There is a need to continue the development of comprehensive packages for
those linguists who would find themselves severely restricted were they
obliged to create their own software for corpus-based research.
At the same time, I'm sure that there are a lot of well-established (read
'older'...) computer literate linguists out there, like myself, who would
greatly appreciate the kind of 'programming-for-corpus-linguists' course
that Mike Scott suggested in his response to this question. It's true that
you don't have to be a fully-fledged programmer to create and/or enhance
analysis tools for specific tasks, and I for one would welcome such an
opportunity to learn how to do this without going back to undergraduate
courses in computational science.
Perhaps the two could be combined in an open-ended package containing
standard tools together with a self-study (or internet-based) course on how
to perform specific tasks or 'add-ons'?
Jean Hudson
Research Editor
Cambridge University Press / ELT
Direct line: +1223-325123