 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Corpus language" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Acorpus language is a language that has no living speakers but for which numerous records produced by its native speakers survive.[1] Examples of corpus languages areAncient Greek,Latin, theEgyptian language,Old English andElamite. Some corpus languages, such as Ancient Greek and Latin, left very large corpora and therefore can be fully reconstructed, even though some details of pronunciation may be unclear. Such languages can be used even today, as is the case withSanskrit and Latin.
Other languages have such limited corpora that some important words—e.g., some pronouns—are lacking in the corpora. Examples of these areUgaritic andGothic. Languages attested only by a few words, often names, and a few phrases, are calledTrümmersprache (literally "rubble languages") in German linguistics. These can be reconstructed only in a very limited way, and often theirgenetic relationship to other languages remains unclear. Examples areDadanitic, aSemitic language that may be close toclassical Arabic, and theLombardic language.
Corpus languages are studied using the methods ofcorpus linguistics, but corpus linguistics can also be used (and is commonly used) for the study of the writings and other records of living languages.
Not allextinct languages are corpus languages, since there are many extinct languages in which few or no writings or other records survive.
 | This article abouthistorical linguistics is astub. You can help Wikipedia byadding missing information. |
 | Thiscorpus linguistics-related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byadding missing information. |
