Corpus Analysis of Vocabulary

Abstract

Abstract Corpora and corpus tools are essential resources for modern vocabulary research. On one hand, corpora can provide researchers with a powerful evidence base for their analyses. On the other hand, corpus tools can facilitate efficient management and analysis of huge data sets and thereby greatly expand the scope and rigor of research. This means that corpora and corpus tools enable a previously unattainable level of scientific rigor in the study of the vocabulary. They have changed the way that researchers approach the study of individual vocabulary items, the vocabulary of a whole language, language variety or domain of language use, and the vocabulary of individual texts. However, corpus analysis of vocabulary needs to be aware of the core methodological issues in any type of corpus analysis: the absence of negative evidence, automated corpus analysis being limited to form‐based information processing rather than meaning‐based processing, and the standards that need to be met to support generalizations from corpus observations. This entry begins with a brief explanation of a corpus and moves on to some key findings from corpus‐based research on vocabulary. The next sections focus on word, language level, and then text‐level vocabulary research, along with examples and suggestions for further reading.