Introduction

A discourse perspective on grammar

Longman Student Grammar of
Spoken and Written English
Biber; Conrad; Leech (2009, p.1-11)

Introduction to the concept of corpusbased grammar

Systematic patterns of choice in the use of

English grammar.
Language for the purposes of
communication: real use of language;
choices used to create discourse in different
situations.
Grammar based on a large, balanced corpus
(collection stored on computer) of spoken
and written text:

Real examples
Coverage of language variation
Interpretation of frequency: context and discourse
Lexico-grammatical patterns

Language variation

Register

Dialects

Mode: written versus spoken

Main communicative purpose: personal
communication; pleasure reading or information
purpose
According to the identity of the speaker/writer:
geographic area, gender, socioeconomic class...

Standard and Vernacular English

Variation in standard English

Prescriptive v. descriptive grammars

Standard and non-standard English

Standard English is not a single, uniform

variety, and it is not always obvious
whether a form should be considered
standard or not. Standard English can be
defined descriptively as follows: in writing,
standard forms are used generally across
published sources; in speech, standard
forms are shared widely across dialects.
Thus, any form that is restricted to a single
dialect would be considered non-standard.
In contrast, many forms are used widely in
conversation but are inappropriate in
formal written texts; we would call these
standard spoken forms.

Lets analyse the underlined structures

A: My brother is never
gonna move out of my
parents house.
B: How old is he?
A: Twenty-five.
B: Oh, if youre not moved
out by twenty-five, you
know, I dont know.
A: He would die if he
moved out of my fathers
house so, he would.
B: See I would die if I lived
at my house.
A: So would I.
C: Me too.

There was a couple of

policemen down there...

The Longman Spoken and Written

English Corpus

Overal composition of the LSWE Corpus

Approximate numbers of speakers in the
BrE and AmE conversation supcorpora by
gender
Distribution of fiction texts across national
varieties
Breakdown of the British and American
new subcorpora by topic
Breakdown of the academic prose
subcorpus

Overview of the book

Chapters 2-3: Key concepts and

categories in English grammar
Chapters 4-7: A close look at the
major phrase types
Chapter 8: Clause grammar
Chapter 9-12: Building on the clause
Chapter 13: The grammar of
conversation

Quiz: Identify each of the following

statements as either true or false.

The SGSWE describes the grammatical preferences of

speakers and writers, so it includes information about
the frequency of grammatical choices.
A descriptive grammar presents rules about correct
and incorrect stylistic choices.
A prescriptive grammar describes the grammatical
patterns that speakers and writers follow when they
use the language, regardless of whether the patterns
conform to standard English that is presented in
usage handbooks.
A corpus is a collection of written texts that is on a
computer.
One of the advantages of a corpus-based grammar,
such as SGSWE, is that it can describe how speakers
and writers vary their grammatical choices for
different communicative purposes.

Quiz: Identify each of the following

statements as either true or false.

Another advantage of a corpus-based grammar is that it

can reveal associations between grammatical structures
and vocabulary (i.e. lexico-grammatical patterns).
A register is a variety of language that is associated with
speakers who share certain characteristics, such as
gender, socio-economic class, or geographic region.
A dialect is a variety of language that is associated with
certain characteristics of a communicative setting, such
as the purpose of communication, the amount of time
for planning, and the mode (e.g. spoken v. written).
Different registers often have different frequencies for
the use of certain grammatical structures.
Standard English is one unvarying form of English that
is always easy to identify.
There is a group of experts that officially decides
whether or not a grammatical form is standard English.