A text corpus is a large and structured set of texts used for linguistic research and analysis. It can include written documents, spoken language transcripts, or any other form of text. Researchers use corpora to study language patterns, vocabulary usage, and grammatical structures, helping to understand how language functions in different contexts. Corpora can be specialized, focusing on specific genres like literature, news articles, or scientific papers, or they can be general, encompassing a wide range of texts. They are essential tools in fields like computational linguistics and natural language processing, aiding in the development of language models and translation systems.