International Journal of Corpus Linguistics - Volume 17, Issue 4, 2012

The collection of representative corpus samples of both child language and online (CMC) language varieties is crucial for linguistic research that is motivated by applications to the protection of children online. In this paper, we present an extensive survey of corpora available for these two areas. Although a significant amount of research has been undertaken both on child language and on CMC language varieties, a much smaller number of datasets are made available as corpora. Especially lacking are corpora which match requirements for verifiable age and gender metadata, although some include self-reported information, which may be unreliable. Our survey highlights the lack of corpus data available for the intersecting area of child language in CMC environments. This lack of available corpus data is a significant drawback for those wishing to undertake replicable studies of child language and online language varieties.

Our research explores the search behaviour of EFL learners (n=24) by tracking their interaction with corpus-based materials during focus-on-form activities (Observe, Search the corpus, Rewriting). One set of learners made no use of web services other than the BNC during the central Search the corpus activity while the other set resorted to other web services and/or consultation guidelines. The performance of the second group was higher, the learners’ formulation of corpus queries on the BNC was unsophisticated and the students tended to use the BNC search interface to a great extent in the same way as they used Google or similar services. Our findings suggest that careful consideration should be given to the cognitive aspects concerning the initiation of corpus searches, the role of computer search interfaces, as well as the implementation of corpus-based language learning. Our study offers a taxonomy of learner searches that may be of interest in future research.

In this article, I revisit the functional distinction between identifying and intensifying uses of such, as in such a person and such a blunderer respectively. In the literature on such, attention has gone mainly to its classification in terms of word class and position in the NP, and to the different NP-structures it occurs in. This paper adopts a data-based constructional approach of cognitive-functional affiliation, viewing grammatical and lexical syntagmatic patterning as one continuum. It offers a fine-grained description of the identifying and intensifying functions of such by observing their different scopal relations, and grammatical and collocational co-occurrence patterns in the data. It also makes a data-based contribution to the controversy about contexts that are vague between an identifying and intensifying reading. The distributional patterns of identifying, intensifying and vague uses of such in spoken and written contemporary corpus data are quantified and interpreted in terms of genre distinctions.

The aim of this quantitative and qualitative study is to compare inclusive and exclusive self-reference in a bilingual English-Spanish corpus of biomedical research articles. The study combines corpus techniques with move analysis to determine where authors resort to first-person reference in Discussion sections. Quantitative analysis showed that Spanish writers selected between exclusive and mixed inclusive-exclusive perspectives equally whereas the exclusive perspective predominated in the English-language articles. Major differences between languages were observed for overall use and for statements of results, comparison of current and previous findings, and metatext. From a cross-disciplinary viewpoint, biomedical research articles exhibited less self-promotion than previously reported for biology. Qualitative analysis revealed that first-person verbs in English were frequently associated with self-promotion whereas English possessives and all exclusive use in Spanish served to attribute responsibility for statements and to harmonise the multiple voices in the polyphonic discourse of biomedical Discussions. The study provides further evidence for cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary diversity in academic and scientific discourse.