Research methodology and Corpus Linguistics

Research methodology and corpus linguistics introduces students to fundamental research methodologies in linguistics with a particular focus on corpus linguistics as an empirical approach to language study. It aims to equip learners with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary for conducting data-driven linguistic research. Students will explore major research methods in linguistics and understand the role of statistics in analyzing language data. The course provides a comprehensive overview of what linguistic corpora are, the different types of corpora used in research, and the principles involved in designing small, balanced corpora with appropriate metadata.

Emphasis is placed on hands-on training in basic corpus annotation techniques, including part-of-speech tagging and lemmatization, as well as the use of essential corpus analysis tools for frequency counts, concordance analysis, and collocation studies. Students will learn how to conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses of linguistic data and critically interpret research findings. In addition, the course highlights practical applications of corpus linguistics in areas such as language teaching, lexicography, translation studies, and natural language processing (NLP).