On the exploitation of computerized corpora in variation studies
Douglas Biber, Edward Finegan · 2014
In an encounter between R.B. Lees and W. Nelson Francis in the early 1960s, Lees asked Francis what he was up to at the time, and Francis replied that he had a grant to compile a computerized corpus of English. When Lees asked 'Why in the world are you doing that?', Francis answered that he wanted to uncover the 'true facts of English grammar'. As Francis recalls the incident, Lees then looked at him 'in amazement' and exclaimed: 'That is a complete waste of your time and the government's money. You are a native speaker of English; in ten minutes you can produce more illustrations of any point in English grammar than you will find in many millions of words of random text' (Francis 1982: 7-8).