[Corpora-List] Bootcamp: 'Quantitative Corpus Linguistics withR'--re Louw's endorsement

[Mcenery, Tony]

I think Stefan makes some very good points here. They are ones that most people, I am sure, would readily agree with. I have met few corpus linguists with a passion for sifting the orthodox from the unorthodox. Such a process is fruitless at best and counter productive at worst. It is the remarkable diversity of the uses of corpus data - and the diversity of viewpoints that their use has promoted - that is utterly refreshing. Linguistics is so diminished when it narrows to doctrinaire positions as, sadly, it so often has in the past. I enjoy and value a wide range of views and works. I will happily read Sinclair on the same day that I will read Gries. I will take away something from both of them. The conjunctions and disjunctions in their positions will promote debate - I accept and welcome that. I think that this position, the position of open minded enquiry, is the one that the great majority of self identified corpus linguists share. Anyway - a purely personal view. Best,
 
Tony

________________________________

From: corpora-bounces at uib.no on behalf of Stefan Th. Gries
Sent: Sun 17/08/2008 01:06
To: corpora at uib.no
Subject: [Corpora-List] Bootcamp: 'Quantitative Corpus Linguistics withR'--re Louw's endorsement



WT> A number of responses I have received via the list or in private
suggest that the future will see the integration of corpus linguistics
with cognitive approaches. I disagree.
I think that depends on what is meant by integration. In a radical
reading of something like '(complete) amalgamation' I agree with
Wolfgang. In a less radical reading of something like 'cognitive
approaches becoming used more and more often to explain
corpus-linguistically observed patterns', however, I think that this
is more likely. Many people pointed out in their writings that corpus
linguistics and cognitively-inspired linguistics are compatible in
many very basic respects:

- the central role attributed to the notion of frequency when it comes
to explain language acquisition, second/foreign language learning,
language variation and change, and last but not least, language
processing (grossly simplifiying, frequency/dispersion =
entrenchment);
- the recognition that words are not the only meaningful elements in
language but that we need to posit contiguous and non-contiguous
multi-element units (grossly simplifiying, patterns = constructions);
- the willingness to describe linguistic structures not in terms of
constituent structures (with tons of empty elements) but in terms of
linear units and other non-classical constituents;
- the assumptions that language is inherently symbolic (with a
dimension of form and a dimension of meaning), has a social dimension,
has a diachronic dimension; (WT's statement that "[f]or cognitive
linguists, meaning is in the individual, monadic minds of speakers and
hearers" is of course an oversimplification);
- the way in which a distinction between lexical and encyclopedic
meaning is abandoned; etc. etc.

I agree with Wofgang that "[corpus linguistics] is not concerned with
the psychological aspects of language. It claims no privileged
knowledge of the workings of the mind or of an innate language
faculty." However, while I agree to this statement and respect his
corpus-linguistic orientation (as outlined in his 25 theses), I also
think they represent only one part of an increasingly diverse field.
First, obviously not everybody might agree with Wolfgang and me on the
above issues, and the degrees to which people disagree with these
assumptions will be correlated with what they think corpus linguists
should be doing. Second, obviously not everybody might agree with

- "Linguistics is not a science like the natural sciences whose remit
is the search for 'truth'" - ; to some, it just might be exactly such
a science, too;
- "Linguistics belongs to the humanities" - to some, it belongs more
or just as well to the social sciences;
- "[corpus linguistics] is not concerned with the psychological
aspects of language. It claims no privileged knowledge of the workings
of the mind or of an innate language faculty." - to some (not me!), it
might be concerned with just that, too;
- "corpus linguistics looks at phenomena which cannot be explained by
recourse to general rules and assumptions" - some, I actually dare say
"many", corpus linguists might very well be interested in phenomena
that can be explained with recourse to general rules.

However, regardless of which combination of positions one adopts with
regard to these and countless other issues, I agree with J. Mukherjee,
Andrew Hardie, and others that there is no need for sweeping
generalizations about what people (should) do/think and (should) not
do/think that divvy up 'the field' into followers, renegades, and
hijackers. After all, who wants to stand up and tell the following
folks that they're not doing REAL corpus linguistics?

- the corpus-based grammaticalization researcher who uses her
colligations to study 'general rules' of language change;
- the language acquisition researcher who does believe that "[corpus
linguistics] is not concerned with the psychological aspects of
language", but who uses his concordance results to, from there, study
psychological aspects of the acquisition or relative clauses;
- the second language learning researcher who explains observed
frequencies of errors with recourse to psychological mechanisms.

And much more importantly, **what purpose does that kind of 'us vs.
them' even serve** ...

STG
--
Stefan Th. Gries
-----------------------------------------------
University of California, Santa Barbara
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/stgries
-----------------------------------------------

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