[Corpora-List] Is corpora of texts an object?

[Otto Lassen]

I think we must make a distinction between the word and the reality.
The definition is only a matter of language and communication, not of the 
reality behind
the words. If you want to describe a piece of realitity e.g. a corpus, you 
have to use many words,
not just one.
A word is only an abstract pattern which because of its abstractness can be 
used metaphorically on
many pieces of reality. Corpus is a metaphor with the latin origin "the 
body" and a structure meaning "a limited whole".
There exists many realizations of this abstract pattern in many different 
contexts. One of these is the name of
the present list, CORPORA (latin plural) which contains discussions about 
using analyzes of collections of texts
to find the structures of languages. Corpora in this meaning are not only 
collections af texts.
There is a also a purpose (linguistics, translation) which require the 
collections
to be representative for the language, and a philosophy: in linguistics 
using corpora is not the same paradigm
as for instance that of generative linquistics. Statistical linquistics can 
not do without corpora to do the training of
the models.cal linquistics
You are asked: "how do you study languages?" And you answer: "I use 
corpora".  If the questioner don't understand
you have the explain this particular meaning of the word.
Quite another matter is the description of corpus objects - the reality of 
corpora: creation, size, age, genre etc.
Even Aristotle was not able to make the distinction between language and the 
reality.
Otto Lassen



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