Alamkorpus

Alamkorpus is the Estonian term for a subcorpus, a subset of a larger language corpus defined by specific criteria. In corpus linguistics, a subcorpus is used to examine language features within a particular variety, genre, time period, or domain, while controlling for factors that might be present in the full collection.

Subcorpora are created by filtering the larger corpus according to metadata and content attributes. Common criteria include time span (e.g., texts from a single decade), genre or register (spoken, technical, news), geographic origin, author demographic, topic, and formality level. Subcorpora can be assembled through targeted selection, or through stratified sampling to preserve representativeness across predefined strata. They are often accompanied by documentation detailing the selection criteria, size, and composition to enable reproducibility and comparability with other corpora.

Applications of alamkorpus include studies of diachronic change, register variation, domain-specific vocabulary, and syntactic or collocational patterns within a restricted context. Researchers use subcorpora to test hypotheses that might be obscured by the diversity of a larger corpus or to provide baseline comparisons against the full dataset. They also support methodological practices such as controlled experiments, benchmarking, and cross-lent resources across languages.

Limitations involve potential sampling bias, metadata quality concerns, and reduced representativeness if the subcorpus is too narrow. Clear reporting of selection criteria, size, and composition is essential to interpret results accurately and to enable meaningful comparisons with other corpora.

See also: corpus linguistics; subcorpus; data provenance.