Beyond patterns: what is often said in English

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Beyond patterns what is often said in English

• Susan Hunston, University of Birmingham

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What I want to show

• There are sequences of meaning that can be shown
  to occur often in a corpus
• These sequences represent what is often said
• A corpus investigation that identifies what is
  often said is useful
• Among other things, it is useful to learners

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Pattern grammar the grammar of words 1

• V n as n
• The president is likely to appoint a woman as
  secretary of the navy.
• I consider him as a friend.
• He has described reports of deathsas
  speculation.
• The whole story shows him up as a near-criminal.

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Pattern grammar the grammar of words 2

• the N be to-inf
• The aim is to encourage
• The idea was to make
• The answer is to keep
• The trick is to plan ahead
• The plan was to fly
• The challenge is to harness
• The effect was to concentrate

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What matters about patterns 1 frequency

• Patterns occur frequently with the node words.
• We discovered that everything had been carried
  off or destroyed.
• though patterns have a habit of extending
  themselves.
• we have obtained that the biexciton binding
  energy is negative Thanks, David Oakey!

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What matters about patterns 2 dependency

• Compare
• We have failed to agree on anything that is
  important. V on n
• We agreed on Tuesday that this was important. V
  that
• Or
• promoted him to captain V n to n
• promoted loyalty to the king V n N to n

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What matters about patterns 3 meaning
classification

• Compare
• He mistook a neighbour for his wife.
• (exchange, substitute, swap, trade)
• He mistook a neighbour as his wife.
• (appoint, categorise, consider, describe,
  represent)
• Compare
• We obtained a negative reading.
• (get, have, own)
• We obtained that x is negative
• (find, discover, ascertain)

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What matters about patterns 4 accuracy and
fluency

• Errors or creativity?
• She suggested me to write a book.
• They highlight that the results are tentative.
• He emphasised on the need for secrecy.
• Pattern flow - linearity
• Its difficult to know what the evidence is for
  his claim that.... it v-link ADJ to-inf V wh N
  for n N that

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Beyond pattern

• V wh
• Co-occurrence of the pattern with modally
  things
• N that
• Use of the pattern with status nouns
• Co-occurrence of the pattern with causation and
  evaluation

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V wh

• These verbs are to do with
• Asking and telling advise, ask, declare,
  explain, hypothesise, mention, reveal, suggest
• Thinking consider, decide, guess, know, reflect,
  remember, wonder
• Finding out and becoming aware deduce, discover,
  recognise, think, verify

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Example FIND out who/how/whether

• Wordform frequencies
• Find out 3209 85
• Finds out 89 2
• Finding out 263 7
• Found out 221 6
• TOTAL 3782 100

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For comparison

• Base form
• find out 67 find out wh 85
• -s form
• finds out 3 finds out wh 2
• -ing form
• finding out 7 finding out wh 7
• -ed form
• found out 23 found out wh 6

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Find out whohowwhether 1

• What comes before
• To 2114
• And 192
• Will/ll 105
• Can 100
• You 49
• Could 33
• Total pronouns 138
• Total modals 291

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Find out whohowwhether 2

• Less frequent
• They find out who is priority and who is not.
• More frequent
• The only way they can find out how the law is
  being broken is to
• But what about
• To 2114

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To find out who/how/whether 1

• Volition goal
• Other studies are now trying to find out whether
  (also try, tried)
• cos he wanted to find out how to cook chestnuts
  (also want)
• The objective is to find out whether this is a
  serious problem (also job, aim, thing, idea)
• in order to find out how

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To find out who/how/whether 2

• Obligation and necessity
• We have to find out whos in charge. (also need)
• Ability
• We werent even able to find out how our dollar
  was doing
• The only way to find out whether he is or not is
• Futurity
• Were about to find out how good he is.
• Im going to find out who did it

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The lemma again

• Wordform frequencies
• Find out 3209 85
• Finds out 89 2
• Finding out 263 7
• Found out 221 6
• TOTAL 3782 100

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Finding out who/how/whether

• What comes before
• Prepositions (of, in, to, about, by) 119
• Forms of BE 15
• Less common
• He is finding out how difficult it is to find
• More common
• One way of finding out how superconductivity
  works
• Im interested in finding out how the owners
• I get down to finding out how television works

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Modal-like expressions

• Obligation
• have to, need to, is to, be asked to, be up to
  someone to, force someone to, be vital to
• Difficulty
• has yet to, try to, take time to, be difficult
  to
• Ability/right/willingness
• have the chance to, have the right to, be able
  to, agree to

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What is often said 1

• expression of obligation, intention, ability
  etc
• PLUS
• verb indicating discovery or directed mental
  process
• PLUS
• object of enquiry or thought

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Examples

• I don't want to speculate where precisely it
  was (volition)
• annoying remarks which make you wonder about
  your own judgement (causation)
• parents need no longer agonize over every
  mistake (obligation)
• all you can do is to persevere in seeking
  appropriate (possibility)
• he will feel free to turn his attention to
  other things (ability)

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N that

• These nouns are to do with
• Things that are written or spoken admission,
  excuse, information, message, prophecy, report,
  suggestion, threat, warning
• Things that are thought assumption, belief,
  expectation, interpretation, knowledge,
  recognition, supposition, wish

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Evaluating status

• The controversy over whether we are all descended
  from an African Eve a hypothesis based on the
  genetic information DISPUTE
• In 1832 a new anatomical institutewas set on
  fire after the discovery that its staff were
  treating corpses like garbage. CAUSE
• There is an alternative interpretationthe
  position and momentum of the electron are defined
  all along. EXISTENCE

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Status nouns

• are often preceded by this
• To test this hypothesis we need to observe
• are often followed by a that-clause
• This fits with the observation that wild bees
  will probe the same flower
• Evaluate the alignment between the proposition
  and the world.

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What co-occurs with N that? 1

• The idea exists
• There is a view that come to the conclusion
  that be under the impression that
• The idea is evaluated
• We should resist the claim that The discovery
  thathas rekindled fears The notion thatis
  incorrect.
• The idea is the cause
• X is based on the idea that X rests/is founded
  on the notion that

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What co-occurs with N that? 2

• Something else causes the idea
• give the impression that led to the discovery
  that will prompt the suggestion that
• The idea is confirmed / disconfirmed
• The idea thatmay explain why is inconsistent
  with the view that developments have
  strengthened the claim that

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Are all status nouns the same?

• Confirm/disconfirm
• Idea, view, theory, claim
• Cause and effect
• Mainly cause discovery
• Mainly effect impression, claim, conclusion,
  theory, suggest
• Both idea, notion, assumption
• Evaluated
• Rarely conclusion
• Predominantly notions
• Often impression, assumptions

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Examples discovery

• Asteroid hunting has been given new impetus with
  the discovery that there are far more asteroids
  close to the Earth...
• was set on fire after the discovery that its
  staff were treating corpses like garbage.
• Britain may be forced to clean up
  pollutionfollowing the discovery that
  contaminationis much worse

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Examples conclusion

• He soon came to the conclusion that a bomb was
  possible.
• Suppose Tom had arrived at the conclusion that S
  is true.
• The book reaches the conclusion that we are
  meant to be here.
• Science creeps inexorably towards the conclusion
  that humans are nothing but matter

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Examples notion

• The notion that advertising can play a roleis
  abhorrent to some.
• The notion that bacteria might in some way be
  more advanced than us seems absurd.
• There is nothing to support the notion that
  Heisenburg hindered the project
• Their results contradict the notion that the
  death rate rises with age

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What we are doing

• Starting with a pattern
• Looking beyond the pattern to see more
  regularities or phraseologies
• Phraseologies that are about meaning as well as
  form
• And finding what is often said

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What we are not doing

• Finding out what is right and what is wrong
• Describing (only) lexis
• Describing (only) grammar
• Describing (only) discourse

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So is it useful?

• D. Willis 1990 2003
• A pedagogic corpus consists of texts that the
  learner will usefully work with and process for
  meaning.
• The (most frequent) words in the pedagogic corpus
  will form the basis of the learners syllabus.
• The learner will be asked to explore the
  pedagogic corpus to work out regularities in
  expression.
• Or, reinterpreted
• The learner will look in the pedagogic corpus to
  find what is most often said, and how it is said.

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I beg your pardon?

• Find or build a corpus consisting of texts that
  are useful to the learner
• Find a way to present the corpus to the learner
  so that words, phrases and their use are
  encountered gradually
• Devise teaching materials to enable the learner
  to gain mastery of those words, phrases and uses

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Investigating a learner corpus(From Y. Kamakura)

• starting point in
• frequent phrase in English
• often language activity in English
• E.g. study in English, read books in English,
  have a conversation in English
• often difficult/important language activity
  in English
• E.g. It is important for me to study in English
  I find it difficult to read books in English

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Investigating a learner corpus 2

• Starting with a very frequent word
• allows us to build up a phraseology
• that is not fixed
• and that expresses something the writers often
  write about
• and that therefore the next generation of
  learners will need to be able to express.

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Investigating a specialised corpus

• Starting point that
• Often evidence that
• Often existence evidence that
• E.g. there is (no) evidence that found evidence
  that
• Often possess assessed evidence that
• E.g. we have strong/compelling evidence that

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Investigating a specialised corpus 2

• Starting with a frequent word
• allows us to build up a set of frequent
  phraseologies
• that are not fixed
• but that express something that is important to
  the speciality concerned
• and that learners also will need to express

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In short

• There are sequences of meaning that can be shown
  to occur often in a corpus
• These sequences represent what is often said
• A corpus investigation that identifies what is
  often said is useful
• Among other things, it is useful to learners

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The End!