| CODE | LIN3098 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Corpus Linguistics | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 03 - Years 2, 3, 4 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 6 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Corpus Linguistics is the study of language through the use of corpora, i.e. large archives of linguistic data (such as texts and speech transcriptions). It is an important paradigm in the study of languages, not only because it has helped to place linguistic theory on a sounder empirical footing, but also because it has challenged a number of standard assumptions that underpin some work in theoretical linguistics. This study-unit aims to introduce participants to the general field of Corpus Linguistics and its methods, and to a number of topics that have benefited from the study of linguistic corpora. In so doing, it will motivate them to assess critically some of the basic assumptions in this field, in comparison to those made in more theoretically-oriented work. Study-unit Aims: - The study-unit aims at presenting the students with theoretical knowledge of corpus linguistics, but also at involving students in hands-on practical work to apply theories to the analysis of existing corpora using corpus analysis tools. - The content the unit aims to cover is divided into two parts as detailed below. Part I: Foundational Issues 1. What is a corpus? A brief history of corpus linguistics and a critical comparison with other approaches to linguistics 2. Types of corpora (reference corpora, parallel corpora, web corpora, multilingual corpora, etc) a. Specific examples of existing corpora (e.g. the British National Corpus, the Maltese Language Resource Server) 3. Issues in the construction and design of linguistic corpora, including representativeness, design and annotation of a corpus 4. Conducting linguistic analysis using corpora that involve the use of descriptive statistics and dedicated corpus analysis tools. Part II: Applications 5. Corpus-based lexicography 6. Semantics: what collocations and idioms in a corpus can tell us about meaning 7. Corpora and grammar: the use of corpora to discover grammatical regularities, and to determine degrees of grammaticality of different constructions 8. Corpora and stylistics: the use of electronic data to discover the determinants of a particular style (e.g. formal vs. informal) in language. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - evaluate the contribution of corpus linguistics to the field of linguistic inquiry; - assess characteristics of existing language corpora and requirements for new corpora; - describe linguistic phenomena on the basis of empirical data; - carry out quantitative analyses of linguistic data extracted from existing corpora. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - employ descriptive statistics to analyse language data; - use dedicated computer tools for the extraction and analysis of language data; - apply existing analysis methods to new language data (e.g. across different languages). Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main text: - A. Stefanowitsch (2020). Corpus Linguistics: A guide to the methodology. Berlin: Language Science Press. Supplementary readings: - McEnery, T. and Wilson, A. (2001). Corpus Linguistics (2nd Ed). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press - Biber, D., S. Conrad and R. Reppen. (1998). Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In addition to the above, students will also be assigned readings which will be made available throughout the course. |
||||||||
| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
|
||||||||
| LECTURER/S | |||||||||
|
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
|||||||||