Towards a new generation of corpus-derived lexical resources for language learning
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David Wible
Abstract
This chapter first argues that, despite their convenience compared to paper-based resources, corpora are, by their very nature as collections of texts and tokens, severely limited in what they can offer directly to language learners or teachers. The focus here is on understanding these limitations with respect to lexical knowledge, and it is suggested that overcoming them requires a different sort of digital resource that mediates between corpora on the one hand and teachers or learners on the other. The challenge is complicated by the fact that such a lexical knowledge resource should capture patterns of word behaviors that fall along a continuum between grammatically well-behaved and lexically idiosyncratic. A knowledgebase called StringNet, designed to capture this range of word behaviors, is described and motivated in detail.
Abstract
This chapter first argues that, despite their convenience compared to paper-based resources, corpora are, by their very nature as collections of texts and tokens, severely limited in what they can offer directly to language learners or teachers. The focus here is on understanding these limitations with respect to lexical knowledge, and it is suggested that overcoming them requires a different sort of digital resource that mediates between corpora on the one hand and teachers or learners on the other. The challenge is complicated by the fact that such a lexical knowledge resource should capture patterns of word behaviors that fall along a continuum between grammatically well-behaved and lexically idiosyncratic. A knowledgebase called StringNet, designed to capture this range of word behaviors, is described and motivated in detail.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements ix
- List of contributors xi
- Preface xiii
- Putting corpora to good uses 1
- Frequency, corpora and language learning 7
- Learner corpora and contrastive interlanguage analysis 33
- The use of small corpora for tracing the development of academic literacies 63
- Revisiting apprentice texts 85
- Automatic error tagging of spelling mistakes in learner corpora 109
- Data mining with learner corpora 127
- Learners and users – Who do we want corpus data from? 155
- Learner knowledge of phrasal verbs 173
- Corpora and the new Englishes 209
- Towards a new generation of corpus-derived lexical resources for language learning 237
- Automating the creation of dictionaries 257
- addendumSelect list of publications by Sylviane Granger 283
- Subject index 289
- Name index 293
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements ix
- List of contributors xi
- Preface xiii
- Putting corpora to good uses 1
- Frequency, corpora and language learning 7
- Learner corpora and contrastive interlanguage analysis 33
- The use of small corpora for tracing the development of academic literacies 63
- Revisiting apprentice texts 85
- Automatic error tagging of spelling mistakes in learner corpora 109
- Data mining with learner corpora 127
- Learners and users – Who do we want corpus data from? 155
- Learner knowledge of phrasal verbs 173
- Corpora and the new Englishes 209
- Towards a new generation of corpus-derived lexical resources for language learning 237
- Automating the creation of dictionaries 257
- addendumSelect list of publications by Sylviane Granger 283
- Subject index 289
- Name index 293
