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Using The Web For Linguistic Research

Posted by timothy on from the that's-rediculous dept.

prostoalex writes "The Economist says linguists are gradually adopting the World Wide Web as a useful corpus for linguistic research. Google is used, among other resources, to research how the written language evolves and how some non-standard examples of usage become more or less acceptable (The Economist quotes the phrase 'He far from succeeded,' where 'far from' is used as an adverb). LanguageLog is a resource linked in the article, where linguists discuss current peculiarities of the English language."

3 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Re:inner city teens by Kafir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    i countinously question my co-workers (social workers) in telling the youth what is propper and not.

    I'm glad they're telling the youth what is proper; you're clearly incompetent to do so.

    using words... is becoming more than just the normal, it is becoming the standard.

    Is that right? Using words is "becoming more than just the normal"? I've been using words for years now; I'm glad to hear that's becoming the standard. Your post is a perfect example of why people should learn to write in something approaching standard English. Your meaning is barely intelligible, and you sound like an idiot.

  2. Done: nous sommes desolés que notre president by new500 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    . . .

    Those expressions are then
    used by native speaking politicians and are
    broadcasted by television.

    Dude, it's worse, the French have already infiltrated as far as the advertising business and are using covert channels to spread some dangerous crack i heard was called La Liberte :

    http://french.about.com/b/a/081281.htm

    Slightly more seriously :

    Apart from pointing out that your use of the word native is rather presumptive of geographic origin in this big wide internet thing, i wonder if this linguistic adoption is more one way towards English since the internet. OK the French got Le Weekend, and tons of anglicised nouns, tried to ban them all and didn't manage. But i read Friday that a British pilot training firm lost a contract to a French one. The reason cited by the Asian airline was that, whilst the training had to be in English, the French trainers spoke better, clearer, more intelligble English than did the English. I can't argue with that. Sadly.

  3. Writing in Japanese by minairia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am American but have to write in Japanese for work. No matter how much one learns in school, when one writes in a foreign language, you'll hit a point of wondering if what you wrote is how native speakers say something or is even understandable. Whenever I hit a point like that, I put the sentence in question (or key fragments thereof) into a Google search. If nothing comes up, I know I have to rewrite. If only a few links come up, I know what I wrote might be a little wierd, but is at least understandable. If I get pages and pages of links, I'm golden.