Exploring constructions on the web: a case study

摘要: This paper presents a case study on grammatical variation that exemplifies both possibilities and limits of using data drawn from the web in linguistic research. In particular, impact animacy (of modifier) choice between s-genitives such as driver’s licence noun+noun constructions (driver licence) will be tested. It shown this type is extremely difficult to basis ‘traditional’ electronic corpora since these do not contain sufficient number crucial tokens. case, therefore, provides unique resource for investigating phenomenon which otherwise could barely studied at all corpus. At same time, however, also discuss various obstacles we may run into when data. Most crucially, it – least present WebCorp software more reliable means retrieving than Google. The findings conclusions are embedded within general discussion