Prospectus

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Corpus Linguistics

Course
2024-2025

Admission requirements

None.

Description

Due to a surge of large-scale text digitisation and spoken language transcription projects (by corpus linguists, digital humanities scholars, but also commercial companies), an unprecedented amount of naturally occurring linguistic data from a wide range of languages and language varieties is ready to be queried and analysed. In this course students will learn how these electronic text databases – or ‘corpora’ – can be used in studying language and linguistics. The course will introduce students to the theory and practice of corpus linguistics and will explore how corpora are currently used in linguistic research. The course is largely practical and skills driven.

Course objectives

After successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  • create their own corpus with proper metadata, and explain the principles upon which they have built the corpus;

  • define corpus queries and extract data from a corpus for research purposes, and be able to manipulate this output with a clear understanding of the nature of the data;

  • design and carry out a small corpus study.

Timetable

The timetables are available through My Timetable.

Mode of instruction

  • Seminar

Assessment method

  • Essay, paper

Assessment

The course is assessed by means of a final paper plus a number of practical assignments throughout term.

  • To pass the course, you can miss no more than two sessions for the semester.

  • To pass this course, a total score of 5.5 must be obtained. Students who score below 5.5 may submit a resit essay.

Weighing

The final mark is based on the grade for the final paper plus the additional requirement that the practical assignments throughout the term are completed with a sufficient result.
Weighting is as follows: paper 90%; practical assignments throughout the term 10%.

Resit

A resit is possible for the final paper.

Inspection and feedback

How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.

Reading list

Course readings will be made available on Brightspace via open access and Leiden University Library resources.

Registration

Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.

Registration À la carte education, Contract teaching and Exchange

Contact

  • For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.

  • For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Reuvensplaats

Remarks

None.