<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1522" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>and then of course there is Michael Halliday's nice
analogy between the climate (=the long-term, fairly stable, slowly evolving
language 'system') and the weather (which can include all sorts of local
quirks). When corpora are small and the data for any given linguistic feature is
sparse, 'weather' effects can lead to bad conclusions: a single instance of a
linguistic feature may just be an aberration. But as corpora become much
larger, it gets easier to tell aberrations from regularities.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(Of course this may become a less useful analogy
now that the cilmate itself is changing and becoming more like the
weather)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>the Halliday ref is:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>MAK H. Corpus studies and probabilistiuc
grammar</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>K Aijmer and B Altenberg (Eds) English corpus
linguistics, Longman 1991: 30-43</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Michael Rundell</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>-- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=r.krishnamurthy@aston.ac.uk
href="mailto:r.krishnamurthy@aston.ac.uk">Ramesh Krishnamurthy</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=joerg.schuster@gmail.com
href="mailto:joerg.schuster@gmail.com">joerg.schuster@gmail.com</A> ; <A
title=CORPORA@hd.uib.no href="mailto:CORPORA@hd.uib.no">CORPORA@hd.uib.no</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, December 14, 2005 3:11
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Corpora-List] Stubbs'
analogy?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Hi Jörg,<BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite">Could you tell us more about
this? </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Not a lot, unfortunately, although your question has
prompted me to find out more....*<BR><BR>(I think it was) John Sinclair (who)
once described lexis and grammar as looking at <BR>language through opposite
ends of the same telescope...<BR><BR>Somewhere or other, I picked up the idea
that if lexis and grammar were looking at the same <BR>phenomenon (language)
from different points of view, the dichotomy might be similar to one
that<BR>has confronted physicists: looking at light as particle and wave at
the same time.<BR><BR>I'm sure this is an ultra-naive understanding on my
part, but if you can help, I'd be grateful.<BR><BR>*e.g. Queen Mary College
London (<A href="http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~zgap118/1/%20etc" eudora="autourl">
http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~zgap118/1/ etc</A>)<BR>has some information that might
help:<BR><BR><I>Energy and matter we have learnt from Einstein's theories are
analagous, matter can be simply described in terms of energy. So far we have
only discovered two ways in which energy can be transfered. These are
particles and waves....<BR>Particles are discrete, their energy is
concentrated into what appears to be a finite space, which has definite
boundaries and its contents we consider to be homogenous (the same at any
point within the particle)... </I>[<U>lexical item?</U>]<I> Particles exist at
a specific location. If they are shown on 3D graph, they have x, y, and z
coordinates. They can never exist in more than one place at once... </I><U>[so
"token" rather than "type"?] <BR></U><I>Waves unlike particles cannot be
considered a finite entity. Their energy cannot be considered to exist in a
single place since a wave by definition varies in both displacement and in
time.... In an area of space, unlike a particle, a wave can propagate until it
exists in all locations and at all times...
</I><U>[grammar?]<BR><BR></U>Best<BR>Ramesh<BR><BR>At 11:00 14/12/2005, you
wrote:<BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite">
<DL>
<DD>I also use the 'particle/wave' analogy for the 'lexico-grammar'<BR>
<DD>continuum<BR><BR></DD></DL><BR>Could you tell us more about this? I have
never heard of it.<BR><BR>Jörg<BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE><X-SIGSEP>
<P></X-SIGSEP>Ramesh Krishnamurthy<BR>Lecturer in English Studies<BR>School of
Languages and Social Sciences<BR>Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET,
UK<BR>Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812<BR>Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766<BR><A
href="http://www.aston.ac.uk/lss/english/"
eudora="autourl">http://www.aston.ac.uk/lss/english/</A>
<P>
<HR>
<P></P>No virus found in this incoming message.<BR>Checked by AVG Free
Edition.<BR>Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/199 - Release Date:
13/12/2005<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>