Planned colloquium at Corpus Linguistics 2007 (Birmingham, UK, July 27-30 2007)
Corpus and Cognition: The relation between natural and experimental language data
MOTIVATION
While the usefulness of corpora for the description of language cannot be denied, it must also be recognised that they are not the only sources for language data. Corpora show how people use language in authentic environments, or what is likely to occur in language, but they do not make it possible to answer questions having to do with, say, grammaticality or language processing, or how, if at all, language is structured in the mind. Hence the suggestion, made by several researchers (e.g. Kennedy 1998), to combine corpus data with other types of linguistic evidence.
One particularly interesting combination is that between corpus analyses and experimental techniques (elicitation, lexical decision, magnitude estimation, eye movement research, reaction time measures, etc.). While the former make it possible to study “properties of the linguistic output of language users” (Sandra 1995: 592), the latter give access to “properties of the mental processes and structures underlying language production and comprehension” (ibid.), such as cognitive salience or readability. Bringing together the two approaches, therefore, offers a more holistic view of language.
Depending on the phenomenon investigated and the types of data used (e.g. speech vs. writing, sentence production vs. self-paced reading), one may find that the natural and experimental language data converge (cf. Gries et al. 2005) or, on the contrary, that they produce different results (cf. Roland & Jurafsky 2002). We believe that, by examining such relations more closely, we will learn more about the specificities of each type of data and will thus be able to make informed choices about how the two can fruitfully be combined, in domains such as descriptive linguistics, sociolinguistics or foreign language teaching.
- Gries, S.Th., B. Hampe & D. Sch?nefeld. 2005. “Converging evidence: Bringing together experimental and corpus data on the association of verbs and constructions”. Cognitive Linguistics 16.4: 635-676.
- Kennedy, G. 1998. An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics. London & New York: Longman.
- Roland, R. & D. Jurafsky. 2002. “Verb sense and verb subcategorization probabilities”. In S. Stevenson & P. Merlo (eds) The Lexical Basis of Sentence Processing: Formal, Computational, and Experimental Issues (pp. 325-346). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- Sandra, D. 1995. “Experimentation”. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. ?stman, J. Blommaert and C. Bulcaen (eds) Handbook of Pragmatics. Manual (pp. 590-595). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
If you are interested in presenting a paper on the relation between natural and experimental language data, please send a short abstract (up to 200 words) to gilquin@lige.ucl.ac.be as soon as possible, and in any case by DECEMBER 1 2006. We will then prepare the official colloquium proposal to be submitted for review to the Corpus Linguistics conference organising committee.
“CORPUS AND COGNITION” COLLOQUIUM ORGANISERS
Gaetanelle Gilquin (FNRS – University of Louvain)
Terry Shortall (University of Birmingham)
CORPUS LINGUISTICS 2007 WEBSITE
http://www.corpus.bham.ac.uk/conference2007/index.htm
****************************
Ga?tanelle Gilquin
Postdoctoral Researcher FNRS
Centre for English Corpus Linguistics
Université catholique de Louvain
Collège Erasme
Place Blaise Pascal 1
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Belgium
Corpus and Cognition: The relation between natural and experimental language data
MOTIVATION
While the usefulness of corpora for the description of language cannot be denied, it must also be recognised that they are not the only sources for language data. Corpora show how people use language in authentic environments, or what is likely to occur in language, but they do not make it possible to answer questions having to do with, say, grammaticality or language processing, or how, if at all, language is structured in the mind. Hence the suggestion, made by several researchers (e.g. Kennedy 1998), to combine corpus data with other types of linguistic evidence.
One particularly interesting combination is that between corpus analyses and experimental techniques (elicitation, lexical decision, magnitude estimation, eye movement research, reaction time measures, etc.). While the former make it possible to study “properties of the linguistic output of language users” (Sandra 1995: 592), the latter give access to “properties of the mental processes and structures underlying language production and comprehension” (ibid.), such as cognitive salience or readability. Bringing together the two approaches, therefore, offers a more holistic view of language.
Depending on the phenomenon investigated and the types of data used (e.g. speech vs. writing, sentence production vs. self-paced reading), one may find that the natural and experimental language data converge (cf. Gries et al. 2005) or, on the contrary, that they produce different results (cf. Roland & Jurafsky 2002). We believe that, by examining such relations more closely, we will learn more about the specificities of each type of data and will thus be able to make informed choices about how the two can fruitfully be combined, in domains such as descriptive linguistics, sociolinguistics or foreign language teaching.
- Gries, S.Th., B. Hampe & D. Sch?nefeld. 2005. “Converging evidence: Bringing together experimental and corpus data on the association of verbs and constructions”. Cognitive Linguistics 16.4: 635-676.
- Kennedy, G. 1998. An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics. London & New York: Longman.
- Roland, R. & D. Jurafsky. 2002. “Verb sense and verb subcategorization probabilities”. In S. Stevenson & P. Merlo (eds) The Lexical Basis of Sentence Processing: Formal, Computational, and Experimental Issues (pp. 325-346). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- Sandra, D. 1995. “Experimentation”. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. ?stman, J. Blommaert and C. Bulcaen (eds) Handbook of Pragmatics. Manual (pp. 590-595). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
If you are interested in presenting a paper on the relation between natural and experimental language data, please send a short abstract (up to 200 words) to gilquin@lige.ucl.ac.be as soon as possible, and in any case by DECEMBER 1 2006. We will then prepare the official colloquium proposal to be submitted for review to the Corpus Linguistics conference organising committee.
“CORPUS AND COGNITION” COLLOQUIUM ORGANISERS
Gaetanelle Gilquin (FNRS – University of Louvain)
Terry Shortall (University of Birmingham)
CORPUS LINGUISTICS 2007 WEBSITE
http://www.corpus.bham.ac.uk/conference2007/index.htm
****************************
Ga?tanelle Gilquin
Postdoctoral Researcher FNRS
Centre for English Corpus Linguistics
Université catholique de Louvain
Collège Erasme
Place Blaise Pascal 1
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Belgium