This book is a critical appraisal of recent developments in corpus linguistics for the analysis of written and spoken learner data. The twelve papers cover an introductory critical appraisal of learner corpus data compilation and development (section 1); issues in data compilation, annotation and exchangeability (section 2); automatic approaches to data identification and analysis (section 3); and analysis of learner corpus data in the light of recent models of data analysis and interpretation, especially recent automatic approaches for the identification of learner language features (section 4). This collection is aimed at students and researchers of corpus linguistics, second language acquisition studies and quantitative linguistics. It will significantly advance learner corpus research in terms of methodological innovation and will fill in an important gap in the development of multidisciplinary approaches (for learner corpus studies).

The first book of its kind, Learner English on Computer is intended to provide linguists, students of linguistics and modern languages, and ELT professionals with a highly accessible and comprehensive introduction to the new and rapidly-expanding field of corpus-based research into learner language. Edited by the founder and co-ordinator of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), the book contains articles on all aspects of corpus compilation, design and analysis. The book is divided into three main sections; in Part I, the first chapter provides the reader with an overview of the field, explaining links with corpus and applied linguistics, second language acquisition and ELT. The second chapter reviews the software tools which are currently available for analysing learner language and contains useful examples of how they can be used. Part 2 contains eight case studies in which computer learner corpora are analysed for various lexical, discourse and grammatical features. The articles contain a wide range of methodologies with broad general application. The chapters in Part 3 look at how Computer Learner Corpus (CLC) based studies can help improve pedagogical tools: EFL grammars, dictionaries, writing textbooks and electronic tools. Implications for classroom methodology are also discussed. The comprehensive scope of this volume should be invaluable to applied linguists and corpus linguists as well as to would-be learner corpus builders and analysts who wish to discover more about a new, exciting and fast-growing field of research.

This book describes effective methods for automatically analyzing a sentence, based on the syntactic and semantic characteristics of the elements that form it. To tackle ambiguities, the authors use selectional preferences (SP), which measure how well two words fit together semantically in a sentence. Today, many disciplines require automatic text analysis based on the syntactic and semantic characteristics of language and as such several techniques for parsing sentences have been proposed. Which is better? In this book the authors begin with simple heuristics before moving on to more complex methods that identify nouns and verbs and then aggregate modifiers, and lastly discuss methods that can handle complex subordinate and relative clauses. During this process, several ambiguities arise. SP are commonly determined on the basis of the association between a pair of words. However, in many cases, SP depend on more words. For example, something (such as grass) may be edible, depending on who is eating it (a cow?). Moreover, things such as popcorn are usually eaten at the movies, and not in a restaurant. The authors deal with these phenomena from different points of view.

This book is a critical appraisal of recent developments in corpus linguistics for the analysis of written and spoken learner data. The twelve papers cover an introductory critical appraisal of learner corpus data compilation and development (section 1); issues in data compilation, annotation and exchangeability (section 2); automatic approaches to data identification and analysis (section 3); and analysis of learner corpus data in the light of recent models of data analysis and interpretation, especially recent automatic approaches for the identification of learner language features (section 4). This collection is aimed at students and researchers of corpus linguistics, second language acquisition studies and quantitative linguistics. It will significantly advance learner corpus research in terms of methodological innovation and will fill in an important gap in the development of multidisciplinary approaches (for learner corpus studies).

It has been estimated that over a billion people are using or learning English as a second or foreign language, and the numbers are growing not only for English but for other languages as well. These language learners provide a burgeoning market for tools that help identify and correct learners' writing errors. Unfortunately, the errors targeted by typical commercial proofreading tools do not include those aspects of a second language that are hardest to learn. This volume describes the types of constructions English language learners find most difficult: constructions containing prepositions, articles, and collocations. It provides an overview of the automated approaches that have been developed to identify and correct these and other classes of learner errors in a number of languages. Error annotation and system evaluation are particularly important topics in grammatical error detection because there are no commonly accepted standards. Chapters in the book describe the options available to researchers, recommend best practices for reporting results, and present annotation and evaluation schemes. The final chapters explore recent innovative work that opens new directions for research. It is the authors' hope that this volume will continue to contribute to the growing interest in grammatical error detection by encouraging researchers to take a closer look at the field and its many challenging problems.