Corpora - resources for writer autonomy
The first part of the heading of this section is Corpora. This word form is the plural form of the noun corpus, a word of Latin origin meaning 'body'. The word is used in phrases like Corpus Christi, which means 'the body of Christ'. In linguistics, however, the term corpus has a more common meaning; it is understood as a collection of texts based on which investigations can be made about language use. A corpus here thus means a body of texts.
For more advanced users of English, a corpus can be a very powerful tool when wanting to know how a particular word, phrase or grammatical construction is used by native speakers. In this subsection, you can learn more about what a corpus is, how it can be used, especially in the context of academic writing in English, and also how you can access on-line corpora to try to find potential answers to your language queries.
Unless you are already familiar with corpora and what they can do, we suggest that you start by reading about what a corpus is by clicking on the top link below.