Corpus Linguistics LING 27340/37340 Instructor: Jordan Fenlon (jfenlon@uchicago.edu) Office hours: Thursdays, 10:45-11:45 (please make an appointment) Spring quarter: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:00-10:20 This course introduces students to the use of corpora in linguistics. Students will learn about the history of corpora, the different types of corpora that exist, and issues that arise in corpus building. There will also be an opportunity to critically evaluate studies that have used corpus data and to engage in practical activities. The course will not be limited to corpora involving spoken and written texts from major languages but will discuss issues that arise when developing corpora for minority languages (e.g., sign languages). Course texts Most of the reading will be taken from the following text which is available for purchase from the Co-op seminary. McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. In addition, some readings will be taken from the following texts which are available online (via the University of Chicago’s library) Baker, P. (ed) (2009). Contemporary Corpus Linguistics. Continuum Baker, P. (2010). Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh University Press O’Keefe, A. & M. McCarthy (eds.) (2010). Routledge Handbook of Corpus

Linguistics. Routledge Tognini-Bonelli, E. (2001). Corpus Linguistics at Work: Studies in Corpus

Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Company Overview of topics

Week Topic 1 Introduction to corpus linguistics 2 Corpora from 1960s onwards/different types of corpora 3 Corpus building and annotation 4 Concordancers 5 Web as corpora and ethics 6 Multimodal and sign language corpora 7 Synchronic and diachronic variation 8 Corpus driven vs. corpus based 9 Corpora and functional linguistics 10 Building corpora

Assessment Assessment will be in three parts:

1. Critical evaluation and survey of two corpora (20%) – due in week 4 2. Literature reviews of studies using corpora (30%) – due in week 8

3. Report of a study using corpora (conducted by the student) (50%) – due in week 11

Week 1: Introduction to corpus linguistics Topics covered: defining corpora, criticisms by Noam Chomsky, rationalism vs. empiricism in language research Required reading Chapter 1: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Week 2: Corpora from 1960s onwards/different types of corpora Topics covered: Different types of corpora, - spoken, written, signed, and different types of specialized corpora, general corpora, monitor corpora. etc. Required reading Chapter 4: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Recommended further reading Tognini Bonelli, E. (2010). Theoretical overview of the evolution of corpus

linguistics. In O’Keefe, A. & M. McCarthy (eds.) (2010). Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge

Lee, D. (2010). What corpora are available? In O’Keefe, A. & M. McCarthy (eds.) (2010). Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge

Week 3: Building corpora Topics covered: balance, representativeness, metadata, annotation, mark up Required reading Chapter 2, p25-35: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Recommended further reading Adolphs, S. & D. Knight (2010). Building a spoken corpus: what are the basics? In

O’Keefe, A. & M. McCarthy (eds.) (2010). Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge

Nelson, M. (2010). Building a written corpus: what are the basics? In O’Keefe, A. & M. McCarthy (eds.) (2010). Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge

Week 4: Concordances Topics covered: Different types of concordances, what they do, key-word in context, statistics in corpus linguistics, demonstration of Ant Conc and other software Required reading Chapter 2, p35-53: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Recommended further reading

Tribble, C. (2010). What are concordances and how are they used? In O’Keefe, A. & M. McCarthy (eds.) (2010). Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge

Week 5: Web as corpora and ethics Topics covered: The Internet as corpora, demo of BNC web, ethics Required reading Chapter 3: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Recommended further reading Lew, R. (2009). The web as corpus versus traditional corpora: Their relative utility for

linguists and language learners. In Baker, P. (ed) (2009). Contemporary Corpus Linguistics. Continuum

Week 6: Multimodal and sign language corpora Topics covered: sign languages, audio-visual corpora, observer’s paradox, specialized corpora Required reading Schembri, A., Fenlon, J., Rentelis, R., Reynolds, S., & Cormier, K. (2013). Building

the British Sign Language Corpus. Language Documentation and Conservation, 7, 136-154.

Thompson, P. (2012). Building a specialised audio-visual corpus. In O’Keefe, A. & M. McCarthy (eds.) (2010). Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge

Week 7: Synchronic and diachronic variation Topics covered: Variation and change in British and American English; Brown family corpus; historical corpora; sociolinguistic variation Required reading Chapter 5: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Recommended further reading Chapter 3&4: Baker, P. (2010). Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh

University Press Week 8: Corpus driven vs. corpus based approaches Topics covered: corpus driven vs. corpus based approaches, semantic prosody, collocations, discourse analysis, Pattern Grammar, Idiom Principle. Required reading Chapter 6: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Recommended further reading Chapter 4&5: Tognini-Bonelli, E. (2001). Corpus Linguistics at Work: Studies in

Corpus Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Company

Week 9: Corpora and functional linguistics Topics covered: corpora and functional linguistics; corpora and typology, syntax, semantics, metaphor Required reading Chapter 7: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Recommended further reading Chapter 8: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge Week 10: Using corpora in linguistics Topics covered: applying corpora to the study of languages, corpora and applied linguistics, using available corpora, the future in corpus linguistics Required reading Chapter 9: McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. (2012). Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge