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 |
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| 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.
Tuesdays: Seminar Room 4, Minto House
Thursdays: Kirkpatrick Room, William Robertson Building |
Entry Requirements
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites |
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| Prohibited Combinations |
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Other requirements |
None
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| Additional Costs |
None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 1, Available to all students (SV1)
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WebCT enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | | | | 10:00 - 10:50 | | | Central | Lecture | | 1-11 | | 09:00 - 10:50 | | | |
| First Class |
Week 1, Tuesday, 09:00 - 10:50, Zone: Central. Seminar Room 4, Minto House |
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
1. A portfolio consisting of a range of responses to weekly exercises (worth 40%)
2. A more in-depth project of 2500 words (excluding data) related to one section of the course (worth 60%)
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| Please see Visiting Student Prospectus website for Visiting Student Assessment information |
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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Contacts
| Course organiser |
Dr Brona Murphy
Tel: (0131 6)51 6408
Email: brona.murphy@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Miss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: Toni.noble@ed.ac.uk |
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copyright 2010 The University of Edinburgh -
1 September 2010 6:13 am
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