To person interested in linguistic results, the analysis of a particular corpus becomes of interest only if it is virtually identical with the analysis which would be obtained in like manner from any other sufficiently large corpus of material taken in the same dialect. If it is, we can predict the relations among elements in any other corpus of the language on the basis of the relations found in our analyzed corpus. When this is the case, the analyzed corpus can be regarded as a descriptive sample of the language.
- Harris (1951), a pag.13

Although our whole investigation has been in a particular corpus of utterances, we may consider this corpus to be an adequate sample of the language from which the corpus was taken. With this assumption, the methods of descriptive linguistics enable us to say that certain sequences of certain elements occur in the utterances of the language. This does not mean that other sequences of these elements, or other elements, do not occur; they may have occurred without entering into our records, or they may have not yet occurred in any utterance of the language, only to occur the next day. Aside from this, however, we may also be able to say that certain sequences almost never occur; we may know this from direct testing, or from the fact that the sequence goes counter to the most general regularities of our corpus.
- Harris (1951), a pag.372