Contrastive linguistics in a new key 1

Abstract

In 1994 a group of researchers from the Nordic countries met in Lund, Sweden, for a symposium titled Languages in Contrast: A Symposium on Text-based Cross-linguistic Studies^.2 The purpose of the symposium was to gather researchers “active in the field of contrastive linguistics and who share an interest in linking cross-linguistic studies with corpus linguistics and the use of the computer as a tool in linguistic research” (Aijmer et al. (eds) 1996, Acknowledgments). Little did we know back then that we would meet again in Lund in 2014 to commemorate the symposium and celebrate the start of the collaborative efforts that led to the compilation of the parallel corpora known as the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC), the Swedish-English Parallel Corpus (ESPC) and the Finnish-English Contrastive Corpus Studies Project (FECCS).³ Moreover, in 2014, we could also celebrate the 20th anniversary of the research network “Languages in contrast”, which was generously funded by the Nordic Academy for Advanced Study (NorFa) between 1994- 1996, and which meant that the parallel corpus projects could employ research assistants and a software developer (Knut Hofland) to work on the compilation of the corpora.⁴