Corpus Linguistics - An Introduction to the Field and its Use in Linguistics

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2, University of Innsbruck (Anglistik), course: Synchronic and/or Diachronic English Linguistics: English Syntax and Morphology, language: English, abstract: This paper is dealing with the topic of corpus linguistics. It tries to give an overview about this topic, as I think that, although it already gained popularity, not everyone is familiar with it.

First, I want to explain what a corpus actually is, and what it is useful for. The different types of corpora will be described and also potential risks of depending to much on computer-processable corpora. Then the focus shifts to the fields of application of corpus linguistics, and also the use in syntax and morphology is discussed. I will also try to illustrate the opportunities a corpus provides by using an example for better understanding.

The main aim of this paper is to give an overview about corpus linguistics and the fields of application, with attention to syntax and morphology.