[Corpora-List] Re: Chomsky

[Tsuguya Sasaki]

> I'm looking for the exact bibliographical reference where we can find
> Chomsky's idea that a corpus presents a language that is defective
> or corrupted.

Chomsky (1962: 159) as quoted in McEnery & Wilson (2001: 10):

"Any natural corpus will be skewed. Some sentences won't occur because
they are obvious, others because they are false, still others because
they are impolite. The corpus, if natural, will be so wildly skewed that
the description [based upon it] would be no more than a mere list."

--
Tsuguya Sasaki
Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages
Bar-Ilan University
Email: ts @ ts-cyberia.net
Website: http://www.ts-cyberia.net/