Linda,

A corpus is basically a gigantic collection of text stored in a
computer-searchable form. The idea is to set up a big batch of real
language that is representative of a certain population (e.g. "modern
American newspaper English"). You're actually using a kind of corpus
when you do a Google search. If you do a Google search to find out
roughly how many pages use "on accident" rather than "by accident,"
you're doing linguistic research.


Given a good corpus, instead of simply making statements about how you
*think* people use the language, you can check to see how they actually
do use it. You can also look at the frequency with which things co-occur
in order to spot patterns, and the computer can do this for you very
quickly (and then you can run the number to see if what looks like it
might be a correlation is a statistically significant one or not). The
kinds of corpora that ATEGgers would be most interested in, I think, are
those that are representative of general American written English, esp.
ones that sample from a wide variety of genres. 

Bill Spruiell

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Linda Comerford
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 4:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: corpus project ideas

Could someone please tell me what a linguistic corpus is?  That's a new
phrase to me.  Thanks.

Linda 


 
Linda Comerford
317.786.6404
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]
www.comerfordconsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 3:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: corpus project ideas

Here are few options, although there are probably hundreds more. Also,
you
might find the site at [http://tiny.cc/corpora] useful -- it bookmarks a
lot
of corpus analysis tools. --- Bill Spruiell

(1) Have each student pick two to five words from a list you provide --
and
include a bunch of words on the list that are commonly the focus of
usage
debates (e.g. "comprise"). Have each student look at what 2-3
dictionaries
say about the words, then do a keyword-in-context search through the
corpus.
The student then compares what the dictionary describes as the word's
usage
with the actual usage in the corpus. 

(2) An arguably more interesting version of (1) involves having students
work in small groups and investigate sets of semantically-related, but
charged, words as part of a kind of social or political analysis. One of
the
corpus studies I've read, for example, looked at the distribution
patterns
of "job" vs. "occupation" vs. "career" with intriguing results.


(3) Make a list of general constructions that can be "Corpus-searched"
without too many headaches -- for example, prepositional phrases with
"among" and "between" (the second you use "to," you're getting
infinitives
in the mix, etc., so it's a headache). Divide the students into small
groups, assign each group one of those constructions, and ask the
students
to see if they can make any observations about the distribution
patterns,
and possible reasons for those (how often does a between-phrase come at
the
beginning, vs. at the end?). If the corpus comprises samples from
different
genres, they can also see if the distribution patterns seem
genre-related.

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Katz, Seth
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 2:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: corpus project ideas

I would like to hear about these project ideas too--please post them to
the
list!
 
Dr. Seth Katz
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Bradley University
Peoria, IL
 
Faculty Advisor
Bradley University Hillel
Bradley Fencing Club

________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of R.
Michael Medley (ck)
Sent: Fri 8/21/2009 12:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: corpus project ideas



For an undergraduate Introduction to Linguistics class, I provide
students
several options for short research projects.  An option that I would
like to
add this year is using a linguistic corpus such as Mark Davies'
Corpus
of Contemporary American English.  The result of the students'
investigation will be a short 3-5 page paper, so I am not looking for a
long
involved process.

Since I am one never to enjoy re-inventing the wheel, I'd appreciate
hearing
ideas that any of you might have for structuring such a project and
aiming
students in fruitful directions.  If I use your idea, I will give credit
in
the assignment description.

Just a reminder, these are first- and second-year college students who
have
probably never had a linguistics course before, but they're motivated &
intelligent and catch on pretty quickly.  Thanks.

R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Eastern Mennonite University
1200 Park Road   Harrisonburg, VA 22802
Ph: 540-432-4051 Fax: 540-432-4444
************************************
"Understanding and shared meaning, when it occurs, is a small miracle,
brought about by the leap of faith that we call 'communication across
cultures.'"  --Claire Kramsch

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