LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13:8 August 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Status of Corpus Linguistics in India

B. A. Mahalakshmi Prasad, M.A.
K. S. Prema, Ph.D.
Prarthana. S., Research Fellow

Abstract

Linguistic research has been a preoccupation of humans from times immemorial. Philosophers and scholars from various disciplines have expended considerable time and effort to understand the nature of language and language use to gain an insight into human nature. In the realm of linguistic research, the discipline of corpus linguistics has managed to attract the thoughts of linguists, computer scientists, teachers, speech language pathologists and people working in language technology. This paper, while mentioning primary assumptions of corpus linguistics, tries to highlight the need for establishing language corpora in a plurilingual context of India.

Key words: corpus linguistics, speech language pathology

Introduction

The discipline of linguistics has undergone development with the renaissance of corpus linguistics that heralds a new understanding about the theories and assumptions regarding the nature of language. In the 1960s, corpus linguistics brought in a revolution to the discipline of linguistics by providing a platform for researchers to explore what ‘language is’ rather than ‘what language ought to be’.

A corpus is defined as a collection of texts that acts as a tool, which represents a given language that can be used for linguistic analysis as enumerated by Francis (1964). Thus, a corpus consists of a databank of natural texts compiled from writing and/or transcription of recorded speech. In order to conduct a study of language, which is corpus-based, it is necessary to gain access to a corpus and a concordance program. A concordance is a software program, which analyzes corpora and lists the results. Even though originally corpora were regarded as mere tool for linguistic work, the main focus of it shifted to discover patterns of authentic language use by analysing natural usage of language. It also helps to understand the language behaviour across population. However, this field of corpus linguistics was not welcomed with open mind during its advent.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

B. A. Mahalakshmi Prasad, M.A.
Department of Speech Language Sciences
All India Institute of Speech and Hearing
Mysore 570 006
Karnataka
India
Machiprasad@gmail.com

Prema K.S. Rao, Ph.D. (Speech and Hearing)
Professor of Language Pathology in Department of Speech Language Sciences
Head
Department of Special Education
All India Institute of Speech and Hearing
Manasagangothri, Mysore-570 006
Karnataka
India
prema_rao@yahoo.com

Prarthana. S
Research Fellow
Department of Speech Language Sciences
All India Institute of Speech and Hearing
Mysore 570 006
Karnataka
India
prarthana_84@yahoo.co.in
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