<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/26/2014 4:51 PM, Matías Guzmán
Naranjo wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAKrYe9krexryu50QeMq3gxA-tN6wffLvAuV+DpKevRej0gvZ5g@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px
solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote">Another
thing we can do is to put off the problem of finding a
representative sample of Language X and focus on a particular
genre or register, where there will be less variability.</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The problem is that we want to be able to generalized. It
is of little insight to say that construction X is more
frequent than construction Y in <<semi-guided interviews
conducted by profession linguists, where the test subjects
know they are being recorded>> for the 100 people you
picked. We would like to be able to say that those results are
representative of, say, spoken language in a particular city,
or at least a formal spoken register. Not being able to
generalize would mean that things like collocational, or
collostructional studies are meaningless for spoken corpora
because they would only apply to that particular set of texts.<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Right. Here's what I don't get: Why hasn't anyone followed even
a single speaker around, let alone a representative sample, to see
what proportion of registers and genres they're exposed to on a
daily basis? Or has this been done?<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:grvsmth@panix.com">grvsmth@panix.com</a>
</pre>
</body>
</html>