Searching for patterns

As we have seen, POS queries are not limited to specifying a word’s POS. This allows you to search for a word or lemma in conjunction with a POS. The following sections are designed to illustrate how you can obtain results that illustrate a word’s patterns using different queries

Take AIM as an example.

Follow these searches through and check your finds against these observations.

aim+NOUN	aim as common noun, proper noun and verb
aim/VERB	as a verb, aim most frequently appears with prepositions.
aim/VERB+NOUN	the base form aim is not frequently used
aim@/VERB+NOUN	this search shows more examples of aiming at something
aim@/VERB+DT+NOUN	since noun phrases typically start with a determiner, this search yields the most results of aim’s objects
aim@/VERB+1NOUN	this shows the random selection of things that can appear between the lemma aim and a noun.
aim@/VERB+1DT+NOUN	a combination of the two searches above.
aim@/VERB+IN+DT+NOUN	this shows prepositional phrases that follow aim
	we saw in the above step that at and for were the most frequent. Towards, in and of occurred only once each. Are they so insignificant, or is that a result of the random selection or tagging errors?
aim@/VERB+of aim@/NOUN+of	A tagging error. When aim is followed by of, it is a noun
aim@/NOUN+of	What are the structures here? 1. One structure is of with an –ing form. 2. The aim of X + to be (without to) + infinitive (with to).
aim@/NOUN+of+VBG	For more examples of 1.
aim@/NOUN+of+2NOUN+be@+to.	For more examples of 2.
NOUN+of+2NOUN+be@+to	Try this search and see if this structure is unique to aim.
aim@/VERB+to	When do we say aim to? When to is part of the infinitive. So now we have observed that aim is also followed by the infinitive with to.
aim@/VERB+to+DT+NOUN	Does to launch prepositional phrases?
aim@/VERB+in	In the examples found here, in is not bound to aim, rather it launches a prepositional phrase.
aim@/VERB+towards	Four finds is not many. Is there another way of expressing that concept?
aim@/VERB+for	Do aim for and aim towards express the same thing? Have a look at the for list and consider where towards could be substituted without changing the basic meaning. Unlikely!
take@+aim	this delexical form seems to be restricted to the target sense of aim.

Grammar patterns

In English, perfect and continuous aspects, the passive, causative and conditionals are formed by auxiliaries in contrast to many languages where they are formed with suffixes. Auxiliaries are words, and this is what concordancers work with best.

What structures will the following queries exemplify?

have\|has+been+VBG
had+been+VBG
have@+be@+VBD
have@+PPO+VBD
get@+VBN
have@+PPS+ever+VBN
if+1had+VBD+6would
if+PPS+4will

Active voice: how active?

When is get used to form the passive? get@+VBN or get@+1VBN will provide some examples that could support your hypothetical answer to this question. It is necessary to separate the constructions in which get is a full verb meaning obtain or become etc from those where it is an auxiliary. How? Human intervention, i.e. do it yourself.

See The Get Passive for an English lesson on this issue.

Curious and Curiouser

Did you know that stative verbs cannot be used in continuous structures? Go to this grammar link for a statement of the rule. What if you came across one of these verbs used continuously? Would you doubt the rule? How can we find evidence to support or refute it?

Try be+VBG or be@+VBG.

Search for some of the examples given at those sites. e.g. be@+hating, or since continuous forms are often discontinuous (sic) be@+2owning.

Colligation

The above section referred to grammar patterns in the abstract, as the foundation of clauses. The more familiar concept of collocation, as we shall see in detail below (Session 8), refers to frequent co-occurrences of words, e.g. logical conclusion, end result, to answer a call. Colligation, however, refers to a word’s syntactic patterns, which is an important part of knowing a word. In Barnbrook’s words, colligation refers to collocation patterns that are based on syntactic groups rather than individual words (1996).

Very interestingly, corpus analysis has shown that words with the same complementation can be grouped into semantic classes. For example, when bleed, care, cry, fear, feel, grieve, mourn and weep (Levin 1993:192) are followed by for someone, they express sympathy. When these words have different complementations, they do not form this group.

For a solid introduction to this notion, go to the Forum section (p.3) of this link by Susan Hunston.

Which verbs can you find that have the following structures? Can you see any semantic similarities within each pattern? Try the following:

VERB+NOUN+as+JJ
VERB+on+to+NOUN
it+VERB+to+VB
VERB+from+NOUN+to+NOUN
draw+2NOUN+from

Articles – using DT in queries

Is it true that polar adjectives tend to be preceded by the definite article?

Search DT+first|next|last and compare your findings with a+first|next|last.

Right and Wrong

*This is the best way how to learn English. (The asterisk is a convention used in grammar books to indicate that a sentence is unacceptable). Unacceptable? Try this procedure:

way (or way@)	gives an overview of what typically follows the word. There are two ways of complementing way with a verb: of + ing form and infinitive with to.
way+how (or way@+how)	of all the concordances, only one has this use of way how.
way+of+VBG	convincing results
way+to+VB	convincing results

Decisions decisions: when to use the infinitive and when to use the gerund?

Correct?

Which is correct: it is me or it is I? Search be@+me and be@+i. Don’t forget that we do not use capital letters in queries except as POS tags. Alternatively you could search: it+be@+PPS and it+be@PPO.

What does “correct” mean? What does hypercorrect mean?