seminario 1: “exploring language with online corpora of english”

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SEMINARIO 1: “EXPLORING
CORPORA OF ENGLISH”
LANGUAGE
WITH
ONLINE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LUGAR Y FECHA----Viernes 14 marzo 2014, 11:00-14:00
Sala de informática “Pragma”, servicio de informática CSIRC, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
UGR (junto a reprografía).
-----DESCRIPCIÓN----The compilation and accessibility of electronic computer corpora and software tools for the
analysis of spoken and written language has revolutionized (applied) linguistics in the last
two decades. This hands-on workshop will introduce several large electronic corpora of
contemporary and historical English and will exemplify how these corpora can be employed
for language studies. The workshop will be structured around a series of practical exercises
guiding the participants through different types of analysis of corpus data and statistical
procedures. The following topics will be covered:



accessibility and functionality of a number of corpora of English (BYU corpus portal,
BNCweb).
using corpora to detect patterns of innovation and change in (Present-Day) English.
descriptive and inferential statistics (normalising and comparing frequency counts, basic
significance testing, using aggregate data vs. individual variation, measures of
collocational strength).
The workshop does not require any prior knowledge of statistics. It will be of interest to
anyone who wants to explore language using electronic corpora (undergraduate and
postgraduate students, as well as any members of the UGR).
!!! IMPORTANT: Before the workshop, participants need to sign up and create an account at
the BYU corpus portal so that they have access to the corpora during the workshop:
http://corpus.byu.edu/profile_new.asp
-----IMPARTIDO POR----Marcus Callies is full professor and chair of English Linguistics at the University of Bremen,
Germany. He received his PhD in English Linguistics with a study on Information
Highlighting in Advanced Learner English (published by John Benjamins, 2009). He is vicepresident of the Learner Corpus Association and co-editor of the International Journal of
Learner Corpus Research, published from 2015 with John Benjamins. His main research
interests are learner corpus research, discourse-functional and pragmatic aspects of
advanced learner varieties, lexico-grammatical variation and English for Academic Purposes.
He is director of the research project “Lexico-grammatical variation in advanced learner
varieties” and compiler of the Corpus of Academic Learner English (CALE).
Webpage: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~callies/
-----ORGANIZA/CONTACTO/INFORMACIÓN----Cristóbal Lozano, [email protected] , Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana,
UGR.
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SEMINARIO 2: “LEARNER CORPORA AND SECOND LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------LUGAR Y FECHA----Martes 11 marzo 2014, 12:30-14:30
Sala de informática “Pragma”, servicio de informática CSIRC, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
UGR (junto a reprografía).
-----DESCRIPCIÓN----Computer learner corpora are systematic collections of authentic, continuous and
contextualized language use (spoken or written) by foreign/second (L2) language learners
stored in electronic format. Learner Corpus Research (LCR) has contributed significantly to
the description of advanced learner languages and many of its findings have resulted in
useful applications for L2 teaching and learning.
This seminar will present case studies on how learner corpora of L2 English have been used
to examine lexico-grammatical means of information structure in advanced learner
languages. Participants will also get the chance to work with learner corpora themselves in
selected hands-on activities.
Finally, the seminar will also discuss the achievements of LCR but also point to future issues
and challenges.
-----IMPARTIDO POR----Marcus Callies is full professor and chair of English Linguistics at the University of Bremen,
Germany. He received his PhD in English Linguistics with a study on Information
Highlighting in Advanced Learner English (published by John Benjamins, 2009). He is vicepresident of the Learner Corpus Association and co-editor of the International Journal of
Learner Corpus Research, published from 2015 with John Benjamins. His main research
interests are learner corpus research, discourse-functional and pragmatic aspects of
advanced learner varieties, lexico-grammatical variation and English for Academic Purposes.
He is director of the research project “Lexico-grammatical variation in advanced learner
varieties” and compiler of the Corpus of Academic Learner English (CALE).
Webpage: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~callies/
-----ORGANIZA/CONTACTO/INFORMACIÓN----Cristóbal Lozano, [email protected] , Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana,
UGR.
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Estos seminarios se enmarcan dentro de la serie de seminarios “USING CORPORA (AND
OTHER SOFTWARE METHODOLOGIES) TO EXPLORE LANGUAGE”:
This is a series of seminars to be delivered during 2014. Several experts from different
universities will talk about the application of corpus linguistics and other sister
methodologies to the study of language (mostly English although other languages will also
be considered).
Topics covered will be the use of software to analyse corpus data; the familiarisation and use
of statistical measurement tests with corpus data; the way corpora can be help understand
how people acquire a second language; the potential benefits of combining this approach
with other disciplines such as (critical) discourse analysis, forensic linguistics, natural
language processing, etc.
These seminars are meant to be practical and hands-on so that participants can have a chance
to use corpus software. The seminars are open to anyone with an interest in language, both
undergraduate and graduate students, as well as UGR lecturers and researchers. It is also
highly recommended for Master and PhD students working with (or intending to work with)
language corpora.