Sylviane Granger (born 5 July 1951) is a Belgian

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

professor of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain). She is the founder of the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics (CECL) and is best known for her pioneering work in the field of Learner Corpus Research. She has mainly published in the areas of

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...

, learner language,

contrastive linguistics Contrastive linguistics is a practice-oriented linguistic approach that seeks to describe the differences and similarities between a pair of languages (hence it is occasionally called "''differential'' linguistics"). History While traditional ...

translation studies Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization. As an interdiscipline, translation studies borrows much from the vari ...

and

lexicography Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines: * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoretical le ...

Career

Sylviane Granger completed her entire career at UCLouvain. After studying English and Dutch philology, she started as a research fellow at the FNRS in 1972. She later took on a teaching assistant position in English language and linguistics, and in 1981 she obtained her PhD under the supervision of Jacques Van Roey. Her PhD dissertation was about the use of ''be + past participle'' in spoken English with a special focus on the passive. She then continued her career as a professor in English language and linguistics. In 1991, she founded the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, whose main research focus is learner language and contrastive linguistics. During her first sabbatical leave in 1995, she taught at

Lancaster University Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new univer ...

and completed the volume ''Learner English on Computer'', which came out in 1998. She took a second sabbatical in 2002 during which she taught at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. In 2016 she was appointed to a Francqui Chair at the University of Leuven-Kortrijk. She retired in September 2016 and is now an Emeritus professor.

Learner Corpus Research

Her pioneering work on learner language set the cornerstone for the field of Learner Corpus Research. One of the main tenets of the discipline is that learner language is best approached holistically and naturalistically. Within this framework, she launched the ''International Corpus of Learner English'' (ICLE) enterprise. ICLE is a collection of rigorously controlled written learner productions in English that are comparable across first language backgrounds. The first version, containing nine language backgrounds, came out in 2002. The second version, released in 2009, contains data from 16 learner populations, and a third version is in the making. Its spoken counterpart, the ''Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage'' (LINDSEI), came out in 2011. Besides those two, she also launched the collection of a number of other corpora, such as LOCNESS, PLECI and LONGDALE. She is also the co-founder and president of the Learner Corpus Association and consulting editor for the ''International Journal of Learner Corpus Research''.

Selected publications

* ''Dictionnaire des faux amis: français - anglais'' (1988) * ''Connector usage in the English essay writing of native and non-native EFL speakers of English'' (1996) * ''Learner English on Computer'' (1998) * ''The International Corpus of Learner English'' (2002) * ''The International Corpus of Learner English. Version 2'' (2009) * ''The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research'' (2015)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Granger, Sylviane Lexicographers Corpus linguists Linguists from Belgium Living people Academic staff of the Université catholique de Louvain 1951 births Women lexicographers