<div>Dear all,</div>
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<div>unwittingly, it seems, we're again falling into the trap of not distinguishing between introspection and intuition. All linguists can, do (and must) use their intuition when analysing language; you can take or leave introspection.</div>
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<div>Corpora provide a source of data which originates in the intuitive use of language by 'ordinary' speakers. This use is not introspective: even if we consider that most corpus data in current use is written rather than transcribed, and so will have undergone a degree of revising and refining by the original authors, the kind of thinking about language that is necessary for perfecting one's writing style is not the same as an armchair linguist's delving for data in his/her own head, in which the introspective part filters out a lot of what is intuitive. Of course, when I say armchair linguist, I'm not excluding non-professionals. I really mean anyone who makes claims about what they personally do, or what an ideal speaker does, or what the speaker community does.</div>
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<div>Working with figurative language and phraseology, I find that a lot of what can be discovered by corpus analysis is confirmed and complemented by psycholinguistic research; sometimes the concordances explain the whys and wherefores, and other times it is the experimental data that explains oddities in the concordances. I also find that many corpus and psycholinguists are united in their dissatisfaction with the claims made by their theoretical linguist, language philosopher, and/or cognitive linguist colleagues, who prefer to introspect for their data. Both corpus and psycholinguistic scholars highlight the fact that introspectively-derived data inevitably leads to oversimplification, and oversimplification amounts to getting the facts wrong an awful lot of the time. Of course some of the facts will be accurate - and this is why people still introspect, because if it never worked, they'd have given up on it ages ago - but the finer details tend to escape notice.</div>
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<div>That said, convincing an introspector to use a corpus instead is probably as difficult as convincing somebody who truly believes the world is flat that is is a sphere... or like convincing a corpus user to introspect his/her concordances. Maybe in 300 years time the paradigm shift will have taken place, but I for one do not plan to hold my breath. Live and let live: but we have much more interesting and exciting data ;-)</div>
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<div>Gill</div>
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<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 17/09/2008, <b class="gmail_sendername">Martin Wynne</b> <<a href="mailto:martin.wynne@oucs.ox.ac.uk">martin.wynne@oucs.ox.ac.uk</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">The paper which you cite may well focus explicitly on this area in a<br>useful way, but of course anyone who uses corpus data always uses both<br>
intuition and corpus data. Or has anyone worked out how to turn their<br>intuition off? (I guess you could try to do corpus linguistics on a<br>language that you don't know, but I don't imagine you'd get very far.)<br>
The point is surely that a corpus linguist doesn't rely on intuition<br>only, but checks intuitions against corpus data.<br><br>And thus, (to be a bit more provocative) by constantly testing, refining<br>and sometimes refuting one's intuitions, the corpus linguist can become<br>
better at knowing when and when not to trust introspection, and can<br>become a much better armchair linguist than the armchair-bound linguist.<br><br>Martin Wynne<br><br><a href="mailto:nina@scils.rutgers.edu">nina@scils.rutgers.edu</a> wrote:<br>
> James Pustejovsky and Anna Rumshisky have recently published an article<br>> advocating an approach that uses both intuition *and* corpus data to<br>> develop and test linguistic theory.<br>><br>> Pustejovsky, J., & Rumshisky, A. (2008). Between Chaos and Structure:<br>
> Interpreting Lexical Data Through a Theoretical Lens. Int J<br>> Lexicography, 21(3), 337-355. doi: 10.1093/ijl/ecn023.<br>> Abstract: In this paper, we explore the inherent tension between corpus<br>> data and linguistic theory that aims to model it, with particular<br>
> reference to the dynamic and variable nature of the lexicon. We explore<br>> the process through which modeling of the data is accomplished,<br>> presenting itself as a sequence of conflicting stages of discovery.<br>
> First-stage data analysis informs the model, whereas the seeming chaos<br>> of organic data inevitably violates our theoretical assumptions. But in<br>> the end, it is restrictions apparent in the data that call for<br>
> postulating structure within a revised theoretical model. We show the<br>> complete cycle using two case studies and discuss the implications.<br>><br>><br>><br>> Mai Zaki wrote:<br>><br>>> Dear colleagues,<br>
>><br>>> My question may be a bit basic but I would appreciate your feedback.<br>>> My own research is corpus-based and I am working in the field of lexical semantics/pragmatics where the majority of the literature is based on made-up examples and testing of native speakers' intuitions. So, I still get stuck in my discussions with others trying to convince them that corpus work and real life examples add a different angle to any research. The usual objections are that it's not about numbers and percentages, and that patterns of use are questionable because of the issue of how representative they are.<br>
>> I want to include in my own work a part about the advantages of corpus-based work as opposed to arm-chair linguistics, and I would appreciate if you could guide me to any references on this topic as well as your own ideas.<br>
>><br>>> Thank you.<br>>><br>>> Mai Zaki<br>>> Middlesex University<br>>><br>>> _______________________________________________<br>>> Corpora mailing list<br>>> <a href="mailto:Corpora@uib.no">Corpora@uib.no</a><br>
>> <a href="http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora">http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora</a><br>>><br>><br>> _______________________________________________<br>> Corpora mailing list<br>> <a href="mailto:Corpora@uib.no">Corpora@uib.no</a><br>
> <a href="http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora">http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora</a><br>><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Corpora mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Corpora@uib.no">Corpora@uib.no</a><br>
<a href="http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora">http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>*********************************<br>Dr. Gill Philip<br>CILTA<br>Università degli Studi di Bologna<br>
Piazza San Giovanni in Monte, 4<br>40124 Bologna<br>Italy