Grammar of Spoken and Written English (D.Biber&S.Johansson&G.Leech&S.Conrad&E.Finegan).pdf

(61597 KB) Pobierz
GRAMMAR
OF
SPOKEN
AND
WRITTEN
ENGLISH
LONGMAN
GRAMMAR
OF
SPOKEN
AND
WRITTEN
ENGLISH
Douglas Biber
S
tig
Johansson
Ceof key Leech
Susan Conrad
Edward Finegan
FOREWORD BY
Randolph
Quirk
Perrson Education Limited
Edinburgh
Gale
Hd10w
Essex
CM20
2JE
Engiimd
and
Associated Companies throughout the WorM
Visit our website: http:/~.longman.com
0
Pcarson Education Limited, 1999
All rights reserved; nopart of this publzcation may
be
reproduced,stored
in
a
retrievalsy~tem, transmitted in
any
form or
by
any
means, electronic,
or
mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise,without
the
prior written
permission of the Publishers.
First published 1999
Sixth impression 2007
Words that the editors have reason to believe
constitute
bademarks
have
been
described
as such. However, neither the presence nor the absence of such a
description should
be
regarded as affectingthe legal
stam
of any
trademark.
ISBN 978-0-582-23725-4
aa
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
D t
Loneman
grammar
of spoken and writlcn English I Douglas Biber
. . .
[et al.];
foreword
by
Randolph
Quirk.
p.
cm.
Inchdm bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-237254 (hardcover)
I. Biber, Douglas.
1. English ln ug.
aga-
PEL 112.I.66 1999
428.2--dc2 1
99-29033
CIP
Douglas Biber and his numerous colleagues are to be congratulated on a book so replete
with interesting and innovative features, not least by way of frequency data. For anyone
planning corpus-based grammatical study, of any language on earth, the
LGSWE
will
rapidly establish itself as indispensable.
And
since any such study must inevitably involve
collaborative teamwork, some examination of Biber's management skills
in
organizing
this huge enterprise
will
not come amiss either, given the size and diversity of the
American and British corpora analysed and the need to coordinate the activity at centres
many thousands of kilometres apart.
The co-authors were lucky
in
being led by a man of such determination, vision,
energy, 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. There was also, far away in
Scandinavia, the highly experienced grammarian, Stig Johansson, who played a key role
in the research, planning, and writing. And Biber was especially lucky in having as his
partner in the massive task, both of general design and of implementing detailed
insights, a scholar of Geoffrey Leech's stature in the fields of semantics, pragmatics,
grammatology, and computational linguistics.
Randolph
Quirk
University College London
March
1999
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A
catalogue record for this book
is
available fiom
the British Library.
Designed by First Edition, London
Set
in
Minion and Helvetica by
MFK
Mendip,
Frome, Somerset
Printed in China
SWTC/06
ACAD
AmE
A
A,
Al
A,
BrE
CGEL
CONV
FICT
LDOCE
LSWE Corpus
NEWS
0
Od
Oi
0,
P
Po
ps
S
v.
v
<...>
<->
<sic>
( )
academic prose
American English
adverbial
circumstance adverbial
linking adverbial
stance adverbial
British English
R.
Quirk et al.,
A
Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language
conversation
fiction writing
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Longman Spoken and Written English Corpus
news writing
object
direct object
indirect object
prepositional object
predicative
object predicative
subject predicative
subject
versus
(i.e.
contrasted with)
verb (phrase)
parentheses
(
)
enclose an optional part of
an
example or a formula
an omitted section of
a
corpus example
the location of ellipsis (in an example)
(in
an
example) confirmation that the example is accurately
reproduced:
e.g.
Dicken's
<sic>
famous novel
an editorial comment on an example: e.g. <unclear>
brackets
[ I
in an example enclose either:
(a) a grammatically defined constituent, such as a phrase or a clause,
or
(b) a part of an example highhghted for attention. Primary
highlighting is signalled by
bold
face
and secondary highlighting
by
[ I .
in transcribed speech, a dash at the end of a word signals that it is
incomplete, i.e. is a word fragment: e.g.
thi-, this
in transcribed speech, a dash signals a pause
unacceptable: e.g.
*They needed not leave.
marginally acceptable: e.g.
?a most promising pupil of hers
on the boundary of unacceptability: e.g.
?*excuse me a little
truncated example
Since its planning first began in
1992,
this book has gone through a complex process of
gestation involving many kinds of collaborative work-computational, editorial, and
authorial. The research-based work required for this project has been on a scale probably
unmatched in the writing of any previous grammar of the Enghsh language. As authors,
we ourselves have individually played somewhat varied roles in the research project and
the writing of the book. Further, we were aided from the start by the dedicated efforts of
several research assistants, and at various points along the way helped by the expertise of
academic reviewers and advisers,
as
well as editors and publishers. In this Preface we
briefly explain our own individual roles in the work, and pay tribute to the many friends
and associates to whom we owe a great deal for their valued aid and support.
As for our contributions as authors, it should be explained that, although each
author took on individual responsibility for the initial drafting of specific chapters, the
chapter drafts subsequently went through a number of stages of redrafting and editing.
The result is that the volume as it stands is the joint responsibility of
all
authors. For the
record, however, we identify here the author or authors principally associated with each
chapter: Chapter
1:
DB; Chapters
2,
3,
and
4:
SJ; Chapters
5
and
6:
DB; Chapter
7:
EF
(first draft),
DB,
and SC; Chapters
8
and
9:
DB; Chapter
10:
SC; Chapter
11:
SJ; Chapters
12
and
13:
DB; Chapter 14: EF (first draft), GL; Appendix: DB. In later stages, GL and
DB
assumed primary editorial responsibility for the whole book, while
DB
worked with
Meg Davies on the conceptual index and with Jenia Walter and Victoria Clark on the
lexical index
The initial three or four years of the project were largely taken up with planning and
research. AuthoriaUeditorial meetings took place at Cambridge, London, Feusisberg
(Switzerland), Flagstaff (Arizona), and Lancaster. DB, as lead author, took on the
principal role of organizing and directing the corpus investigations at Northern Arizona
University, Flagstaff, on which most of the quantitative information in this grammar is
based. At the same time, other authors had access to the LSWE Corpus at their own
universities, and were able to undertake their own corpus-based research at their home
site. Although the authors were widely separated in geographical terms, they kept in
close and detailed contact throughout the project by electronic mail and other means.
The work of the international team was thus well balanced and integrated in terms of the
spread of effort between North America and Europe.
One curious minor dilemma which the team faced, in trying to produce a book
giving equal weight to American and British Enghsh, was in the choice of spelling
standard: should we adopt British or American spelling conventions? Either choice
would appear to contravene the ideal of an objectively international view of the English
language. In the end we resorted to a chapter-by-chapter solution to this dilemma: each
chapter was printed
in
accordance with the spelling conventions adopted by its main
author or authors.
At Northern Arizona University, in addition to the growing contribution of Susan
Conrad (who began
as
a research assistant but became a co-author during the course of
the book's composition), very important contributions to the research project were
made by Marie Helt and Erika Konrad, who became key members of the Arizona project
team. In addition, Marie's PhD research on discourse markers provided a significant
intellectual input to Chapter
14.
Other contributions were made by Susan Carkin, Sarah
viii
PREFACE
Rilling, Jennifer Rey, and Jena Burges. Also at NAU, Jenia Walter and Victoria Clark
helped with the compilation of the lexical index.
At an early stage in the preparation of the book, the authors benefited from the
comments of distinguished academics who reviewed the plan, and read one or two 'trial'
chapters: Florent Aarts, Paul Bruthiaux, Paul
J.
Hopper, Yoshihiko Ikegami, Graeme
Kennedy, Christian Mair, Keith Mitchell, Randolph Quirk (Lord Quirk), Jan Svartvik,
and Michael Stubbs. We also received valuable comments from Bengt Altenberg and
Gunnel Tottie, who read draft versions of individual chapters. (Bengt's online
ICAME
Bibliography also provided
us
with an extremely useful starting point for our own
Bibliography.) At a later stage, pre-final draft chapters were presented to the Longman
Linglex Advisory Committee, where again a strong impetus to improve the book's
content and presentation was provided by valuable and (often) trenchant critiques kom
a group of leading British linguists, under the chairmanship of Lord Quirk: Rod Bolitho,
Gillian Brown, David Crystal, Philip Scholfield, Katie Wales, John Wells, and Yorick
Wilks. Alan Tonkyn offered useful advice and information on C-units (Chapter
14).
Our indebtedness to Lord Quirk goes further: we acknowledge our debt to
A
Comprehensive Grammar of the
English
Language,
by Randolph Quirk, Sidney
Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik (Longman,
1985),
as
a previous large-
scale grammar of English from which we have taken inspiration for a project of similar
scope. From
CGEL
we have also borrowed, with few exceptions, the grammatical
framework of concepts and terminology which has provided the present book with its
descriptive apparatus. While advances in corpus technology have allowed us to go
beyond
CGEL
in important ways-particularly in the exemplification and quantitative
investigation of grammar across different language varieties, spoken and written-
CGEL's
attention to detail and comprehensive coverage
is
something to which this
grammar does not attempt to aspire. In many ways, the two grammars complement
rather than compete with each other.
To one member of the Linglex advisory committee we owe a special debt-Philip
Scholfield, who, when the book was being assembled for publication, went through it
with a fine-tooth comb in his capacity as editor for style and presentation. This reference
to 'style and presentation' does not adequately represent Philip's contribution, which led
to much redrafting in the interests
of
consistency of style, terminology, layout, and level
of detail. We also owe a special debt to Meg Davies for assuming primary responsibility
for the conceptual index and compiling the index under very strict time constraints.
Finally we take the opportunity of this Preface to pay tribute to members of the
Longman staff and editorial team who have steered this project from its inception to the
final stages of publication. Sheila Dallas, although she came late to the project, played a
crucial role in seeing the book from final draft stage through several proofs into print:
she dedicated herself to the success of the project, working beyond the
call
of duty to get
chapters edited to strict deadlines. Adam Gadsby, the publisher in charge of this book
project from beginning to end, was a dependable and supportive colleague, motivating
us through thick and thin in the progress of the book. He not only kept us on track
organizationally, but also contributed a great deal to the conceptual development of the
grammar. Last but far from least, we express our gratitude to Della Summers, the
Director of Longman Dictionaries, as prime mover of
this
project who, at a time when
the idea was as strange to us
as
to the rest of the world, inspired us to plan a truly
corpus-based grammar, and persuaded us to turn that vision into
a
reality.
F
Contents
summary
Foreword
Abbreviations and symbols
Preface
Contents in detail
Symbols and notational conventions
Introductory
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
v
vi
vii
xiii
xxvi
Introduction: a corpus-based approach to English grammar
Introduction
Structure and use in English grammar
Varieties of English
Representation of varieties in the LSWE Corpus
Description of the register categories in the LSWE Corpus
Grammatical analysis of the LSWE Corpus
Quantitative findings in the grammar
Functional interpretation of quantitative findings
1.9
Overview of the grammar
1.10
Potential users and uses of the
LGSWE
Basic grammar: description and distribution
Word and phrase grammar
2.1
The nature of grammat~calunlts
2.2
Words and t h e ~ r
character~stlcs
2.3
Survey of lexical words
2.4
Survey of function words
2.5
Survey of Inserts
2.6
Phrases and thelr character~stlcs
2.7
Types of phrase
2.8
Embedding of phrases
2.9
Coordinat~on phrases
of
2.10
Slmple v. complex phrases
2
3
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
3.8
3.9
3.10
3.11
3.12
3.13
3.14
3.15
Clause grammar
Clause v. non-clausal materlal
Major clause elements
Clause links
Peripheral elements
Major clause patterns
Varlatlons on clause patterns
Ellips~s
Negation
Subject-verb concord
~ i p e of dependent clauses
s
Fln~te
dependent clauses
Non-finite clauses
Major types of Independent clauses
Unembedded dependent clauses
Non-clausal rnaterlal

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin