1. Corpus search What are the most common words in English
What are the most common verbs
What is the most common pronoun
What is the most common proper noun
What are the most common noun+noun collocations?

2. Whom in British and American
Fill in the tables using COCA and BNC
Freq. whom
Freq. Prep. + whom
Freq. Whom – (prep + whom)
British
American

3. Whom in British and American
COCA has 450M and BNC 100M
Calculate per million frequencies
Freq. whom
Freq. Prep. + whom
Freq. Whom – (prep + whom)
British
American

4. Simple past vs. present perfect
Use the BNC and COCA to fill in this chart with frequencies per million
Past participle ([vh*][v?n*] = auxiliary have verb + PP)
Simple past ([v?d*] = past tense verb) US UK
Simple
Pres. Perf.
just
already
yet
ever

5. Simple past vs. present perfect
Use the BNC and COCA to fill in this chart with frequencies per million
Past participle ([vh*][v?n*] = auxiliary have verb + PP)
Simple past ([v?d*] = past tense verb) US UK
Simple
Pres. Perf.
just
already
yet
ever

6. Browse corpora at BYU
Corpus.byu.edu

7. Corpus Applications

8. What is corpus linguistics good for?
Making a concordance
List of all words in a text and where they are found
Scriptures
Works of Shakespeare

9. What is corpus linguistics good for?
Finding word frequencies
Psycholinguistic experiments
Language instruction
Put most common words in L2 vocabulary
toxicomano

10. What is corpus linguistics good for?
Lexicography
What words to include in a dictionary?
What do words mean?
How are meanings changing?
How are spellings changing?
Blowtorch
Blow-torch
Blow torch
Identifying regionalisms

11. What is corpus linguistics good for?
Computer systems development
Text to speech
Text messaging
If you have typed gla- frequency data says glass is highly probable and fills it in for you
Speech synthesis
Natural language processing

12. What is corpus linguistics good for?
Testing linguistic theories
Generativists relied on personal introspection
So what if Dayton is less frequent than New York in a corpus
I’m a native speaker and know what sounds right and wrong

13. What is corpus linguistics good for?
Problems with introspections
They’re subjective
They can’t be verified
Your introspection probably go along with your theory

14. What is corpus linguistics good for?
Corpus data . . .
Are objective
Can be verified
Can be shared
Can be used to test theories
Can be used to get ideas for theories

15. Limitations of corpora
They can’t contain every sentence
Some data aren’t interesting
Frequency of Dayton versus New York
They have mistakes

16. Lexical Word lists General Service List Academic Word List (Coxhead)
2,000 most frequent words in English
Academic Word List (Coxhead)
570 words in English academic writing
Academic Vocabulary List (Davies & Gardner)
3,000 words
High frequency in ACAD, low frequency in other registers
Measure of dispersion (Juilland’s D)

17. Lexical Word lists General Service List Academic Word List (Coxhead)
2,000 most frequent words in English
Academic Word List (Coxhead)
570 words in English academic writing
Academic Vocabulary List (Davies & Gardner)
3,000 words
High frequency in ACAD, low frequency in other registers
Measure of dispersion (Juilland’s D)

18. Phraseology Formulaic sequences (lexical bundles) Corpus-driven
Frequency
Function
Fixedness
at the * of
What do you think most often fills the *?
Check in COCA

19. Grammar Descriptive reference grammars
Describe descriptions of how language is actually used rather than prescriptions about how language should be used
Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English

20. Lexicogrammar
Certain words are more likely to occur in some grammatical structures than others
E.g., some verbs (e.g., deem, base, subject) are much more common in the passive than active voice
The material was deemed faulty.
Her choice was based solely on…
The matter may be subjected to…
Collostructional analysis is a means of measuring the strength of a relationship between a word and a grammatical structure

21. Register variation
Does ‘general English’ exist?

22. Frequent phrases in conversation
Phraseological feature
Examples
Personal pronoun + lexical verb phrase
I don’t know what, I don’t want to,
I was going to
Yes-no question fragments
do you want to, are you going to
Wh-question fragments
what are you doing, what do you mean,
what do you think, what do you want

23. Frequent phrases in academic writing
Phraseological feature
Examples
Noun phrase with of-phrase fragment
the end of the, one of the most
Prepositional phrases with embedded of-phrase fragments
in the case of
Other prepositional phrase fragments
on the other hand

24. Register variation—complexity
Which is more complex—speech or writing?
Define the type(s) of complexity we find in each.

25. Multi-Dimensional analysis
Identify a comprehensive set of relevant linguistic features
Identify and quantify those features in a corpus of texts
Use factor analysis to identify dimensions based on co- occurrence among linguistic features
Interpret dimensions functionally
Calculate scores for each text on each dimension
Compare mean scores of registers/varieties

26. Involved vs. Informational

27. Non-technical Synthesis vs. Specialized Information Density
Positive features:
Verbs: verb HAVE (.36)
Adverbs: general adverbs (.59), amplifiers (.43), certainty adverbs (.37), emphatics (.36)
Coordination: adverbial conjuncts (.51), phrasal coordinating conjunctions (.39)
Nominal Modifiers: that-relative clauses (.36)
Lexical Features: COCA Core Vocabulary (1-500) (.61)
Negative features:
Nouns: pre-nominal modifiers (-.73); nouns (-.73), technical concrete nouns (-.31)
Verbs: agentless passive voice (-0.42) 27

28. Study 1—Dimension 1 Results28

29. Register variation
Does ‘general English’ exist?

30. Dialect variation activity
In what country is this expression permitted?
Allow to Verb
Permit to Verb
Where is the word banjaxed used? Meaning?
UK vs. US use of
Different from/to
Which do they use in Australia?
Needn’t vs. don't need
Haven't a Noun vs. don't have a Noun

31. Diachronic change whom [be] [v?n*] [get] [v?n*] end up [v?g*] need n’t
Others?

32. Data-driven Learning
Language learners actually use corpora in the classroom
Research is mixed
It seems to be more useful/effective for advanced learners

33. Corpus-informed materials

34. Political discourse