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Planned colloquium at Corpus Linguistics 2007 (Birmingham, UK, July 27-30
2007)<br>
<br>
<b>Corpus and Cognition: The relation between natural and experimental
language data<br>
</b> <br><br>
MOTIVATION<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
- Gries, S.Th., B. Hampe & D. Schönefeld. 2005. “Converging evidence:
Bringing together experimental and corpus data on the association of
verbs and constructions”. <i>Cognitive Linguistics</i> 16.4:
635-676.<br>
- Kennedy, G. 1998. <i>An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics</i>. London
& New York: Longman.<br>
- Roland, R. & D. Jurafsky. 2002. “Verb sense and verb
subcategorization probabilities”. In S. Stevenson & P. Merlo (eds)
<i>The Lexical Basis of Sentence Processing: Formal, Computational, and
Experimental Issues</i> (pp. 325-346). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.<br>
- Sandra, D. 1995. “Experimentation”. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, J.
Blommaert and C. Bulcaen (eds) <i>Handbook of Pragmatics. Manual </i>(pp.
590-595). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing
Company. <br>
<br>
<br>
<pre>CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
</pre> <br>
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
<a href="mailto:gilquin@lige.ucl.ac.be">gilquin@lige.ucl.ac.be</a> 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. <br>
<br>
<br>
<pre>“CORPUS AND COGNITION” COLLOQUIUM ORGANISERS
</pre>Gaetanelle Gilquin (FNRS – University of Louvain)<br>
Terry Shortall (University of Birmingham)<br><br>
<br>
<pre>CORPUS LINGUISTICS 2007 WEBSITE
</pre><a href="http://www.corpus.bham.ac.uk/conference2007/index.htm">
http://www.corpus.bham.ac.uk/conference2007/index.htm</a><br>
<br><br>
****************************<br>
Gaëtanelle Gilquin<br>
Postdoctoral Researcher FNRS<br>
Centre for English Corpus Linguistics<br>
Université catholique de Louvain<br>
Collège Erasme<br>
Place Blaise Pascal 1<br>
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve<br>
Belgium<br>
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