In the 20th century structuralism established itself as the central linguistic theory, in the first half mainly through its originator Ferdinand de Saussure, and in the second half with the figure of Noam Chomsky. The latter consistently refused to acknowledge analysis of extensive quantity of texts as a valuable method, and favoured linguistic intuition of a native speaker instead. In parallel with structuralism other trends in linguistics emerged which pointed to the inadequateness of the prevailing linguistic paradigm and to theoretical insights which were only possible after the systematic analysis of large quantities of texts. The paper discusses some of the dilemmas stemming from this dichotomy and places corpus linguistics in a broader linguistic context.V 20. stoletju se je strukturalizem vzpostavil kot osrednja jezikoslovna teorija, v prvi polovici stoletja predvsem s svojim začetnikom Ferdinandom de Saussurjem, v drugi polovici pa z likom Noama Chomskega. Zadnji je vztrajno zavračal smiselnost analiz obsežnih količin besedil, ki jih je obravnaval kot nezanimive v primerjavi z jezikovno intuicijo naravnega govorca. Vzporedno s strukturalizmom so se množile tudi jezikoslovne smeri, ki so opozarjale na nezadostnost prevladujoče jezikoslovne paradigme in na teoretske uvide, ki jih je omogočila šele sistematična analiza velikih količin besedil. Prispevek obravnava dileme, ki izhajajo iz navedene dihotomije in umešča t. i. korpusno jezikoslovje v širši jezikoslovni kontekst
