Corpora and (the Need for) Other Methods in a Study of Lancashire Dialect

Abstract

Abstract This paper is based on a nascent project on Lancashire dialect grammar, which aims to describe the relevant features of this dialect and to engage with related theoretical and methodological debates. We show how corpora allow one to arrive at more precise descriptions of the data than was previously possible. But we also draw attention to the need for other methods, in particular modern elicitation tasks and attitude questionnaires developed in perceptual dialectology. Combining these methods promises to provide more insight into both more general theoretical issues and the exact nature of the object of study, namely Lancashire dialect.