230560 Applied Linguistics / Registers of English: Spoken and Written Language, Working with Corpora (S) (WiSe 2007/2008)

Prerequisites:
You must have completed your basic module phase in linguistics with the
classes "How to Handle Speech", "How to Make a Dictionary" and the "Introduction to
Linguistics" or equivalent classes. Though we are going to process the corpora
on a computer, programming skills are not required.

This seminar deals with corpus linguistics, i.e. the study of text collections
and collections of annotated spoken language material. In the first part of
the course we will define the concept of corpora and introduce the basic
theoretical concepts of corpus linguistics. The second part will deal with the
influence of corpus linguistics on linguistic subdisciplines including
language learning, that is the application of corpus linguistic methods for
research in syntax, semantics, phonetics and phonology, lexicography, etc.
The practical part of this class will focus on the creation of a corpus and
finding methods of asking sensible questions.

At the end of this seminar you will know what a corpus is, what kind of
questions can be answered by consulting a corpus and you will have created a
small corpus.