[Corpora-List] What is corpora and what is not?

[Krishnamurthy, Ramesh]

#1 Graham wrote:

>People are trying to find a definition of a term, whereas a good deal
>of experience in disciplines such as corpus linguistics seems to show
>that a lot of terms do not have definitions in the sense that people are
>looking for (and that they are none the worse for that). Why do people
>not apply the insights of their own discipline to this enterprise?

I partly agree, but I think the underlying purpose of the discussion is not

actually to define a term,  but to characterize the field rather than pin it

down or constrain it? I think we have been using the insights from our

experience of the discipline?



Looking back, it seems we have focussed on contents and purpose, and

less on techniques.



#2 Angus wrote:

>I'm one of the people on this list who push the hardest and most
>obnoxiously for representative corpora, but I really don't think that
>representativeness should be part of the definition. We already have a
>perfectly good phrase, "representative corpus."

>And of course, every corpus is representative of something - itself
>at a minimum. Many are not in fact representative of much else. The
>ARTFL corpus (on which I have spent many hours, and on which I have
>based a major study) is representative of the canon of French classics
>that were in the public domain as of 1968 or so. It's not necessarily
>possible to generalize it to anything else. But it's still a corpus, and
>so is any other collection of texts.



Agreed. Representativity is a discussable attribute, not an inherent quality.



>Definitions don't have to be illuminating. A "pack" is a
>collection of dogs (or cards, or cigarettes, etc.). Of course there's
>more to the story than that, but the definition doesn't have to tell the
>story.

Agreed. Definitions don't have to be illuminating. But discussions

about definitions can be?



I think this discussion has run its course, for the time being?

My final contribution:



"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will

be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

(TS Eliot)



best

Ramesh




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