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87 THE DATA OF LINGUISTICS
some topics. When interpreting corpus data, it must always be recalled that any
result holds for the corpus rather than for the language as a whole.
Possible benefits of this type of data include:
• There is good software available for searching corpora quickly and
efficiently.
• Experiments based on freely available corpora are replicable.
• It is possible to search large amounts of data for relatively rare constructions.
• The text collection and transcription of spoken material are done in
advance.
• Experiments based on corpus data allow for the meaningful statistical
analysis of results.
Possible disadvantages of this type of data include:
• There are some constructions which it is very difficult to search for in
most corpora, for example, relative clauses with a zero relativiser.
• For some queries huge amounts of data are required if any meaningful
results are to be obtained.
• The analyst can be faced with too much data.
• In most cases a search has to be done on lexical data.
Descriptive grammars
Even when dealing with our own language, we all turn to descriptive grammars to
discover what is going on in various constructions or what the difference between
two similar constructions might be. When it comes to learning another language,
we turn either to specific pedagogical grammars, which compare the target language
with our own first language, or to more general descriptive grammars in
order to aid our learning of that language. When it comes to knowing how a more
exotic language works, we are often dependent on what we are told in a descriptive
grammar of that language, written by an expert. These three types of descriptive
grammar are not entirely parallel, but we will consider them all together here.
Descriptive grammars may or may not be overt about the linguistic theory
or grammatical model which informs their description. In principle, the best
grammars are readable independent of the model they base themselves on, but
the questions that are answered may depend on the assumptions made by the
author(s). Every descriptive grammar must be selective in the material it presents,
none can ever hope to be exhaustive, and room for illustrative material is
always at a premium. The result is that some constructions will not be covered,
and that it can often be difficult to find multiple examples of the same