6.4 McEnery, Xiao & Tono (2006)

Corpus-based Language Studies is, as the name already says, an advanced resource book which aims at providing students and researchers with support for advanced studies in the field of corpus linguistics. Its structure is threefold: While the first part concentrates on explaining how to use corpora, the second part, consisting of selected core readings from existing key books and articles, sheds light on the discussion why corpora should be used at all. The third part then comprises six different case studies which show the reader, also visually by means of screenshots, how specific studies are carried out effectively.

On the whole, the book seems to be not as easily accessible as Lindquist’s textbook. However, it offers more theoretical aspects and goes deeper in that it connects methodology with general linguistic discourse. In terms of historical corpora, the book gives mainly the same kind of basic overview of ARCHER, HC and the Lampeter Corpus as Lindquist (2009) does.

In the second section of the book, the chapter “Contrastive and diachronic studies” presents two excerpts from published material that explore language change. The first study by Kilpiö examines the morphological and functional developments of the verb be from Old English to Early Modern English and is based on the HC (cf. McEnery, Xiao & Tono 2006: 185-190). The second study (cf. McEnery, Xiao & Tono 2006: 190-194), conducted by Mair, Hundt, Leech and Smith, deals with recent language change concerning the frequency of nouns and verbs and is therefore not based on historical corpora but on the British National Corpus (BNC), the Freiburg Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus (FLOB) and the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus (LOB).

Unfortunately, section three of the book, which explains the conduction of studies practically, is entirely void of examples from historical corpora. Additionally, as is the case with Lindquist (2009), there is no use and mention of historical literature databases in the book whatsoever.

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