Cover -- Half-title -- Series-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Corpus analysis and linguistic theory -- 1.1 Linguistic theory and description -- 1.2 Corpora in functional descriptions of language -- 1.3 Corpus-based research in linguistics -- 1.3.1 Grammatical studies of specific linguistic constructions -- 1.3.2 Reference grammars -- 1.3.3 Lexicography -- 1.3.4 Language variation -- 1.3.5 Historical linguistics -- 1.3.6 Contrastive analysis and translation theory -- 1.3.7 Natural language processing -- 1.3.8 Language acquisition -- 1.3.9 Language pedagogy -- 1.4 Conclusions -- Study questions -- 2 Planning the construction of a corpus -- 2.1 The British National Corpus -- 2.2 The overall length of a corpus -- 2.3 The types of genres to include in a corpus -- 2.4 The length of individual text samples to be included in a corpus -- 2.5 Determining the number of texts and range of speakers and writers to include in a corpus -- 2.6 The time-frame for selecting speakers and texts -- 2.7 Sampling native vs. non-native speakers of English -- 2.8 Controlling for sociolinguistic variables -- 2.8.1 Gender balance -- 2.8.2 Age -- 2.8.3 Level of education -- 2.8.4 Dialect variation -- 2.8.5 Social contexts and social relationships -- 2.9 Conclusions -- Study questions -- 3 Collecting and computerizing data -- 3.1 General considerations -- 3.2 Collecting samples of speech -- 3.3 Collecting samples of writing -- 3.4 Keeping records of texts gathered -- 3.5 Computerizing data -- 3.6 Computerizing speech -- 3.6.1 Representing speech in standard orthographic form -- 3.6.1.1 Vocalized pauses and other lexicalized expressions -- 3.6.1.2 Linked expressions -- 3.6.1.3 Partially uttered words and repetitions -- 3.6.1.4 Unintelligible speech -- 3.6.1.5 Punctuation -- 3.6.1.6 Background noise.

3.6.1.7 Changing the names of individuals referred to in spoken texts -- 3.6.2 Iconicity and speech transcription -- 3.7 Computerizing written texts -- 3.8 Conclusions -- Study questions -- 4 Annotating a corpus -- 4.1 Structural markup -- 4.2 Tagging a corpus -- 4.3 Parsing a corpus -- 4.4 Other types of tagging and parsing -- 4.4.1 Semantic tagging -- 4.4.2 Discourse tagging -- 4.4.3 Problem-oriented tagging -- 4.5 Conclusions -- Study questions -- 5 Analyzing a corpus -- 5.1 The pseudo-title in English: framing a research question -- 5.2 Determining whether a corpus is suitable for answering a particular research question -- 5.3 Extracting information from a corpus -- 5.3.1 Defining the parameters of a corpus analysis -- 5.3.2 Coding and recording grammatical information -- 5.3.3 Locating relevant constructions for a particular corpus analysis -- 5.4 Subjecting the results of a corpus study to statistical analysis -- 5.4.1 Judging the suitability of a corpus for statistical analysis and determining the appropriate statistical tests to apply -- 5.5 The statistical analysis of pseudo-titles -- 5.5.1 Exploring a corpus -- 5.5.2 Using quantitative information to support qualitative statements -- 5.6 Conclusions -- Study questions -- 6 Future prospects in corpus linguistics -- Appendix 1 Corpus resources -- Appendix 2 Concordancing programs -- PC/Macintosh-based programs -- Web-based programs -- References -- Index.