Re: [Corpora-List] problems with Google counts

From: Philip Resnik (resnik@umiacs.umd.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 18 2005 - 17:02:45 MET

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    Ring Low <mlow@acsu.buffalo.edu> writes:
    > I agree that using Google to conduct linguistic studies has gotten more
    > and more difficult since then, as the design of the search engine has
    > been changing due to commercial reasons. We do need a search engine
    > design specically for linguistic studies.

    A few people wrote me to suggest that this might be a good opportunity
    to mention the Linguist's Search Engine (http://lse.umiacs.umd.edu/).
    And it is, assuming we carefully distinguish between linguistic
    studies that do and do not rely on automatic counting. A great deal
    of linguistic insight can be gained by doing linguistically informed
    searches, and then looking at the data with the same methodological
    caveats that linguists must traditionally heed: you need to be sure
    the data comes from a native speaker, that the word (or construction,
    or sentence) is being used in the intended meaning, that the context
    is not exercising some unusual influence, etc.

      Philip

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      Department of Linguistics and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies

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