On the role of cumulative knowledge building and specific hypotheses: the case of grammatical complexity

As corpus linguistics matures as a field, there is an increasing number of research areas in which we have accrued sufficient knowledge such that we can start to build knowledge in a cumulative manner by (a) synthesising findings and generalisations made by previous research and interpreting new findings in relations to those, and (b) formulating and testing increasingly specific predictions/hypotheses resulting from (a). This paper outlines what a move towards cumulative knowledge building may look like for the field and offers a case study on grammatical complexity as illustration. In building knowledge in a more systematic way, we can engage more deeply with the claimed generalisable findings from previous research and help move the field’s state-of-the-art forward.