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Describing English Language
Corpus, Concordance, Collocation
John Sinclair charts the emergence of a new view of language and the computer technology associated with it. Developments in computational linguistics over the past ten years are outlined. There is discussion of corpus creation and exemplification of corpus use. The book goes on to spell out the implications of these developments for an understanding of collocation.
179 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1991
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About the author
John McHardy Sinclair
40 books8 followersJohn McHardy Sinclair (June 14, 1933 – March 13, 2007), Professor of Modern English Language at Birmingham University, 1965 to 2000. He pioneered work in corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, lexicography, and language teaching.
John Sinclair was a first-generation modern corpus linguist and the founder of the COBUILD project. This project's aim was to build corpus-driven lexicons for foreign learners of English. He became chief adviser of Collins' Cobuild English Language Dictionary, whose first edition was published in 1987.
He was well-known for having unconventional ideas which helped to advance the young field of corpus linguistics. At his valedictory lecture in 2000 he stated that none of his many published articles passed successfully through peer review, and that even an article he had been invited to write for a journal was peer reviewed by mistake and rejected.
Notable works include Towards the Analysis of Discourse, which he published together with Malcolm Coulthard in 1975, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, (Oxford University Press, 1991), Reading Concordances, 2003, Trust the Text, 2004, and Linear Unit Grammar, 2006.
After early retirement from his post as Professor of Modern English Language at Birmingham, Sinclair founded the Tuscan Word Centre with his second wife Elena Tognini-Bonelli. This institution provides training courses in corpus linguistics.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John Sinclair was a first-generation modern corpus linguist and the founder of the COBUILD project. This project's aim was to build corpus-driven lexicons for foreign learners of English. He became chief adviser of Collins' Cobuild English Language Dictionary, whose first edition was published in 1987.
He was well-known for having unconventional ideas which helped to advance the young field of corpus linguistics. At his valedictory lecture in 2000 he stated that none of his many published articles passed successfully through peer review, and that even an article he had been invited to write for a journal was peer reviewed by mistake and rejected.
Notable works include Towards the Analysis of Discourse, which he published together with Malcolm Coulthard in 1975, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, (Oxford University Press, 1991), Reading Concordances, 2003, Trust the Text, 2004, and Linear Unit Grammar, 2006.
After early retirement from his post as Professor of Modern English Language at Birmingham, Sinclair founded the Tuscan Word Centre with his second wife Elena Tognini-Bonelli. This institution provides training courses in corpus linguistics.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 2, 2010
This book demonstrates how a truly empirical approach to language and grammar produces theories that are completely different, almost opposed, to those dominant in Chomskian linguistics.
This is the home of the influential concepts of the idiom principle (langauage consists largely of pre-packaged chunks with their own meaning, which are varied grammatically to fit the co-text) and the open choice principle (language works as a slot-and-filler system, probably when original or difficult meanings are attempted especially when there is little or no pressure to produce). So, why is it unavailable? These ideas have helped reshaped modern linguistics, and this books sets out a methodology that anyone can adopt. Shame on you OUP.
This is the home of the influential concepts of the idiom principle (langauage consists largely of pre-packaged chunks with their own meaning, which are varied grammatically to fit the co-text) and the open choice principle (language works as a slot-and-filler system, probably when original or difficult meanings are attempted especially when there is little or no pressure to produce). So, why is it unavailable? These ideas have helped reshaped modern linguistics, and this books sets out a methodology that anyone can adopt. Shame on you OUP.
March 2, 2018
In retrospective, this was not the best choice for an introduction to corpus linguistics. Nevertheless, I am grateful for two main ideas: the idiom principle vs. the open-choice principle.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews