= Text corpus
A <text corpus> is a collection of language samples assembled according to stated criteria for systematic analysis. It can contain written material or transcribed <speech>; selection, recording conventions and <linguistic annotation> determine what questions it can answer. A collection's size alone does not make it representative of every speaker or situation.<What is a corpus? in the EAGLES Text Corpora Working Group report>[definition, explicit linguistic selection criteria and computer-corpus discussion]{ref}
Suppose a toy <text corpus> contains 20,000 word tokens and 60 occurrences of a chosen form. Its observed rate is $60/20000=0.003$, or 3,000 per million tokens. A second collection needs a comparable denominator before counts are compared. Keeping interview and news samples separately identifiable helps distinguish a difference in <language> use from a difference in the mixture of text types. A <text corpus> thus turns examples into countable evidence while preserving the need to justify sampling.
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