Linguistic Research with PaQu

Abstract

In this paper I illustrate the use of the PaQu (Parse and Query) application for carrying out linguistic research. The major findings of this paper are: (1) PaQu is very useful for aiding researchers in efficient manual verification of hypotheses; (2) PaQu can even be used for automatic verification of hypotheses, provided some care is exercised; (3) the Dutch CHILDES data are too small to address certain research questions; and (4) the data found suggest several new hypotheses on the acquisition of lexical properties that should be further explored