Linguistic evidence

More about the book

The recent renaissance in corpus linguistics and advancements in experimental linguistic techniques have sparked renewed interest in the empirical foundations of linguistic theory and the status of various types of linguistic evidence. There is growing consensus that even primary data, derived from introspection and authentic language production, are complex performance data that only indirectly reflect the linguistic theories they aim to support. For a robust foundation of linguistic theories, evidence from diverse sources—such as introspective data, corpus data, (psycho-)linguistic experiments, historical and diachronic data, typological data, neurolinguistic data, and language learning data—is not only beneficial but often essential. By contrasting evidence from these varied sources with specific research questions, we can enhance our understanding of the status and quality of different types of linguistic evidence, as well as their interrelationships and relative significance. This volume comprises selected papers from the 'Linguistic Evidence' conference held in Tübingen in 2004, focusing on these critical issues in relation to specific linguistic research problems, thereby contributing to a deeper comprehension of the nature of linguistic evidence.