Re: Corpora: Corpus Linguistics User Needs

eric@scs.leeds.ac.uk
Tue, 11 Aug 1998 15:20:05 +0100

I've just returned from vacation to catch up on this interesting debate.
It seems odd that the focus is on whether an individual Corpus Linguist
should be able to program, on the assumption that research is done
by lone scholars. Much scientific research benefits from teamwork,
combining complementary strengths and expertise. Likewise, much successful
Corpus Linguistics research has come from teams (eg Tosca, Birmingham,
Lancaster) which include programming, linguistics, and ELT expertise,
without requiring each member to be a master-of-all-trades.
So, I DON'T believe corpus linguists have to be programmers - as long
as they can collaborate with programmers in research.

A response might be: "That's all very well for large University research
groups with funds to hire research teams, but what about me working alone
on my PhD or personal research?..."
One answer is to contact your local Univ computer studies dept - most
Undergraduate and Masters students have to undertake at least one major
Project during their studies, and at this time of year Lecturers are
rounding up ideas for possible 1998/99 projects. You may find a friendly
Computing lecturer only too pleased to work with you as a Project `client'
if you can specify the IT service you need supplied, and this fits into the
Undergrad/MSc Project schedule.

In fact, with the Internet there is no reason to stick to the local University.
As a concrete example, lecturers in my School have just been invited to come
up with Project proposals for 200+ students, so that 1998/99 students can be
matched with appropriate supervisors in October. Projects have to run from
mid-Oct'98 to end-April'99, require c300 hours' work (or c150 hours for
Joint Honours students), and must result in a Project Report and other
deliverables eg software demo; see http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/uginfo/projects/
I am keen to supervise projects useful to Corpus Linguistics, so welcome
project ideas where a Leeds computing student provides programming or
other IT services to a CORPORA-reader remote client and/or external supervisor.
If you're interested, please mail me
Title of project:
Your name + affiliation:
Prerequisites (eg. C++ programming):
Outline of Project:

We post all project ideas on local.projects newsgroup, so all ideas are
welcome - though I can't guarantee that computing students will choose yours!

Eric Atwell, Senior Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence,
Director, Centre for Computer Analysis of Language And Speech (CCALAS)
School of Computer Studies, University of Leeds, LEEDS LS2 9JT, England
EMAIL: eric@scs.leeds.ac.uk TEL: (44)113-2335761 FAX: (44)113-2335468
WWW: http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/scs/public/staff/eric.html