Some Current Quantitative Problems in Corpus Linguistics and a Sketch of Some Solutions

Abstract

This paper surveys a variety of methodological problems in current quantitative corpus linguistics. Some problems discussed are from corpus linguistics in general, such as the impact that dispersion, type frequencies/ entropies, and directionality (should) have on the computation of association measures as well as the impact that neglecting the sampling structure of a corpus can have on a statistical analysis. Others involve more specialized areas in which corpus-linguistic work is currently booming, such as historical linguistics and learner corpus research. For each of the problems, first ideas/pointers as to how these problems can be resolved are provided and exemplified in some detail.

Corpus analysis in the study of the discursive characteristics of the media image of immigrants and asylum seekers (A case study of British and American media 2018-2020)

“…Chernyavskaya, T. McEnery, E. Wilson, P. Baker, and other researchers of corpus linguistics deal with the study of the influence of discursive practices on the formation of social and political reality, as well as the discourse as a form of social interaction by combining general scientific methods of theoretical and empirical knowledge, critical discourse analysis and the method of corpus analysis for the study of specific and repetitive discursive practices (Plungyan 2008;Chernyavskaya 2017;McEnery, Hardie 2011;McEnery, Wilson 2001;Baker et al, 2013). The attention of the researchers in the field of corpus analysis is aimed at identifying, comparing, and interpreting collocations, keywords, concordances, and their usefulness through sample analysis of corpus (Evert, 2008;Granger, Bestgen, 2014;Handl, 2008), the study of technological processes related to the design, selection and processing of language material based on text corpora (Zubov, Zubova, 2004;Finegan, 2004;Gries, 2015), the analysis of corpus linguistics' current contributions to research in linguistics and the digital humanities, including comparing corpus techniques against other digital methods that are currently more popular amongst humanities researchers (Brown, 2020), the critical analysis of the discursive reproduction of racial stereotypes, biases and prejudice against people of other nationalities (Baker et al, 2013;Baker et.al, 2008;Mautner, 2009). Summarizing the research on this issue, we note that the interests of linguists are mainly concentrated around the collocation possibilities of words, concordance in order to determine the stylistic, semantic, and cultural shades of their meanings, which are caused by the specifics and ideological attitudes of society.…”

The replication crisis, scientific revolutions, and linguistics

“…In order for a discipline to promote and adopt better quantitative practice, awareness of relevant issues must be raised in the community. While vivid and controversial discussion is cultivated in other scholarly fields, efforts towards this end have arguably been insufficient in the language sciences (Gries 2015). In certain highly specialized, strongly quantitative subdisciplines of linguistics, however, the level of awareness and reflection is more advanced.…”

Antioxidant and Cytotoxic Activities of Areca Catechu Seed Extract in Swiss Albino Mice Using Eac Cell Line in Different Culture Medium

“…Afterward, 1.5 ml of incubation solution was further mixed with 1.5 ml Gries solution. The chromophore formed there was measured using UV visible spectroscopy at wavelength 546 nm [30,31].…”