27.3661, Calls: General Linguistics; Language Documentation; Linguistic Theories; Text/Corpus Linguistics / CORPUS (Jrnl)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3661. Fri Sep 16 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.3661, Calls: General Linguistics; Language Documentation; Linguistic Theories; Text/Corpus Linguistics / CORPUS (Jrnl)

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Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2016 11:50:01
From: Charlotte Danino [charlotte.danino at hotmail.fr]
Subject: General Linguistics; Language Documentation; Linguistic Theories; Text/Corpus Linguistics / CORPUS (Jrnl)

 
Full Title: CORPUS 


Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Language Documentation; Linguistic Theories; Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 30-Sep-2016 

Computer science has allowed linguists to tackle big data in big corpora.
Technology has stirred many debates about data collection, corpus design or
statistical significance. Corpus linguistics have gained in theoretical
strength as corpus linguists explored the notion and the object. Large corpora
have been extensively dealt with - but what about ''small corpora''? Small
corpora (SC), in contrast, have drawn little attention from the scientific
community so far. What is a small corpus? Are there several types? When and
how are they used? Could we - or should we - do without them? SC raise two
main questions:

1) Is a SC any corpus that cannot be categorized as a big corpus?
2) What are the epistemological and methodological implications of SC ?

This special issue aims at discussing SC directly, steering the debate away
from already discussed notions (quantitative/qualitative opposition,
representativeness, implementation, etc.). We want to focus on SC for
themselves, starting by acknowledging their existence and accounting for their
actual uses: linguists and language science scholars constantly use them.

Common SC are doctoral research corpora, test corpora (to train or test an
automatic process or implementation), exploratory corpora to investigate the
validity of a topic, method or of data set. Less or little documented
languages are studied on small(er) corpora. Dead languages provide us with
finite corpora: do they share issues with SC? Linguists can also work with a
zero corpus or created data (as with invented languages). It thus appears that
SC play a seminal role in language research, especially so since they are
usually used at early stages. Their use is ubiquitous in language studies
today, and this raises issues in multiple domains of the field. 

SC force us to consider our research practices for what they are. As
Antoinette Renouf (2007) explains, ''my analysis of the continuing creation of
small corpora when it is technologically possible to create larger ones is
that here necessity is playing a larger role''.

Searchable ''by hand'' (Cameron & Deignan 2003) or analyzed by the linguist
(Koester 2010) SC can be practical. Other definitions are quantitative,
defining different minimum word-numbers (Fachinetti 2007, McEnery & Wilson
1996). But Vaughan & Clancy (2013) noticed how blurry the limit actually is.

We invite contribution dealing with SC as such with their potential
specificities in design, use and purpose. Contributions from any field of
language science are welcome. Theoretical and epistemological considerations
will be particularly appreciated.

Some possible axes of investigation include but are not limited to the
practical problem (why choose SC? Is it always a choice?); the specialization
problem (why would SC be specialized? What does specialization mean exactly?);
the purpose problem (can certain types of SC depend on research domains for
example? What about SC for purposes other than research, e.g. language
learning?)

Submission format:

Long Abstract (max. 2 pages) in both PDF and text formats + a statement of
purpose, in French, English, Italian or Spanish, sent to
charlotte.danino at hotmail.fr by September 30, 2016

Important dates: 
Sept. 30, 2016: deadline for abstract submission 
Nov. 30, 2016: notification of acceptance 
May 15, 2017: deadline for complete articles
Jan. 15, 2018: publication of Corpus special issue (digital and printed
versions)

Contact:

Charlotte Danino (Associate professor, Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne
Nouvelle): charlotte.danino at hotmail.fr




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