This paper critically discusses how corpus linguistics in general, but learner corpus research in particular, has been dealing with
all sorts of frequency data in general, but over- and underuse frequencies in particular. I demonstrate on the basis of learner
corpus data the pitfalls of using aggregate data and lacking statistical control that much work is unfortunately characterized by.
In fact, I will demonstrate that monofactorial methods have very little to offer at all to research on observational data. While
this paper is admittedly very didactic and methodological, I think the discussion of the empirical data offered here – a
reanalysis of previously published work – shows how misleading many studies potentially and provides far-reaching implications for
much of corpus linguistics and learner corpus research. Ideally/maximally, this paper together with Paquot & Plonsky (2017, Intntl. J. of Learner Corpus Research) would lead to a complete
revision of how learner corpus linguists use quantitative methods and study over-/underuse; minimally, this paper would stimulate
a much-needed discussion of currently lacking methodological sophistication.
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learner corpus research. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2014: New empirical and theoretical paradigms (pp. 35–54). Cham: Springer.
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