Resumen de Comparative corpus linguistics: the study of current grammatical changes in English
Today, the problem of the lack of adequate data can no longer be a hindrance to the analysis of language changes in progress. Corpus linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics, which have their origins in the early 1960s, have recently started to develop together and collaborate in fruitful ways. Yet even in languages like English, which is the most thoroughly studied language from a corpus-based perspective, we still have many goals for the future improvement of comparable corpora for the study of shortterm ongoing grammatical changes. This paper presents two corpus resources: the Brown family of corpora and the Diachronic Corpus of Present-day Spoken English (DCPSE). In each case, with my own research I illustrate how the different corpora fare with respect to two suspected grammatical changes in progress in present-day English. At the same time, I make a critical assessment of the possibilities and limitations shown by each of the corpora for this kind of research enterprise. Finally, in the conclusion, I make a plea for those qualities that, in an ideal world, should be shared by all diachronic corpora such as: (a) they should faithfully represent conversational English; (b) their size should be significant enough for grammatical studies; (c) they should allow for true sociolinguistic research; (d) they should be freely available to all scholars; (e) they should follow the same sampling frame; and (f) they should include various registers of Internet language, an increasingly core modality of communication for many English speakers.
