A tagging tool for error analysis on learner corpora

1 Introduction A decade of research on errors as contained in learner corpora, usually known as Computer-aided Error Analysis (CEA), has proved not just that increasing attention is being paid to the field but also shown what elements are basic for this purpose: a learner corpus and an error tagset for annotation of errors in the corpus (cf. Granger 1999; Tono 2000). Interestingly, while a good number of corpora of learners of different target languages and of diverse L1 backgrounds have been collected or are still under collection since the early 90s, tools for annotation of learner corpora seem to be scarce. It also seems that, unlike tools for morphological, syntactic or semantic annotation in corpus linguistics research, the error tagging systems that exist have in general not accomplished stages of public availability (see for instance Funded by the Andalusian Regional Council (Consejería de Educación y Ciencia de la Junta de Andalucía, Spain), a four-year project based in the English Department of the University of Jaén was launched in 2003 for research on error annotation of learner corpora, specifically on an error tagging system for use on English written material by Spanish learners. The system consists of an error taxonomy and software tools derived from the former.