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<TITLE>RE: Counting things</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2> Having spent three decades counting things, I want to second Wallace Chafe's "last reservation." Of course, there is always going to be a need for the intervention of human minds. But those minds tend to work best on inputs that do not originate within themselves. There is a real world, and it is, in some important sense, out there. Corpus linguistics offers the possibility of starting with something other than "Can you say S?" or worse "Can I say S?"and I don't think that is a small achievement.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Carl</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>-----Original Message-----</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>From: Wallace Chafe</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>To: FUNKNET@LISTSERV.RICE.EDU</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Just one last reservation. Corpora make it easy to count things and</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>come</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>up with interesting findings regarding the frequency of this or that.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>But</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>knowing exactly what you're counting may not be such a simple matter,</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>and</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>it's easy to come up with "operational definitions" that turn out in the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>end to be spurious. What I'm trying to say is that there's much of</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>importance to learn from examining real language, but it shouldn't</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>seduce</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>us into thinking we can just crank out analyses mechanically.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Understanding the nature of language is always going to require the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>intervention of perceptive human minds.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Wally Chafe</FONT>
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