Table Of ContentEDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE – ADVANCED
Series Editor: Heinz Giegerich C
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Books in this series provide readers with a detailed description and L
explanation of key areas of English Language study. The authors presuppose in
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a basic working knowledge of the topic and explore aspects of the u
linguistics of English for an intermediate or advanced student readership. is
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Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English t
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HANS LINDQUIST
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A lively hands-on introduction to the use of electronic corpora in the description and n
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aparticularly valuable guide.
After introducing corpora and the rationale and basic methodology of corpus linguistics, the
author presentsanumber ofcase studies providing new insights into vocabulary, collocations,
phraseology, metaphor and metonymy, syntactic structures, male and female language, and
language change. In a final chapter it is shown how the web can be used as a source
for linguistic investigations. Each chapter has study questions, exercises and suggestions for
further reading.
Students will benefit from the book’s
• Clear language and structure
• Well-defined terminology
• Step-by-step instructions H Corpus Linguistics
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• Generous, up-to-date exemplification from different varieties of English around the world N
• Accompanying web page with exercises and updated information about freely accessible S
corpora. See www.euppublishing.com/series/ETOTELAdvanced/Lindquist LIN and the Description
Hans Lindquist is associate professor of English Linguistics at Linnaeus University, Sweden. D
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Cover design & illustration: River Design, Edinburgh
Hans Lindquist
Edinburgh University Press
22George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF E
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ISBN 978 0 7486 2615 1 in
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www.euppublishing.com u
rg EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE – ADVANCED
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Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English
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Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language – Advanced
General Editor
Heinz Giegerich, Professor of English Linguistics (University of Edinburgh)
Editorial Board
Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington)
Derek Britton (University of Edinburgh)
Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam)
Rochelle Lieber (University of New Hampshire)
Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh)
Donka Minkova (UCLA)
Edward W. Schneider (University of Regensburg)
Katie Wales (University of Leeds)
Anthony Warner (University of York)
TITLES IN THE SERIES INCLUDE
Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English
Hans Lindquist
English Metre
Chris McCully
A Historical Phonology of English
Donka Minkova
A Historical Morphology of English
Dieter Kastovsky
Grammaticalisation and the History of English
Manfred Krug and Hubert Cuyckens
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Corpus Linguistics and the
Description of English
Hans Lindquist
Edinburgh University Press
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© Hans Lindquist, 2009
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Janson
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2614 4 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 2615 1 (paperback)
The right of Hans Lindquist
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
List of fi gures ix
List of tables xi
To readers xvi
List of abbreviations xix
1 Corpus linguistics 1
1.1 Introducing corpus linguistics 1
1.2 The professor’s shoeboxes 2
1.3 The tape-recorder and the computer 3
1.4 What can we get out of corpora? 5
1.5 Criticism from armchair linguists 8
1.6 Types of corpora 10
1.7 Very large and quite small corpora 22
1.8 Summary 23
Study questions 23
Corpus exercises 23
Further reading 23
2 Counting, calculating and annotating 25
2.1 Qualitative and quantitative method 25
2.2 Frequency 26
2.3 Comparing frequencies 37
2.4 Distribution in the corpus 40
2.5 Using percentages and normalising 41
2.6 Representativity 42
2.7 Corpus annotation 43
2.8 Summary 49
Study questions 50
Corpus exercises 50
Further reading 50
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vi CORPUS LINGUISTICS
3 Looking for lexis 51
3.1 The role of the lexicon in language 51
3.2 How lexicographers use corpora 51
3.3 The meaning of words 52
3.4 Semantic preference, semantic prosody and evaluation 57
3.5 How words change in frequency over time 59
3.6 How words spread between varieties of English 62
3.7 How authors use words 66
3.8 Summary 68
Study questions 69
Corpus exercises 69
Further reading 70
4 Checking collocations and colligations 71
4.1 Two types of collocations 71
4.2 Collocations in a window 73
4.3 Adjacent collocations 78
4.4 Colligations 87
4.5 Summary 89
Study questions 89
Corpus exercises 89
Further reading 90
5 Finding phrases 91
5.1 Phraseology 91
5.2 Idioms 93
5.3 Recurrent phrases 97
5.4 A literary application: Dickens’ recurrent long phrases 108
5.5 Summary 109
Study questions 109
Corpus exercises 110
Further reading 110
6 Metaphor and metonymy 111
6.1 Introduction 111
6.2 Using corpora in the study of metaphor 119
6.3 Summary 129
Study questions 129
Corpus exercises 130
Further reading 130
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CONTENTS vii
7 Grammar 131
7.1 Introduction 131
7.2 Who and whom 131
7.3 Get-passives 134
7.4 Adjective complementation 137
7.5 Prepositional gerund or directly linked gerund 139
7.6 Using a parsed corpus: passives revisited 147
7.7 Summary 148
Study questions 148
Corpus exercises 149
Further reading 149
8 Male and female 150
8.1 Introduction 150
8.2 Referring to men and women 151
8.3 The way men and women use language 159
8.4 Summary 164
Study questions 165
Corpus exercises 165
Further reading 166
9 Language change 167
9.1 Introduction 167
9.2 What is likely happening with likely 169
9.3 Grammaticalisation: The history of beside(s) 173
9.4 The OED as Corpus: Starting to say start to and
start V-ing 180
9.5 Sociolinguistic explanations of language change:
The rise of third person singular -s 182
9.6 Summary 184
Study questions 185
Corpus exercises 185
Further reading 185
10 Corpus linguistics in cyberspace 187
10.1 Introduction 187
10.2 The web as corpus 188
10.3 Using commercial search engines for linguistic research 190
10.4 Piggybacking: WebCorp 192
10.5 Regional variation: agreement with collective nouns 196
10.6 Grammar: adjective comparison 198
10.7 Dialect and non-standard language 201
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viii CORPUS LINGUISTICS
10.8 Web genres and compiling corpora from the web 203
10.9 Summary 204
Study questions 205
Corpus exercises 205
Further reading 205
References 207
Index 217
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Figures
Figure 1.1 Concordance for globe in Shakespeare’s work 6
Figure 1.2 The fi rst ten lines from the concordance for globe in
The New York Times, 1990 6
Figure 1.3 Selected concordance lines for globe in The New York
Times, 1990 7
Figure 1.4 Expanded context for concordance line 479 for globe
in The New York Times, 1990 8
Figure 1.5 Excerpt from a transcribed conversation in the
London-Lund Corpus 12
Figure 1.6 Key to transcription symbols 13
Figure 1.7 Excerpt from COLT 14
Figure 2.1 The fi rst ten concordance lines for fi ne (noun) in
COCA, with manual analysis 48
Figure 2.2 The nine concordance lines with incorrect tagging
out of the fi rst 100 concordance lines for dance (noun)
in COCA 49
Figure 3.1 Dictionary entry for the verb squeeze 53
Figure 3.2 The fi rst twenty concordance lines for squeeze (verb)
in the Time Corpus, 1990s 54
Figure 3.3 Dictionary entry for the noun squeeze 55
Figure 3.4 The fi rst twenty concordance lines for squeeze (noun)
in the Time Corpus, 1990s 56
Figure 3.5 The fi rst ten concordance lines for set in in COCA,
2000s 58
Figure 3.6 Frequency of greenhouse effect and global warming in
Time, 1950s–2000s 59
Figure 3.7 Frequency of maybe and perhaps in Time, 1920s–2000s 61
Figure 4.1 A verb pattern in H. E. Palmer 72
Figure 4.2 Excerpt from a noun pattern in H. E. Palmer 72
Figure 4.3 Selected meanings of at hand, in hand, on hand and to
hand in the OED online 82
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