what is corpus linguistics

what is corpus linguistics
what is corpus linguistics
what is corpus linguistics
The term corpus ,derived from the Latin word for body ,was first encountered in the 6th century to referto a collectio of legal texts.The term corpus has preserved this initial meaning i.e.a body of text;according to one of the five definitions provided by the Oxford Dictionary ,acorpus is 'the body of written or spoken material upon which a linguistic analysis is based'.Franceis(1992) mentions three main areas in which corpora has traditionally been used :lexicographicalstudies in the creation of dictionaries ,dialectological studies and the creation of grammars.Corpus research continued and even strengthened due to technological advances in computer software.Now it is possible to process texts of several million words in length (Sinclair 1991( .