corpus based research at Stanford

[Marianne Mithun]

> I think that more corpus-based research from more perspectives on language
> is possible at Stanford than almost anywhere.  (Penn being an
> exception to the rule... :-)
>
> J.


Actually, there may be considerably more active, corpus-based linguistics
going on than many realize. There's been a long tradition among most Santa
Barbara linguists of corpus-based analysis, in many cases dating from well
before the formation of the department over a decade ago. It ranges from
close work on phonetics and prosody through analysis of morphology,
syntax, discourse, language change, and language acquisition. The corpora
vary in size, but most are quite extensive. They generally consist of
spontaneous spoken language, and considerable thought and discussion have
gone into issues of content, collection, format, etc. Languages represented
include Mohawk, Tuscarora, Cayuga, Seneca, Caddo, Central Pomo, Central
Alaskan Yup'ik, Kapampangan, Mandarin, Korean (child language), Japanese
(both adult and child language), American English, and others.
Corpus-based linguistics is something most of our students simply do as a
matter of course in much of their work.


Marianne Mithun