In the past few decades the use of increasingly large text corpora has grown rapidly in language and linguistics research. This was enabled by remarkable strides in natural language processing (NLP) technology, technology that enables computers to automatically and efficiently process, annotate and analyze large amounts of spoken and written text in linguistically and/or pragmatically meaningful ways. It has become more desirable than ever before for language and linguistics researchers who use corpora in their research to gain an adequate understanding of the relevant NLP technology to take full advantage of its capabilities.
This volume provides language and linguistics researchers with an accessible introduction to the state-of-the-art NLP technology that facilitates automatic annotation and analysis of large text corpora at both shallow and deep linguistic levels. The book covers a wide range of computational tools for lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse analysis, together with detailed instructions on how to obtain, install and use each tool in different operating systems and platforms. The book illustrates how NLP technology has been applied in recent corpus-based language studies and suggests effective ways to better integrate such technology in future corpus linguistics research.
This book provides language and linguistics researchers with a valuable reference for corpus annotation and analysis.

This book presents a collection of original research articles that showcase the state of the art of research in corpus and computational linguistic approaches to Chinese language teaching, learning and assessment. It offers a comprehensive set of corpus resources and natural language processing tools that are useful for teaching, learning and assessing Chinese as a second or foreign language; methods for implementing such resources and techniques in Chinese pedagogy and assessment; as well as research findings on the effectiveness of using such resources and techniques in various aspects of Chinese pedagogy and assessment.

* Features/Benefits o The first book to comprehensively and systematically review corpus analytic research methods to understand/examine second language acquisition (L2 use, processing, development, and pedagogy). o Discusses recent empirical studies that employ these techniques to apply corpus linguistic methods across diverse areas of SLA and theoretical orientations, and highlights the contributions that corpus methods have made to the studies' results. o Discusses how new and emerging corpus linguistic methods can be fruitfully used in future SLA research. * Demand/Audience o The field of Second Language Acquisition has had a marked increase in studies on and interest in corpus- and usage-based approaches. This book serves that audience in both courses and personal research use with a comprehensive, up-to-date, how-to volume on corpus-based research methodology. o A unique resource for students and researchers of SLA and applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, second language pedagogy, bi- and multilingualism, and language teaching. * Competition o No real competition. Extant books in this area fail to cover corpus linguistics methods for SLA comprehensively as this book does; they either report findings from a specific research study or focus on a single theoretical perspective/particular area of SLA. o Many of the books in this area are edited volumes, which lack the unified authoritative voice of a single author that this book will have.

* Features/Benefits o The first book to comprehensively and systematically review corpus analytic research methods to understand/examine second language acquisition (L2 use, processing, development, and pedagogy). o Discusses recent empirical studies that employ these techniques to apply corpus linguistic methods across diverse areas of SLA and theoretical orientations, and highlights the contributions that corpus methods have made to the studies' results. o Discusses how new and emerging corpus linguistic methods can be fruitfully used in future SLA research. * Demand/Audience o The field of Second Language Acquisition has had a marked increase in studies on and interest in corpus- and usage-based approaches. This book serves that audience in both courses and personal research use with a comprehensive, up-to-date, how-to volume on corpus-based research methodology. o A unique resource for students and researchers of SLA and applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, second language pedagogy, bi- and multilingualism, and language teaching. * Competition o No real competition. Extant books in this area fail to cover corpus linguistics methods for SLA comprehensively as this book does; they either report findings from a specific research study or focus on a single theoretical perspective/particular area of SLA. o Many of the books in this area are edited volumes, which lack the unified authoritative voice of a single author that this book will have.

In the past few decades the use of increasingly large text corpora has grown rapidly in language and linguistics research. This was enabled by remarkable strides in natural language processing (NLP) technology, technology that enables computers to automatically and efficiently process, annotate and analyze large amounts of spoken and written text in linguistically and/or pragmatically meaningful ways. It has become more desirable than ever before for language and linguistics researchers who use corpora in their research to gain an adequate understanding of the relevant NLP technology to take full advantage of its capabilities. This volume provides language and linguistics researchers with an accessible introduction to the state-of-the-art NLP technology that facilitates automatic annotation and analysis of large text corpora at both shallow and deep linguistic levels. The book covers a wide range of computational tools for lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse analysis, together with detailed instructions on how to obtain, install and use each tool in different operating systems and platforms. The book illustrates how NLP technology has been applied in recent corpus-based language studies and suggests effective ways to better integrate such technology in future corpus linguistics research. This book provides language and linguistics researchers with a valuable reference for corpus annotation and analysis.