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AUTHOR "Susan Hunston"

TITLE "Pattern grammar, language teaching, and linguistic variation"

SUBJECT "Studies in Corpus Linguistics, Volume 9"

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Chapter 9

Pattern grammar, language teaching,

and linguistic variation
Applications of a corpus-driven grammar

Susan Hunston
University of Birmingham

1. Word behaviour and variation

This paper is about pattern: an approach to language which maintains the

generalising characteristics of grammatical descriptions while prioritising the
behaviour of individual lexical items. ‘Pattern grammar’ can therefore be
described as a new approach to language description, although it incorporates
and reinterprets some aspects of traditional grammar. As will be argued in this
paper, awareness of pattern is important to language teaching because it can
facilitate the development of both accuracy and fluency. Pattern is also an
important site of investigation with regard to variation, because it represents a
link between lexis, grammar and meaning. Identification of the significant
patterns in a given variety, or register, of English helps to indicate the meanings
that are prevalent in that variety or register. In addition, a single meaning is
often able to be expressed in a number of lexis-pattern combinations, and it is
important to know how variation between those combinations correlates with
variation in register.
Although some traditional grammars pay scant attention to lexis, some
features have long been recognised as restricted to particular lexical items.
These include transitivity and the complementation behaviour of verbs. The
availability of large, electronic corpora allows studies of these behaviours to be
carried out more extensively and in greater detail, and to take account of
variation between registers.
It is well known, for example, that many words, especially verbs and
adjectives, are followed by finite or non-finite clauses i.e. that-clauses, wh-
168 Susan Hunston

clauses, to-infinitive clauses, and ‘-ing’ clauses. There is significant variation in

the distribution of these clauses, between registers and between the verbs and
adjectives that control them (Biber et al 1999: 754–759). For example, verbs
followed by that-clauses are particularly frequent in conversation. The most
frequent verb with this complementation pattern in conversation is think, with
say, know and guess also occurring frequently (ibid: 668). In academic prose, on
the other hand, the ‘verb + that-clause’ combination is less frequent, but ‘adjective
+ to-infinitive clause’ combinations are relatively common, particularly with
adjectives that indicate degrees of certainty, such as certain, liable and (un)likely
(ibid: 754). A few verbs occur with all four kinds of complementation clause,
but most verbs occur with only one or two patterns (ibid.: 755).
Biber et al also consider clauses that complement nouns (1999: 647–656).
They note that noun complementation clauses are rare in conversation, but
more frequent in news reportage and in academic prose. News texts show a high
incidence of to-infinitive complementation clauses, especially chance to, attempt
to, decision to, plan to and bid to. Academic texts include a relatively high
proportion of that-clause noun complementation, especially fact that, possibility
that, doubt that, belief that and assumption that.
Complementation by a finite or non-finite clause, however, is only one of
the behaviours that distinguishes one lexical item from another. Rudanko
(1996), for example, discusses verbs that occur with each of the prepositions in,
to, at, on, with and of followed by an ‘-ing’ clause. Levin (1993) distinguishes
classes of verbs that share aspects of behaviour such as the occurrence of various
participants in the process as subject.
The work to be presented in this paper draws on the lexicographical work
undertaken during the compilation of the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary
(1995), which allowed the behaviour of each lexical item in that dictionary to be
described in some detail. In particular, the tendency of individual verbs, nouns
and adjectives to control certain clause types, or prepositional phrases, was
noted. These behaviours, along with the occurrence of verbs as intransitive (no
object), transitive (followed by an object), or ditransitive (followed by two
objects), are coded in the dictionary as a sequence of items such as ‘verb and
noun group’ (V n), ‘adjective, preposition of and noun group’ (ADJ of n), or
‘noun and that-clause’ (N that). Such sequences are known as patterns. The
concept of ‘pattern’ will be described in the next section. Here it might be noted
that patterns subsume much of what has been described by others as transitivi-
ty, complementation clauses, and prepositional phrases governed by verbs, but
that they are able to indicate the range of behaviours of a given item more
 Pattern grammar, language teaching, and linguistic variation 169

precisely. Two arguments will be presented here: that ‘pattern’ is an important

concept in language teaching, and that the study of pattern variation in differ-
ent registers is both feasible and desirable.

2. Pattern grammar

‘Pattern grammar’, then, is an approach to the grammar of English which

prioritises the behaviour of individual lexical items (see Francis et al 1996;
1997; 1998; Hunston & Francis 1998; 1999). It has its roots in the pioneering
work of Hornby (1954), but takes its theoretical stance from Sinclair’s (1991)
observations that
i. words tend to occur in more-or-less typical phraseologies;
ii. meaning and patterning are connected;
iii. grammar and lexis cannot be treated as distinct phenomena in a
description of English (Hudson 1984: 3–4 makes a similar point).

To this we might add that, when observing raw corpus data, traditional gram-
matical categories (such as ‘direct object’, ‘indirect object’, ‘noun clause’ and
‘extraposed clause’) might be unnecessary or even unhelpful (Hunston &
Francis 1998; 1999).
A pattern is a sequence of grammar words, word types or clause types which
co-occur with a given lexical item. An item may be said to control or ‘have’ a
pattern if the pattern occurs frequently and is dependent on the item in
question. Patterns are observable through concordance lines, though intuition
is also involved in deciding on dependency. Below are sets of concordance lines
for the verb decide, showing the patterns this verb controls.1 (For reasons of
space, only five lines for each pattern are shown: this masks the comparative
frequency of the patterns).
V that
when Bartoli was a free agent, he decided all he had to do was play a
jobs. The letter reads: ‘I have decided it is necessary to draw your
s postwar ‘economic miracle”. MITI decided that the computer industry ha
on World War II until in college I decided that I wanted to become a Mar
with infertility treatment, Lorna ‘decided that it really didn’t matter

V wh
another face, for a while. I must decide if I want my old one, or a nic
pregnancy” not Profet’s list to decide what’s best for her. Willi
are in Minnesota as tourists. They decided what they wanted to do and wh
to sent short messages and Glen decides whether or not he’s going to
A trial is set for December 4 to decide who will get permanent custody
170 Susan Hunston

V wh to-inf
of the issues facing charities when deciding how to utilise their investm
would be. When you’re a teenager, deciding what to do with your life, y
who, before Royan last week, had not decided whether to start Almox Ratina
up to the state attorney general to decide whether to appeal the judge’s
demolished.” The bank must now decide whether to sell the building,

V to-inf
So the churchwardens have decided no longer to pay the quota, a
Register office wedding. People decide to marry at a register office
the parents. <M01> And what did you decide to study? <M02>I-
ovulatory problems). When a couple decides to have a child, it is a decisio
availability of the plants. So he decided to start his own nursery, from

be V-ed
blabbered.’ The itinerary was decided at the highest level. The Hom
cus race in Santa Cruz County that was decided by 25 votes. There were, you
interpreters, the matter may be decided for you by the coupling.
Allende’s election itself was decided in the Chilean congress again
1), 7-5, 6-3. The match will be decided tomorrow,” he said of the dou

it be V-ed that
of the Battle of Britain. So it was decided that the celebrations would be
babes. For some reason, it was decided that the latest from the Mexican
completely done by now, but it was decided that rather than put Brett in da
give up his life so easily. It was decided that the only place to treat him
out from monetary union it has been decided that eight different coins will

To show the range of words that might control one pattern, below are
concordance lines showing some of the adjectives occurring in the pattern it
v-link ADJ that (referred to in Biber et al 1999 as an extraposed that-clause).
(Again for reasons of space, only a maximum of two lines for each adjective are
shown.)
ill Constable Jones, Mr Casey said It is apparent that fate intervened th
orses. Elegance being a key factor, it was appropriate that Joanne
all I can tell you.” From his tone it was clear that Dick Ryle had had
in Mecca to perform the haj. It is clear that the revolution in mas
National Union of Students said that it is crucial that universities give a
only to add the fateful words: ‘But it is essential that we end it in such
e Woodgate Valley Country Park, and it was fitting that two of the city’s
health clinic, or any hospital. It is important that the woman
is sewn up is not so important; but it is important that North Korea should
impossible. At the same time it is inevitable that those at home,
ters to Stick Letters <p> I suppose it was inevitable that this passionate
him to act so out of character? It was ironic that Penelope’s insistence
co-operation, however he said it was likely that Germany would have t
is a lethal muscle wasting disease. It is likely that any child with this
ll enjoyment of this exquisite poem, it is necessary that the reader should
a camera attached and working. It is obvious that the chance of a
which it had been contracted here, it was obvious that that was not what
<M02> And we asked them and it was overwhelming that- the the
portant parts of every relationship. It is possible that your partner’s mil
s a template for building proteins — it is possible that the FraX protein h
exchange transactions in London. It is revealing that the Socialists wh
st past the end of the year. Indeed it was significant that the Jakarta
n euthanasia is a guess at best. It is surprising that, following an
others. <p> Some doctors have said it is suspicious that the pills named
s ever as simple as presented. While it is true that vertical integration
Europe will require a high-wire act. It is true that Malcolm Rifkind, the
 Pattern grammar, language teaching, and linguistic variation 171

et to him, but he couldn’t help it. It was typical that Robyn would have
who said: ‘In a civilised society, it is unacceptable that women are
in this Year of Remembrance. It is unfortunate that the article made
anti-government protests. He said it was unfortunate that a number of
More recent work has suggested that it is unlikely that family boundary
to testify. In retrospect, it is unlikely that a US court would

Below are individual examples of words and their patterns (in each case the
word with the pattern is underlined; in the coding, the symbol for the word
with the pattern is in capitals):
i. Crowds of near hysterical men jostled their way through to try to find news
of their wives and families. V way prep/adv
ii. He instructed family members in nursing techniques. V n in n
iii. Japan’s industrial output increased by 2%. V by amount
iv. The mood in Japan is changing and candidates want to identify themselves
with reform. V pron-refl with n
v. I can be very rude to motorists who hoot at me. V at n
vi. It’s an honour to finally work with her. it v-link N to-inf
vii. He was too high on drugs and alcohol to remember them. ADJ on n
viii. Do they have a chance of beating Australia? N of -ing
ix. We played that record all night long. n ADV
x. …a thinly disguised attack ADV -ed
xi. There’d be no telling how John would react to such news as this. DET n as n
xii. She let the dogs into the house and fed them. v PRON

2.1 The non-randomness of pattern

It appears that the co-occurrence of lexis and pattern is not random, but is
associated particularly with meaning (as noted also by Rudanko 1996). This
association is not, however, predictive. As will be seen below, two words with
similar meanings may not share a pattern (though Hunston and Francis 1999
present some evidence that patterns change over time so that words with similar
meanings become more like each other in this respect). Furthermore, words
that share a pattern rarely all share a single element of meaning. Rather it is the
case that the words sharing a pattern can be grouped so that the members of
each group share an aspect of meaning. In Francis et al (1996; 1997; 1998) the
groups are termed ‘meaning groups’. Below are two examples of patterns and
the meaning groups associated with them: ‘verb followed by into’ and ‘noun
followed by at’.
172 Susan Hunston

V into n (from Francis et al 1997: 122)

1. something becomes something else: change, convert, develop, escalate, evolve,
form, grow, merge, turn
With her care, he grew into a normal, healthy child.
2. something breaks or divides into pieces or groups: break, crumble, divide,
separate, shatter, smash, split
The plane hit the ground and broke into three pieces.
3. one person or thing collides with another: bang, bump, crash, run, slam, smash
The spokesman said both vehicles crashed into a burned-out car.
4. someone enters a place: book, break, check, cram, crowd, dive, move, pack,
pile, push
Then we all crowded into a small restaurant and ordered a meal.
5. someone or something disappears or is not noticeable: blend, fade, fade
away, melt, merge, vanish
Does the new housing stick out like a sore thumb or blend into its surroundings?
6. pressing something or making a hole in something: bite, dig, drill, eat, sink
He bit into the bread and chewed slowly.
7. someone investigates something: dig, inquire, look, probe, research
The team has been researching into the genetic cause of the disease for more
than six years.
8. someone becomes involved in something: break, enter, get, go, plunge, rush,
tumble, venture, walk
I’d like to get into management.
9. someone or something starts being in a different state or starts doing
something: break, burst, burst out, come, descend, dissolve, erupt, fall, fly, get,
lapse, launch, plunge, retreat, sink, slide, slip
She burst into tears.
10. someone puts on different clothes: change, slip
I changed into my suit.
N at n/-ing (from Francis et al 1998: 137–139)
1. emotions and attitudes: amazement, anger, anxiety, awe, bewilderment,
bitterness, concern, delight, despair, disappointment, disbelief, disgust, dismay,
displeasure, distress, embarrassment, exasperation, excitement, frustration,
fury, glee, grief, guilt, horror, joy, jubilation, laughter, outrage, rage, relief,
resentment, revulsion, sadness, satisfaction, shame, shock, surprise, terror, thrill
Large crowds later took to the streets to express their anger at yesterday’s killings.
 Pattern grammar, language teaching, and linguistic variation 173

2. attempts to do or get something: attempt, bash, chance, crack, effort, go, shot,
stab, tilt, try
Mr Downer said that he may one day get another chance at the leadership.
3. looking at someone or something, physically or metaphorically: glance,
glimpse, look, peek, smile
The island is bigger than a first glance at the map indicates.
4. someone is good or experienced at a particular activity: dab hand, expert,
genius, master, novice, old hand, past master, whizz, wizard
Dickens was a genius at creating characters of great depth and this film is
peppered with them.
5. critical comments: dig, protest, side-swipe
It’s a none-too-subtle dig at the officials of the Brisbane and Canberra clubs.

3. Applications to language teaching

In considering the applications of pattern to language teaching, four topics will

be discussed briefly: accuracy, fluency, the place of patterns in language
pedagogy, and the issue of consciousness-raising.

3.1 Accuracy
Patterns are important to language production in terms of both accuracy and
fluency. Even advanced learners tend to have imperfect control over patterns;
in fact, in the case of very advanced learners, pattern use is perhaps the greatest
source of a sense of non-idiomaticity in English. Below are some examples, with
the kind of advice the teacher might offer, based on the association of pattern
and meaning.
Teachers … discourage students to try to use the target language to express their
own ideas.
The verb discourage is not used with this pattern (though its opposite encourage
is). The correct pattern is ‘verb + noun + from + -ing’, so the phrase should read
discourage students from trying…. The teacher could point out that discourage is
similar in meaning to stop and prevent, which have the same pattern.
Criminals will find it difficult to evade from being arrested.
174 Susan Hunston

The verb evade is not used with this pattern (though escape is). The most likely
alternative is evade arrest (with the pattern ‘verb + noun’). The pattern ‘verb +
-ing’ is also possible (evade being arrested) but is much less frequent. The better-
known verb avoid also has these two patterns.
Not all undergraduates are given the privilege to stay in university accommodation.
The noun privilege is rarely used with this pattern (though the pattern ‘it + link
verb + noun + to infinitive’, as in It’s a privilege to meet you, is common). Much
more frequently found is the pattern ‘noun + of + -ing’ (the privilege of staying).
The nouns advantage, benefit, distinction, gift, honour, luxury and pleasure are
also used with this pattern.

Teachers have the objective to help learners acquire natural English.

Again, the noun objective does not have this pattern. It does have the pattern ‘noun
+ of + -ing’ (the objective of helping), along with aim, function, purpose and role.
Along with accuracy, however, goes creativity, and it would be contentious
to suggest that a pattern not typically used by native speakers is necessarily
infelicitous. Different geographical varieties of English have in some cases
different pattern-word combinations. For example, in standard Singapore
English the verb forget has the pattern ‘verb + noun + prepositional
phrase/adverb’, as in She forgot her books at home. In British English, forget does
not have this pattern, though many other verbs, such as leave, do. Intuition is
sometimes a poor guide to what can be attested to occur. For example, a teacher
coming across the sentence She mistook him as her brother might object that the
verb mistake does not have the pattern ‘verb + noun + as + noun’ and that the
sentence is therefore in error. In terms of meaning, however, this pattern does
fit well with the verb (by analogy with She wrongly identified him as her brother),
and indeed the Bank of English corpus contains seven examples of this pattern
with mistake.2 This suggests that the usage is rare rather than wrong.

3.2 Fluency
Control over patterns can be said to aid fluency as well as accuracy. This is
because if a word with its pattern has been learnt the learner can produce, not
just one word, but a series of words, a phrase, together. A single mental effort
produces a whole string of language. For example, here is a native speaker of
English talking about his addiction to cigarettes:
 Pattern grammar, language teaching, and linguistic variation 175

My nan sometimes says to me that I get really moody when I don’t have a cigarette
and I keep snapping at her she says but I try not to do it but I just keep doing it
and then she gives me a cigarette.

Each of the verbs in this short extract has a pattern, which translates into a
recognisable phrase:
say V to n that says to me that
get V adj get really moody
have Vn don’t have a cigarette
keep V — ing keep snapping; keep doing
snap V at n snapping at her
try V to-inf try not to do
do Vn do it; doing it
give Vnn gives me a cigarette

Together, these phrases, which are not fixed lexically but are not random
either, make up a large proportion of the utterance. The speaker has produced a
novel utterance by putting together patterns belonging to the individual words
that are used. So, although a learner may never have heard or said keep snapping
at her before, it can be produced without hesitation by putting together the
pattern of keep (keep snapping) with the pattern of snap (snapping at her).
One way of interpreting fluency is as what has been called ‘pattern flow’.
When a word that is part of a pattern has a pattern of its own, the result is flow
from one pattern to the other. It is possible to show this diagrammatically, as in
the example below.

I tend to think that it’d be wrong to arm the police because…

V….to..inf
V….. that
it…be..ADJ……to-inf
V……..….n

In this example, the lexical items tend, think, wrong and arm demonstrate a
typical behaviour. This gives the sequence I tend to think that it’d be wrong a sense
of naturalness and familiarity, such as might be associated with a fixed phrase that
is chosen by the speaker as a single item, rather than being constructed from the
raw materials of lexis and grammar. Yet the sequence is not frequently met (there
are no instances in the Bank of English corpus). It is not a single choice but
might be seen as a series of choices, each arising from the one before.
176 Susan Hunston

3.3 Patterns and Pedagogy

One important question is how an approach to lexis and grammar as pattern
relates to current models of language teaching. It seems clear that patterns fit
most closely with views of language that prioritise lexis — what is sometimes
called the lexical approach (Willis 1990; Lewis 1993). If a syllabus is composed
of lexical items instead of structures or notions, patterns will be what is taught
about a word, because knowing a word means, among other things, knowing
the patterns a word has.
The next question to be addressed is what teaching method is most appro-
priate to patterns. It is probably obvious that no one could set out to teach one
pattern per lesson (though some patterns, such as V to-inf and V -ing have been
part of the teaching repertoire for years). In fact, patterns sit uncomfortably
with what has been called the PPP model of teaching. They accord much better
with task-based learning, as discussed by Long and Crooks (1992) and by Willis
and Willis (1996), among others. In Willis and Willis’s approach, students
perform a task which leads into a period of language focus, in which awareness
is raised of aspects of the language used, such as tense use, pronouns,
phraseology and so on. Patterns are ideally suited to this awareness-raising
approach. The next section gives some examples of exercises based on patterns.
The point of these exercises is partly to raise awareness of the individual
patterns in focus, but a more general purpose is to make the learner aware that
patterns, in general, are important, so that the learner can notice patterns
wherever they are met, not only when the teacher draws attention to them.

3.4 Consciousness-raising
Exercises designed to raise learners’ awareness of pattern can involve pieces of
language taken out of context. Such exercises have the benefit of traditional
parsing exercises in that they encourage learners to identify the parts that make
up a sentence, but because they require recognition of surface features only
they make far fewer demands in terms of metalanguage. They also direct
attention to specific items such as individual prepositions as well as to general
categories such as ‘noun’. Here is one such exercise, with the instructions to
learners given first:
Here are two sets of sentences. Each sentence from the first set matches one from the second
set in that the word in bold has the same pattern. Match up the two sets. (For example,
sentence 1c matches 2a because in both the verb is followed by of and a noun — died of a
heart attack and complained of a headache.)
 Pattern grammar, language teaching, and linguistic variation 177

(1) a. They’ve just banned bikes from the city

b. He’s much more familiar with those kinds of issues than I am.
c. She died of a heart attack.
d. So you didn’t come to a conclusion as to how many different sentences
there were.
e. I felt perhaps they would you know give more attention to the girls.
(2) a. She complained of a headache.
b. Let me just introduce you to the gentleman sitting behind you.
c. My mum’s never hidden anything from me.
d. Please give him some advice as to what to do.
e. Presumably the bank was also happy with the budget.

Alternatively, an exercise might be set in the context of another language task.

The next example is based on a reading text used by Willis and Willis (1996)
and quoted here. It is possible to create various exercises based on this text.
Below are suggestions for ways of drawing attention to just one pattern — ‘verb
+ noun + past participle’ (V n — ed), used with the verb LEAVE. The exercises
begin with examples from the reading text and then introduce other material
taken from the Bank of English corpus.
Auto-pilot
The flight ran several times a week taking holiday-makers to various resorts in the
Mediterranean. On each flight, to reassure the passengers all was well, the captain
would put the jet on to auto-pilot and he and all the crew would come aft into the
cabin to greet the passengers.
Unfortunately on this particular flight the security door between the cabin and the
flight deck jammed and left the captain and the crew stuck in the cabin. From that
moment, in spite of efforts to open the door, the fate of the passengers and crew was
sealed.
Look at the underlined phrase left the captain and the crew stuck in the cabin. We can divide
it up as in the table:
Now divide up these sentences and add them to the table:
a. The masked men left her bound and gagged.
b. A serious operation left her confined to a wheelchair.
c. A childhood illness has left her crippled.
d. The war left 300,000 homes destroyed.
e. The bitter winds left many fishermen frozen to their seats.
f. An earthquake killed around 170 people and left thousands deprived of shelter.

Look at what you have written in Column 1. What kind of things do these words describe?
Look at what you have written in Column 4. What kind of things do these words describe?
178 Susan Hunston

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4

The security door left the captain and the crew stuck in the cabin.

4. Applications to the study of variation

The work on identifying patterns to date has been done manually,3 most of it
by lexicographers compiling the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995).
The patterns of around 20,000 words are given in that dictionary and/or in the
two major volumes of the ‘pattern grammar’ series. Now that this ground-
word has been done, it is a tractable problem to automate the identification of
patterns in running text. That is, a program can be written which, on
encountering a word, can check what patterns that word may have, and thus
can identify the elements of the pattern in the text (Mason and Hunston 2001).
There are various possible applications of this. Firstly, and most obviously, the
comparative frequency of patterns with individual lexical items can be
calculated. This would extend the work done in Biber et al (1998) which
compares, for example, the frequency of begin followed by a to-infinitive and
followed by an ‘-ing’ clause. Secondly, the relative frequency of different
patterns in various registers can be calculated. This would extend the work
described in Biber et al (1999) on complementation clauses, allowing a more
complete picture of verb, noun and adjective behaviour to emerge.
Finally, the connection between pattern and meaning opens the possibility
of quantifying ways of expressing meanings in different registers via the
concept of ‘local grammar’ (Barnbrook and Sinclair 1995; Hunston and
Sinclair 2000). A local grammar is a grammar that seeks to account for, not the
whole of a language, but one meaning only. One example is a grammar of
definitions (Barnbrook and Sinclair 1995), another is a grammar of evaluation
 Pattern grammar, language teaching, and linguistic variation 179

(Hunston and Sinclair 2000). A grammar currently being written is that for
‘cause and effect’ (Allen 1999). Below are some examples of analysed expres-
sions of cause and effect. In each case, a sentence expressing causality is parsed
into semantic elements (‘cause’, ‘effect’ and ‘observer’). The parsing can be
done because a pattern is recognized along with one of a number of verbs or
nouns which use that pattern to express causality. In the first example, for
instance, identification of the verb lead with the pattern ‘noun1 + verb + noun2
+ to-infinitive’ is followed by a mapping of the meaning elements on to the
pattern (where ‘noun1’ = ‘cause’; ‘noun2 + to-infinitive’ = ‘effect’), allowing
the analysis to be made.

Personal problems at home led her to misbehave at school.

Personal problems at home = CAUSE
Her … misbehave at school = EFFECT
IDENTIFYING PATTERN = noun…led…noun….to-inf
POSSIBLE VERBS: cause; compel; drive; force; impel; induce; lead; push; tempt

The libel case arose from John Pilger’s film ‘Cambodia’.

The libel case = EFFECT
John Pilger’s film ‘Cambodia’ = CAUSE
IDENTIFYING PATTERN = noun…arose from…noun
POSSIBLE VERBS: come; follow; result; stem

Drugs are certainly the cause of much crime but a large part of this is because of
their illegality.
Drugs = CAUSE
Much crime = EFFECT
IDENTIFYING PATTERN = noun…be…the cause of…noun
POSSIBLE NOUNS: agent; benefit; cause; consequence; effect; fruits; generator;
implications; legacy; outcome; product; result; root; secret; source

The effect of radiation is to shift the transition from ductile to brittle behaviour
to a higher temperature.
Radiation = CAUSE
Shift the transition…to a higher temperature = EFFECT
IDENTIFYING PATTERN = the effect of…noun…be…to-inf
POSSIBLE NOUNS: effect; result
180 Susan Hunston

The final exam determines whether you can sit for university entrance or not.
The final exam = CAUSE
Whether you can sit for university entrance or not = EFFECT
IDENTIFYING PATTERN = determine … wh
POSSIBLE VERBS: decide, determine, define, dictate, influence

Kelly attributes her coping ability to growing up in a big family.

Kelly = OBSERVER / SOURCE
Her coping ability = EFFECT
Growing up in a big family = CAUSE
IDENTIFYING PATTERN = noun….attribute…noun…to…noun/-ing
clause
POSSIBLE VERBS: ascribe; assign; attach; attribute; credit; impute; put down

Once a complete grammar of cause and effect is available, all instances can be
identified in a large corpus, and the frequency of instances in different registers
can be calculated.
An example may be given from a less complex meaning-type than cause and
effect (less complex in terms of the range of patterns used): the meaning
‘abstain from an action’ (see Francis et al 1996: 619–620). Typical realisations of
this meaning include:
‘verb + -ing’, with verbs such as avoid and (not) bother, as in avoided doing
the washing-up;
‘verb + to-infinitive’, with verbs such as (not) bother, fail, forget and refuse,
as in failed to do the washing-up;
‘verb + about + -ing’, with verbs such as forget and (not) bother, as in forgot
about doing the washing-up;
‘verb + from + noun or -ing’, with verbs such as abstain, desist, flinch,
recoil, refrain and shrink, as in refrained from house-work/doing the washing-
up;
‘verb + out of + noun or -ing’, with verbs such as drop, get and opt, as in
opted out of doing the washing-up.

Two corpora — a corpus of British spontaneous spoken English and a corpus

of issues of the Guardian newspaper — have been compared with respect to the
occurrence of each of these patterns with all their verbs (not just the ones listed
above) with this meaning. The results suggest that:
i. This meaning is expressed through these verbs and their patterns more
frequently in the Guardian than in spoken English. In the Guardian
 Pattern grammar, language teaching, and linguistic variation 181

corpus there are 436.4 instances per million words, taking all the
patterns together. The comparable figure for the spoken corpus is 85.
ii. Overall, the patterns with prepositions are less frequent than those with
non-finite clauses. The total frequency per million words over both
corpora is 135.4 for patterns with prepositions and 386 for patterns
with clauses. In both corpora, the patterns with a to-infinitive are more
frequent than any other group.
iii. The patterns with prepositions are especially infrequent in spoken
English. For example, the verbs with from occur a total of only 3.7 times
per million words. Many of the target verbs are not found in those
patterns at all in the spoken corpus. An exception to this general rule is
the expression GET out of, which occurs 34.3 times per million words
in the spoken corpus. In the Guardian corpus, most of the verb-pattern
combinations are found. Some of them are infrequent, but the relative-
ly large number of verbs pushes up the overall frequency. The verbs
with from, for example, occur a total of 36.4 times per million words.
iv. These verb-pattern combinations are much more frequent in the
Guardian than in the spoken corpus: ‘avoid + -ing’; ‘decline + to-
infinitive’; ‘fail + to-infinitive’; ‘refuse + to-infinitive’; ‘refrain + from +
n/ing’; ‘opt + out of + n/ing’.
v. These verb-pattern combinations are much more frequent in the spoken
corpus than in the Guardian corpus: ‘(not) bother + -ing’; ‘forget + to-
infinitive’; ‘(not) bother + about + n/ing’; ‘get + out of + n/ing’.

5. Conclusion

Pattern grammar is an approach to the description of English which prioritises

the behaviour of individual lexical items as observed in an un-parsed corpus,
and which consequently owes little to pre-corpus theories of grammar. Patterns
are an important aspect of language for learners, particularly in the context of
a lexical syllabus and of a consciousness-raising approach to grammar teaching.
Patterns are a significant aspect of the study of variation. Examples have
been given in this paper of pattern differences between regional varieties and
registers. More significantly, patterns are an essential component of Local
Grammars, and can be used to quantify the occurrence and expression of
particular meanings in different registers.
182 Susan Hunston

Notes

1. Concordance lines and examples are taken from the Bank of English corpus, currently
standing at over 400 million words, and jointly owned by HarperCollins publishers and the
University of Birmingham.
2. All examples appear to be from native speakers. Three examples occur in Australian
newspapers, suggesting a possibility that the pattern may stem from a regional variety. The
other examples come from books published in Britain (1), books published in the US (1),
and a British tabloid newspaper (1).
3. ‘Manually’ here means that the researchers examined the concordance lines and collo-
cational information for each word in turn, or for each pattern in turn. To this extent the
search was computer-assisted, but was not automatic.

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