Web Searches Should Supplement Judgement, Not Supplant Them

It is argued that the Web can be useful to linguists as a source of ideas & an evidentiary tool: in the former scenario, a sentence may be attested on the Web that will motivate the linguist to conduct more extensive research, while in the evidentiary scenario, Web data are used as evidence to support research. Implications of the Web as an evidentiary tool are examined in more detail, exploring the challenges, problems, & pitfalls of using material retrieved from the Internet. Studies by Joan Bresnan & Tatiana Nikitina (2003), Geoffrey R. Sampson (2007), & Christipher D. Manning (2003) are critiqued for inappropriate or methodologically flawed use of Web data. Z. Dubiel