The co-authors were lucky in being led by a man of such determination vision, eneigy? and fine track record in corpus theory and computational practice. But Biber was lucky in his co-authors, too. There was his Arizona colleague, Susan Conrad, who, in addition to a major contribution to the actual writing, invested much time and energy in the relevant research from the earliest stages of the project. | xxviii SYMBOLS AND NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS 5 Grammatical symbols signals optional elements in formulae and occasionally in examples Elements of clause structure are represented by the following symbols A Ac A As O Od Oi Op p po Ps s V adverbial . circumstance adverbial linking adverbial stance adverbial object direct object indirect object prepositional object predicative object predicative subject predicative subject verb verb phrase V is also sometimes used for verb as a word class Clause structures are represented by a combination of the above symbols . SV SVA SVO Od SVPs subject verb subject verb adverbial subject verb indirect object direct object subject verb subject predicative Phrase types NP noun phrase see VP verb phrase see 6 Other abbreviations or symbols CGEL R. Quirk et al. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language LDOCE Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English LSWE Longman Spoken and Written English Corpus SECTION A Introductory 4 INTRODUCTION A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO ENGLISH GRAMMAR Introduction a corpusbased approach to English grammar Introduction 4 Structure and use in English grammar 6 Varieties of English 15 Representation of varieties in the LSWE Corpus 24 Description of the register categories in the LSWE Corpus 29 Grammatical analysis of the LSWE Corpus 35 Quantitative findings in the grammar 38 Functional interpretation of quantitative findings 41 Overview of the grammar 44 Potential users and uses of the LGSWE 45 See page xiii for contents in detail Introduction Every time that we write or speak we are faced with a myriad of choices not only choices in what we say but in how we say it. The vocabulary and grammar that we use to communicate are influenced by a number of factors such as the reason for the communication the context the people with whom we are communicating and whether we are speaking or writing. Taken together these choices give rise to systematic patterns of
