Dos problemas en el uso de corpus diacrónicos del español: perspectiva y comparabilidad

This paper addresses a number of methodological problems related to corpus-based research in language variation. It is shown through a number of case studies using data from Biblia medieval (a parallel corpus of Old Spanish bible translations) how this kind of research can profit from parallel texts. To begin with, the perspective afforded by parallel corpus methodology is more open as it is possible to analyze all the forms used to express contents in the source language. Likewise, parallel texts offer direct comparability of concrete examples across different historical periods, as translation equivalents are likely to be inserted in the same or very similar syntactic, semantic and pragmatic contexts of occurrence. Finally, in a parallel corpus it is possible to analyze stylistic variation in a more controlled manner by examining how the same translator selects different linguistic options depending on the genre of each text.