Some Thoughts on Corpus and General Linguistics

Abstract

The article is devoted to a discussion of dominant approaches developed within the framework of Corpus Linguistics (CL) and their influence on the general theory of language. Based on the research co-authored with his colleagues, the author describes three approaches to linguistic research in CL. First, corpus-informed analysis assumes that the data collected in the corpus are used as a source of examples in a natural language. Second, corpus-based analysis presupposes that the data are examined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively. Third, corpus-driven analysis assumes that the research task is to create an algorithm for data processing, the results of which require theoretical interpretation or practical application. The article concludes with a discussion of those implications that CL brings into the general understanding of language. The most important of them are: reduction of the role of introspection, increase of attention to peripheral linguistic phenomena, and reliance on quantitative data. It is still too early to sum up the impact of corpus linguistics on the general theory of language, but it is already clear that syntagmatic connections, in particular idiomatization in a broad sense, have moved into the focus of linguistic attention and are recognized as one of the main phenomena of language and its evolution. Moreover, an adequate description of a language is not limited to the rules of interaction of units divided into levels, but the description of all – both individual and the most general – probabilistic parameters of use, representing a single continuum in which the division into language and speech is conventional.