Postgraduate Course: Corpus Linguistics (MSc) (LASC11078)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Language Sciences |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This course covers the ways in which electronic text databases (corpora) can be used to do research in linguistics and language studies. Corpora can show the distribution of a word or construction, which can tell us about the structure or function of that item, and/or the way it patterns stylistically, socially, regionally, or historically.
Students will be exposed to a range of different corpora (spoken, written, historically and socially differentiated, single genre and multi-genre),and encouraged also to think of the internet as a corpus. We will look at the ways in which electronic texts are adapted for linguistic research through tagging and mark-up. Most sessions will be held in the teaching lab where students will learn to use concordancing software to extract and manipulate data.
We will not only make use of collocational data but also word frequency lists, which can be used to estimate vocabulary size and to make inferences about how words are remembered and parsed by speakers.
The course assumes that students have not worked with electronic corpora before, and provides a basic introduction to corpora and how to use them. It builds on knowledge that students could be expected to have of, for example, syntax or discourse, and demonstrates how they can pursue research in this area with a new methodology. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students should have:
- An understanding of the construction of different corpora and what kinds of data they are able to provide
- A broad sense of the applications of electronic corpora
They should be able to:
- Develop and refine a query to extract data from a corpus
- Present and discuss corpus results
- Use corpus data to answer questions about vocabulary, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistic variation and language change |
Assessment Information
| You are required to conduct a piece of corpus-based research on a topic of your choice. You should include the usual structure for assignments: introduction, literature review, data and methodology, presentation of findings and discussion, conclusion, references and appendices.At the end of each week, you will be presented with some suggestions for further study which you can use as a platform to get you started. You are also free to develop your own inquiry, but this should be done in consultation with the course organiser. Word count: 4000 words, excluding data and appendices. |
Special Arrangements
In order for a student to be enrolled, you must contact the course secretary as places are limited to 38, due to the availability of lab space.
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Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Not entered |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | electronic corpora, concordancing, collocation, word frequency |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Brona Murphy
Tel: (0131 6)51 6408
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: |
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