This book offers a series of studies that come together in their concern for furthering an understanding of the French language, of its uses, its forms, its variation, and its acquisition. Other than contributing to a general understanding of French, this book also addresses the use of corpora for the study of language and the links between tools, methods, analyses and applications. What data are used, and how? What are the underlying theoretical and/or methodological considerations? How have these changed our way of formulating linguistic descriptions? What are the implications for descriptive accounts of French today? What are the applications of corpus studies?

These questions (and many more) are addressed here in a series of scholarly contributions grouped into four broad areas: diachrony, syntax, sociolinguistics, and the learning and teaching of French. The book provides an up-to-date and challenging account of French for researchers in French linguistics. It will also be suitable for use on post-graduate and some undergraduate courses, providing useful information not only for students and teachers of French, but also for language and linguistics students in general. Many of the issues addressed are not specific to the French language and can be accounted for within a more general area of reflection within linguistics on changing relations between data, theory and methods.