Widening the scope of learner corpus research

Corpora and language in use

Since its beginnings in the late 1980s, the field of Learner Corpus Research (LCR) has been continuously evolving and thereby widening its scope. LCR is rapidly closing gaps within its original scope by expanding on the languages, language mediums (spoken vs written) and learner types covered, and it is turning its attention to ever-emerging new research questions and phenomena which arise at the crossroads with neighboring disciplines. In fact, by embracing e.g. the latest technical developments in Natural Language Processing and Computer Science as well as by adopting state-of-the-art research methodologies used in Corpus Linguistics which include sophisticated statistical methods of data analysis, LCR is dipping into new interdisciplinary subjects with curiosity and expanding its research scope and methodological repertoire.

This volume combines selected research papers from the 4th LCR conference hosted by Eurac Research in Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) in October 2017. All contributions in this volume build on the topics of previous LCR conference volumes, and enrich them with their research. The contributions are arranged thematically and refer to the following five LCR topics : (1) analysis of learner data in spoken language, (2) analysis of learner data in corpora of other languages than English, (3) analysis of learner data of young learners, (4) LCR, language learning and pedagogical applications, and (5) LCR and automatic language modeling. The assembled papers introduce innovative research strands, present original data and research findings, and discuss latest desiderata within the five thematic focal points of the book.