Statistics in Corpus Linguistics Research: A New Approach

Traditional approaches focused on significance tests have often been difficult for linguistics researchers to visualise. Statistics in Corpus Linguistics Research: A New Approach breaks these significance tests down for researchers in corpus linguistics and linguistic analysis, promoting a visual approach to understanding the performance of tests with real data, and demonstrating how to derive new intervals and tests. Accessibly written, this book discusses the ‘why’ behind the statistical model, allowing readers a greater facility for choosing their own methodologies. Accessibly written for those with little to no mathematical or statistical background, it explains the mathematical fundamentals of simple significance tests by relating them to confidence intervals. With sample datasets and easy-to-read visuals, this book focuses on practical issues, such as how to: • pose research questions in terms of choice and constraint; • employ confidence intervals correctly (including in graph plots); • select optimal significance tests (and what results mean); • measure the size of the effect of one variable on another; • estimate the similarity of distribution patterns; and • evaluate whether the results of two experiments significantly differ. Appropriate for anyone from the student just beginning their career to the seasoned researcher, this book is both a practical overview and valuable resource.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1 Why Do We Need Another Book on Statistics? 2 Statistics and Scientific Rigour 3 Why Is Statistics Difficult? 4 Looking Down the Observer’s End of the Telescope 5 What Do Linguists Need to Know About Statistics? Acknowledgments A Note on Terminology and Notation Contingency Tests for Different Purposes PART 1 Motivations 1 What Might Corpora Tell Us About Language? 1.1 Introduction 1.2 What Might a Corpus Tell Us? 1.3 The 3A Cycle 1.4 What Might a Richly Annotated Corpus Tell Us? 1.5 External Influences: Modal Shall / Will Over Time 1.6 Interacting Grammatical Decisions: NP Premodification 1.7 Framing Constraints and Interaction Evidence 1.8 Conclusions PART 2 Designing Experiments With Corpora 2 The Idea of Corpus Experiments 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Experimentation and Observation 2.3 Evaluating a Hypothesis 2.4 Refining the Experiment 2.5 Correlations and Causes 2.6 A Linguistic Interaction Experiment 2.7 Experiments and Disproof 2.8 What Is the Purpose of an Experiment? 2.9 Conclusions 3 That Vexed Problem of Choice 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Parameters of Choice 3.3 A Methodological Progression? 3.4 Objections to Variationism 3.5 Conclusions 4 Choice Versus Meaning 4.1 Introduction 4.2 The Meaning of Very 4.3 The Choice of Very 4.4 Refining Baselines by Type 4.5 Conclusions 5 Balanced Samples and Imagined Populations 5.1 Introduction 5.2 A Study in Genre Variation 5.3 Imagining Populations 5.4 Multi- Variate and Multi-Level Modelling 5.5 More Texts – or Longer Ones? 5.6 Conclusions PART 3 Confidence Intervals and Significance Tests 6 Introducing Inferential Statistics 6.1 Why Is Statistics Difficult? 6.2 The Idea of Inferential Statistics 6.3 The Randomness of Life 6.4 Conclusions 7 Plotting With Confidence 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Plotting the Graph 7.3 Comparing and Plotting Change 7.4 An Apparent Paradox 7.5 Conclusions 8 From Intervals to Tests 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Tests for a Single Binomial Proportion 8.3 Tests for Comparing Two Observed Proportions 8.4 Applying Contingency Tests 8.5 Comparing the Results of Experiments 8.6 Conclusions 9 Comparing Frequencies in the Same Distribution 9.1 Introduction 9.2 The Single-Sample z Test 9.3 Testing and Interpreting Intervals 9.4 Conclusions 10 Reciprocating the Wilson Interval 10.1 Introduction 10.2 The Wilson Interval of Mean Utterance Length 10.3 Intervals on Monotonic Functions of p 10.4 Conclusions 11 Competition Between Choices Over Time 11.1 Introduction 11.2 The ‘S Curve’ 11.3 Boundaries and Confidence Intervals 11.4 Logistic Regression 11.5 Impossible Logistic Multinomials 11.6 Conclusions 12 The Replication Crisis and the New Statistics 12.1 Introduction 12.2 A Corpus Linguistics Debate 12.3 Psychology Lessons? 12.4 The Road Not Travelled 12.5 What Does This Mean for Corpus Linguistics? 12.6 Some Recommendations 12.7 Conclusions 13 Choosing the Right Test 13.1 Introduction 13.2 Tests for Categorical Data 13.3 Tests for Other Types of Data 13.4 Conclusions PART 4 Effect Sizes and Meta-Tests 14 The Size of an Effect 14.1 Introduction 14.2 Effect Sizes for Two-Variable Tables 14.3 Confidence intervals on ϕ 14.4 Goodness of Fit Effect Sizes 14.5 Conclusions 15 Meta- Tests for Comparing Tables of Results 15.1 Introduction 15.2 Some Preliminaries 15.3 Point and Multi-Point Tests for Homogeneity Tables 15.4 Gradient Tests for Homogeneity Tables 15.5 Gradient Tests for Goodness of Fit Tables 15.7 Conclusions PART 5 Statistical Solutions for Corpus Samples 16 Conducting Research With Imperfect Data 16.1 Introduction 16.2 Reviewing Subsamples 16.3 Reviewing Preliminary Analyses 16.4 Resampling and p-Hacking 16.5 Conclusions 17 Adjusting Intervals for Random-Text Samples 17.1 Introduction 17.2 Recalibrating Binomial Models 17.3 Examples With Large Samples 17.4 Alternation Studies With Small Samples 17.5 Conclusions PART 6 Concluding Remarks 18 Plotting the Wilson Distribution 18.1 Introduction 18.2 Plotting the Distribution 18.3 Example Plots 18.4 Further Perspectives on Wilson Distributions 18.5 Alternative Distributions 18.6 Conclusions 19 In Conclusion Appendices A The Interval Equality Principle 1 Introduction 2 Applications 3 Searching for Interval Bounds With a Computer B Pseudo-Code for Computational Procedures 1 Simple Logistic Regression Algorithm With Logit-Wilson Variance 2 Binomial and Fisher Functions Glossary References Index

About the Author :
Sean Wallis is Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Survey of English Usage at UCL.

Review :
"Perfect for corpus linguists: an introduction to statistics written by one of them." Christian Mair, University of Freiburg, Germany. "Perfect for corpus linguists: an introduction to statistics written by one of them." Christian Mair, University of Freiburg, Germany