Corpus linguistics. Readings in a widening discipline.

A corpus is a collection of specimens of a language as used in real life, in writing and/or speech. Corpus lingustics is research, carried out in university linguistics departments and computing departments (and nowadays in industrial research labs too), which uses corpora as crucial sources of evidence on the structure and properties of languages. Modern corpus linguistics began fifty years ago, but the subject has seen explosive growth since the early 1990s. These days corpora are being used to advance virtually every aspect of language study, from computer processing techniques such as machine translation, to literary stylistics, social aspects of language use, and improved language-teaching methods. Because corpus linguistics has grown fast from small beginnings, newcomers to the field often find it hard to get their bearings. This volume reprints 42 corpus linguistics articles which first appeared at dates ranging from 1952 to 2002, and which between them illustrate all the main directions in which the subject is developing. It includes articles that are already recognized as classics, and others which deserve to become so, supplemented with editorial introductions relating the individual contributions to the field as a whole. Language is a perennially fascinating topic, and some contributions are chosen, among other reasons, for the human interest of their findings.