Corpus linguistics: Theory vs methodilogy

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the stages of formation and development of corpus linguistics. The purpose of the article is to analyze various scientific approaches to the scientific significance of this linguistic discipline and identify a set of concepts and criteria that form the foundation of this field. Corpus linguistics is one of the most promising and rapidly developing areas of language research. Linguistics of the XIX century set as its goal the study of language as such, and linguistics of the XXI century sees the relevance of the research not in identifying absolute linguistic categories and meanings but in the practical application of linguistic knowledge. The relevance of the article is determined by the fact that the linguistic corpus contains a vast potential, which the scientific community has not fully comprehended since the text as the main object of corpus linguistics in various forms of its implementation is one of the central components systems of language and speech-thinking activity of a modern native speaker of any language. The content and volume of linguistic corpora of various kinds allow obtaining reliable information about the modern and real use of a particular term: the corpus becomes a tool for analyzing the functioning of this term both in the linguistic field of morphology, syntax, and vocabulary and in the theory and practice of translation, identifying the register of its formal or informal usage. The fundamental novelty of this study’s results allows us to speak about the legitimacy of the creation of corpus dictionaries and corpus grammars of a new generation, developed and verified concerning a specific fixed corpus. Simultaneously, the author substantiates the proposition that the corpus nature of dictionaries and grammars increases their reliability and objectivity and avoids the subjectivity that is often characteristic of research-based solely on the intuition of a linguist. The corpus is a medium for obtaining new scientific data, the comprehension of which seems to be a priority for modern linguistic description and necessary in the scientific activity of a modern researcher. From our point of view, this article’s relevance and novelty lie in the fact that the expediency of corpus research is an essential requirement of the time, associated with a new quality of linguistic reality and meeting the needs of modern society. The article examines the main stages of the formation of corpus linguistics as a scientific field, characterizes the scientific concepts and approaches inherent in each of these stages, provides an overview of the main conceptual provisions of corpus linguistics within the framework of domestic and foreign linguistics. The author analyzes in detail the polemics between representatives of various scientific directions and reveals the advantages of one or another approach, traces the similarities and differences between approaches to the study of corpora at various historical stages of their formation. The review’s focus is the role and place of corpus studies of language in modern linguistics, comparison of the pro and contra arguments of the use of corpus technologies in linguistic description. Considerable attention is paid to the main criteria for the classification of corpora, a brief overview of the most famous corpora in history is offered, and the prospects for their use in various fields of modern language science are discussed. © 2021, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. All rights reserved.