[Corpora-List] problems with Google counts

[Philip Resnik]

Ring Low <mlow at acsu.buffalo.edu> writes:
>   I agree that using Google to conduct linguistic studies has gotten more
>   and more difficult since then, as the design of the search engine has
>   been changing due to commercial reasons.  We do need a search engine
>   design specically for linguistic studies.

A few people wrote me to suggest that this might be a good opportunity
to mention the Linguist's Search Engine (http://lse.umiacs.umd.edu/).
And it is, assuming we carefully distinguish between linguistic
studies that do and do not rely on automatic counting.  A great deal
of linguistic insight can be gained by doing linguistically informed
searches, and then looking at the data with the same methodological
caveats that linguists must traditionally heed: you need to be sure
the data comes from a native speaker, that the word (or construction,
or sentence) is being used in the intended meaning, that the context
is not exercising some unusual influence, etc.

  Philip


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  Philip Resnik, Associate Professor
  Department of Linguistics and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies

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