[Corpora-List] corpus linguistics

[amsler at cs.utexas.edu]

Quoting Samuel Henderson <samueljhenderson at gmail.com>:

>
> I would be quite interested in reading a thoughtful exchange on the mutual
> relevance of corpora and Chomskyan linguistics, even if it was written by
> the participants here.  But I would want to read it in one sitting (or at
> least a few sittings).  It is not pleasant to be subjected to it one drip at
> a time in an email inbox already crowded with traffic.   Such
> high-volume and irrelevant threads also render daily digests almost
> unreadable.
>

Such a discussion has appeared, albeit not by Corpora's participants and totally
coincidentally in DHQ's (Digital Humanities Quarterly) latest edition, Summer
2007, Vol. 1, N.2 in "The End of Irrelevant Text: Electronic Text, Linguistics,
and Literary Theory" by David Hunter (NYU). It can be seen at
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/001/2/000012.html

I do think there is an important point in Samuel Henderson's posting. The
messages and the messengers, no matter how well respectively crafted or
intentioned, are limited by the medium. Using a email deliveries to a mailing
list to conduct this discussion seems to bring out the worst aspects of this
medium, i.e., rapid responses because of time pressure to get one's voice into
the debate before the topic changes, widespread dissemination of the comments
to individuals who throught they were attending the equivalent of a conference
on many topics some of which were relevant to their interests--only to find
they had been locked in a room where one panel was debating something they
didn't attend the conference to hear about.


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