Leech (1991, 1992) has written two important articles on the origins of corpus linguistics. Both cover the history of corpus linguistics in some detail, though the 1992 article is of particular interest in that it considers corpus linguistics as a paradigm contrasting with the generative framework of language study.

Also, of historical interest is Francis, W. (1979) "Problems of assembling, describing and computerizing large corpora", in Bergenholtz, H and Schaeder, B (eds) Empririshe Textwissenscharft: Aufbau und Auswertung von Text-Corpora, Konigstein: Scripter Verlag. This is an early work from the renaissance of corpus linguistics.

Finally, Hockett (1948) is of particular importance - it shows that some "early corpus linguists" did have more progressive views of the role of corpus data in the investigation of language than one might imagine.

Further Reading