ABSTRACT
Analyzing large amounts of distributional data is useful for improving our knowledge of the behavior and the meanings of words. This grants corpora a central role in the development of new methodological proposals for twenty-first century lexicology and lexicography. However, the impact of such methodological innovations has been unequal across disciplines, theoretical frameworks and languages object of study. With reference to Spanish lexicology and lexicography—which constitute the core areas of interest of this chapter—we can assert that, at present, the incorporation of the new corpus-based methodologies finds itself in an initial stage. The newly available techniques are still underutilized, but there is a growing interest in them, as well as an increasing awareness of the need to take better advantage of the possibilities they 176offer for improving the existing methods of lexical analysis. This methodological concern lies at the heart of the current proposals for a renewal of the Hispanic lexicographic tradition. The present chapter provides a review of recent advances and a discussion of some problems and challenges with which the new techniques of lexical analysis must be confronted. I will also argue for a more systematic application of these techniques in future studies of the Spanish lexicon.
