Corpora and corpus linguistics in France: inventory and applications
Corpus linguistics has developed over the last twenty years thanks to the creation of socalled 'reference corpora', which revolutionized the field of language sciences and brought
about an opposition between studies advocating a unique grammar for each language and
studies carried out using corpora and based on usage, i.e. which list written and spoken
usages pertaining to varied situations of utterance. This method is predominently used in
France.
The aim of this presentation is (i) to make an inventory of the written and spoken corpora
which are available in France, and (ii) to present four recent applications, namely the
Rhapsodie, Orfeo et Valibel projects which are spoken corpora, and the MC4 project which
addresses the issue of reference in written French.