If you are studying terminology in Linguistics using a corpus, there are several factors to consider when determining the ideal dataset for your study. Here are some general guidelines to help you choose an appropriate dataset:
Size: The size of the corpus should be large enough to provide a representative sample of the language or subfield of linguistics you are interested in. A larger corpus may be more representative of the language or subfield, but it can also be more challenging to manage and analyze. Therefore, you need to balance the size of the corpus against the practical limitations of data collection, storage, and processing.
Coverage: The corpus should cover a range of linguistic genres, such as written texts (academic articles, books, etc.), spoken texts (lectures, interviews, conversations, etc.), and other forms of communication (emails, social media, etc.). This will help ensure that the terminology you study is representative of the language in real-world contexts.
Quality: The corpus should be carefully selected to ensure that the texts are of high quality, accurate, and reliable. You should also check that the texts are appropriate for your research question and that they are relevant to the subfield of linguistics you are studying.
Metadata: The corpus should include appropriate metadata, such as the author, title, publication date, and other relevant information. This metadata can be used to contextualize the texts and provide insights into the social, cultural, and historical factors that may influence the terminology used in the texts.
Annotation: Depending on your research question, you may want to consider annotating the corpus with additional information, such as part-of-speech tags, syntactic structures, semantic annotations, and so on. These annotations can help you analyze the corpus more effectively and provide deeper insights into the terminology used in the texts.
Overall, an ideal dataset for studying terminology in Linguistics would be a large, representative corpus that covers a range of linguistic genres and is carefully selected for quality and relevance to your research question. You should also consider including appropriate metadata and annotations to provide additional insights into the texts.