2.1 Research method sketch

This sketch is intended to provide a step-by-step procedure of corpus-based analysis of a syntactic construction using part-of-speech tagged corpora.

The main stages:

1. Initial stage
2. Retrieval of a target construction
3. Categorization of retrieved instances
4. Quantitative and qualitative analysis

1. Initial stage:

• Literature review on the research problem: up-to-date state of affairs
• Framing a research question and working definitions
• Preparing a retrieval:
• Defining the information to be extracted from corpora
• Deciding how many corpus instances need to be coded
• Choosing annotated corpora and corresponding software
• Defining corpus query syntax

2. Retrieval of a target construction:

• Design of a grammatical query using part-of-speech tags
• Training and testing of the query
• Creating an initial query in order to identify possible patterns
• Developing a prototype query according to the research question
• Training the query in order to identify invalid patterns
• Refining the query
• Creating the final query
• Testing the query: estimating a precision rate and a recall rate of the query
• Performing the final retrieval with the final query

3. Categorization:

• Selecting the categories for analysis
• Establishing operational definitions of the relevant variables
• Choosing approach and software:
• in-corpus-tool approach: concordancers (WordSmith, Monoconc, BNCweb, etc.)
• database approach:
• database programs (Filemaker, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, etc.)
• statistical analysis packages (SPSS, Minitab, etc.)
• Classifying the retrieved instances according to the established categories and variables

4. Quantitative and qualitative analysis

Because, in their chapters, the authors Hoffmann and Smith & Seoane demonstrate and discuss only the first three stages – initial stage, retrieval and categorization of a target structure - no further information will be provided on quantitative and qualitative analysis at this point.

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