Applications of the experimental Polish-Lithuanian corpus /EkorpPL-LT/ in research on the contemporary Polish language and in theoretical Polish-Lithuanian contrastive studies

The experimental Polish-Lithuanian corpus is an extended tool put into effect at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, first of all with a view to contrastive studies and the structure of the planned Polish-Lithuanian electronic dictionary. The potential recipients of EKorpPL-LT (obviously apart from linguists) can comprise computer specialists (dealing with computer processing of a language), literary scholars, library science specialists, pedagogues, educationalists, teachers, translators, students. Bi- and multilingual corpora are irreplaceable and indispensable in the process of studying a foreign language. In the article, basing on the examples of several problems, possible ways to apply EKorpPL-LT have been presented. During the experiments carried out it turned out that the parallel corpus is not only an excellent tool for comparison and contrast, but also an instrument allowing to look at every language from a different perspective. Without the perspective it would not be possible to say much about Polish and Lithuanian indicative pronouns, indefinite determiners, dual forms or the vocative case. If it were not for the information based on corpora resources, nobody would be aware that the language of Polish instructions of convenience appliances is not only a commercial effect, but above all an element of the state’s concern for the Polish language