7/21/2019 Corpus Linguistics Unit 1 Video Transcript

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University of Birmingham. ELAL. Corpus Linguistics Module. Unit 1

Corpus Linguistics. Unit 1

2 minutes 35

Neil Millar

0:01

Hello and welcome to unit one

0:04

of this module. An introduction to

0:07

Corpus Linguistics and BNC web. The first thing that we do in this

0:13

unit, is introduce

0:16

two main concepts in Corpus Linguistics. Those are

0:19empiricism, so Corpus Linguistics is based on

0:22

observations of language; it's not based on introspection,

0:27

thinking about language but rather observable facts about language.

0:30

The second main concept that we

0:34

talk about in this module, in this unit, is

0:37

representativeness, and this is an important but

0:41

tricky topic to tie down.

0:44

So when we are using a corpus

0:48

to carry out some sort of language research we're probably

0:52

interested in making generalisable claims0:55

either about the language as a whole, or

0:59

a part of the language, so for example a group speakers,

1:03

or a certain group texts that we're analysing.

1:07

In order for those claims to be valid then

1:10

we would hope that our texts, our corpus,

7/21/2019 Corpus Linguistics Unit 1 Video Transcript

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University of Birmingham. ELAL. Corpus Linguistics Module. Unit 1

1:14

in some way reflect the...

1:17

the language so here we're talking about

1:21

our corpus as a sample and the language that we're

1:25

...interested in, or the part of the language that we're introducing,

1:29

is the population. Okay. And the relationship between

1:33

our sample, the corpus and the language is all

1:37

to do with representativeness

1:40

how how representative our corpus is.

1:44Okay. We then move on to

1:46

look at the applications of corpus linguistics.

1:50

So... applications

1:54

in second language acquisition, lexicography,

1:58

...translation... many applications

2:04

and the different types of corpora that are available

2:08

and are used for research.

2:11

 And then finally we actually move on to

2:15

some practical activities with corpora and start off with

2:19

simple searches. So...2:22

you'll sign up for a username and password with BNC web,

2:26

and then there are a set tasks to

2:30

get you started with some simple... simple searches.

2:33

Okay.