Corpus, context, culture: histories and futures
Professor Ronald Carter, University of Nottingham

This opening talk involves a review of some key developments in corpus linguistics over the past 40 years and of what we might learn from them in both theory and practice for future developments of the field. The principal focus is on the main themes of the conference and examples are given which suggest how corpus linguistics can continue to address issues of interdisciplinary applications and involve other fields of study --- with particular reference to language learning, stylistics and professional and internet communication. Issues of context and culture will be explored with reference to a spoken corpus data and to a recent research collaboration between Nottingham University and Cambridge University Press in the development of an e-language corpus (the CANELC corpus) where (sometimes multimodal) language use is marked by forms associated with both spoken and written grammars. Exploration of data from this and other corpora suggests the need for a fuller recognition of key notions of 'emergent' cultures, 'dynamic' contexts and mixed research methods appropriate to different data streams.

Corpus research for SLA: The importance of mixing methods
Dr. Ute Römer, Georgia State University

Over the past few decades, the growing availability of native speaker and learner corpora has enabled Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers to study patterns in the linguistic input of learners as well as in their language output in a more empirical and systematic way than previously possible. Corpus linguists have contributed considerably to a better understanding of central aspects of second language (L2) learners’ production and of differences between learner and native speaker English (see, for example, the influential work of Sylviane Granger and her team, and of Stefan Gries and Stefanie Wulff). This talk argues that corpus linguistics has a lot to offer to research and practice in SLA, especially if different methods and data types are combined in a “methodological pluralism” sense (McEnery & Hardie 2012). The talk also suggests that progress in corpus-based SLA research will depend to some extent on successful collaborations between corpus linguists and scholars from other fields. After a brief overview of some existing uses of corpora in SLA, the talk will present findings from two case studies that benefited from mixing methods and from the presenter’s collaboration with researchers from neighboring disciplines, including a computational linguist, a genre expert, a psycholinguist, and a cognitive linguist.
While not based on learner output, the first study examines language that can serve as a model to learners and has clear implications for second language teaching practice (see Wulff, Römer & Swales 2012). It combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to the distribution of attended and unattended this in successful student writing across disciplines and determines what learners need to know about this in this particular writing context. The second study examines the role that constructions play in second language acquisition. It uses data from a native speaker corpus, learner corpora, and psycholinguistic experiments to investigate what influences L2 learners’ acquisition and processing of English verb-argument constructions (see Ellis, O’Donnell & Römer 2013; Römer, O’Donnell & Ellis Forthcoming; Römer, Roberson, O’Donnell & Ellis 2014). The talk discusses the implications of both studies before closing with thoughts on desiderata and future avenues for corpus-based SLA research.

References

• Ellis, N. C., M. B. O’Donnell & U. Römer. 2013. Usage-based language: Investigating the latent structures that underpin acquisition. Language Learning 63(Supp. 1): 25-51.
• McEnery, T. & A. Hardie. 2012. Corpus Linguistics. Method, Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Römer, U., M. B. O’Donnell & N. C. Ellis. Forthcoming. Using COBUILD grammar patterns for a large-scale analysis of verb-argument constructions: Exploring corpus data and speaker knowledge. In: Nicholas Groom, Maggie Charles & Suganthi John (eds.). Corpora, Grammar and Discourse: In Honour of Susan Hunston. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Römer, U., A. Roberson, M. B. O'Donnell & N. C. Ellis. 2014. Linking learner corpus and experimental data in studying second language learners’ knowledge of verb-argument constructions. ICAME Journal.
• Wulff, S., U. Römer & J. M. Swales. 2012. Attended/unattended this in academic student writing: Quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 8(1): 129-157.