English Corpus Linguistics

English Corpus Linguistics is a step-by-step guide to creating and analyzing linguistic corpora. It begins with a discussion of the role that corpus linguistics plays in linguistic theory, demonstrating that corpora have proven to be very useful resources for linguists who believe that their theories and descriptions of English should be based on real rather than contrived data. Charles F. Meyer goes on to describe how to plan the creation of a corpus, how to collect and computerize data for inclusion in a corpus, how to annotate the data that are collected, and how to conduct a corpus analysis of a completed corpus. The book concludes with an overview of the challenges that corpus linguists face to make both the creation and analysis of corpora much easier undertakings than they currently are. Clearly organized and accessibly written, this book will appeal to students of linguistics and English language.

• Essential step-by-step guide to creating a linguistic corpus, a key tool in the study of language • Contains clear, practical advice which users will welcome • Clearly organized and accessibly written, to appeal to students

Preface; 1. Corpus analysis and linguistic theory; 2. Planning the construction of a corpus; 3. Collecting and computerising data; 4. Annotating a corpus; 5. Analysing a corpus; 6. Future prospects in corpus linguistics; Appendices; References; Index.

‘… a very welcome addition to the range of corpus linguistic publications. It offers the beginner a brief yet valuable introduction to the basic aims and - especially - the research procedures of corpus linguistics and thus serves a real need.’ International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English