Pre-conference workshops
The workshops will be held on 1 June between 1pm and 4.15pm at the conference hotel. They will include a short coffee break.
Note that workshop 2 starts at 2 pm.
There will be three parallel pre-conference workshops at ICAME 32:
WS1: Corpus-based contrastive analysis (Workshop organised by Karin Aijmer & Bengt Altenberg)
WS2: Do we still need language corpora? (Debate organised by Martin Wynne & Ylva Berglund Prytz)
WS3: From multigenre to register-specific historical corpora (Workshop organised by Merja Kytö & Irma Taavitsainen)
1: CORPUS-BASED CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS
Workshop organised by Karin Aijmer, Gothenburg University, and Bengt Altenberg, Lund University
In 1993, at ICAME 14 in Zürich, Stig Johansson presented a corpus-based project that was to begin a new era in contrastive linguistics and translation studies. Using a computer corpus of comparable English and Norwegian texts and their translations into the other language, he and his team created a fruitful empirical basis for comparing the systems and use of the two languages from lexis to discourse. Since then, the idea of using bilingual or multilingual translation corpora (together with comparable corpora of original texts for control purposes) has spread and a number of researchers are now using this approach to compare different sets of languages and to develop methodologies for various practical applications offered by the corpora, e.g. in language teaching, lexicography, machine-aided translation, and automatic lexicon extraction.
The purpose of the workshop is to bring together researchers involved in the use of bilingual or multilingual corpora for various purposes, theoretical or practical, to exchange views and experiences and, not least, to get to know each other.
The workshop programme will consist of paper presentations. The deadline for submitting abstracts for this workshop was 1 February.
2: DO WE STILL NEED LANGUAGE CORPORA?
Debate organised by Martin Wynne and Ylva Berglund Prytz, University of Oxford
Language corpora were originally developed as datasets for linguistic research, in a world where researchers rarely had access to machine-readable language data. Pioneers such as Stig Johansson provided an invaluable service and helped to create a new paradigm in linguistic research. Corpus linguistics subsequently developed sets of procedures and methodologies based on discrete, bounded datasets, created to represent certain types of language use, and studied as exemplars of that domain. The growth of the field and advances in technology mean that corpora have become bigger and more plentiful and various, with huge reference corpora for a vast range of languages and time periods, and numerous specialist corpora representing a wide range of language varieties.
Nowadays, the enormous wealth of digital language data at our fingertips brings the role of the corpus into question. Large-scale digitization projects are delivering the writings of the past to our desktops in ways that allow us to configure ad hoc, bespoke datasets to help address our research questions. Much current language data is 'born digital', often a form of computer-mediated communication, and is easily captured and shared. Books and newspapers are published in electronic form, and made available in large collections. Online tools allow us to search for texts, collect them in virtual corpora. The boundaries between the corpus and other ad hoc datasets is blurring. What is the case for the carefully crafted corpus today?
The session will be a formal debate, with two speakers for and two against the motion, questions from the floor, and a summing up by the speakers, ending with a vote by the audience. The motion will be:
"Language corpora are no longer necessary for linguistic research."
Participants in the ICAME conference are warmly encouraged to come along and participate in what promises to be an entertaining debate on the key question confronting corpus linguistics today. Speakers to be announced.
Time and place: The workshop will be held in the afternoon between 14.00 and 16.00 on Wednesday 1 June at the conference hotel and main venue, the Clarion Royal Christiania Hotel, located in Oslo city centre. After the workshop, the conference proper will start at 17.00 with the opening plenary in the Old Ceremonial Theatre of the University of Oslo (also in the city centre).
3: FROM MULTIGENRE TO REGISTER-SPECIFIC HISTORICAL CORPORA
Workshop organised by Merja Kytö, Uppsala University, and Irma Taavitsainen, University of Helsinki
The aim of the workshop is to give up-to-date information about new developments and current trends in the versatile field of historical corpora. Register- and genre-specific corpora are often created to answer specific research questions, but they can be used for other research tasks and combined for a more comprehensive picture. Assessments of linguistic features across such databases show interesting distributions and can cast new light on core issues of historical linguistics.
13.00-14.15, Corpus parade will contain several 10-15 minute presentations on newly-compiled historical corpora by members of corpus compilation teams.
| Corpora | Speaker(s) |
| Introduction | Merja Kytö and Irma Taavitsainen |
| Correspondence | Arja Nurmi and Marina Dossena |
| Medical/ scientific writing | Jukka Tyrkkö |
| Religious writing | Thomas Kohnen and Tanja Rütten |
| Newspaper corpus | Erik Smitterberg |
| English/Swedish drama | Linnéa Anglemark |
14.15-14.45, Panel discussion. Speakers of the Parade and other compilers of historical corpora will answer questions from the audience. The discussion will focus on issues common to historical corpora and their future developments.
14.45-15.15, Coffee
15.15-16.00, An empirical study on the yield of various historical corpora:
Douglas Biber: “Being specific about historical change: The influence of sub-register”
Abstract
In my talk I will first discuss the importance of register for describing change in general: changes do not apply to the ‘whole’ language. I will then take two case studies illustrative of 20th-century change. One deals with news reportage, the other with academic prose, comparing patterns of change in science/medical research articles, non-science research articles, and ‘popular’ science articles.
16.00-16.15, Discussion