Chapter 1

Introduction: A discourse
perspective on grammar
 Come on, please…..
• Please open your copy of the Longman
Grammar.
• We’ll work through Chapter 1 together so
that I can try to help you understand the
content.
• But you can’t really benefit from this
overview unless you have your copy of the
book open and ready to use.
• Thanks! Pat
 Organization of
Chapter 1
• Look over the list on page 1 of the
topics covered in the chapter.
• Look through the chapter to see how
those 5 topics are presented…find
the headings. Just flip through the
chapter to get a sense of what’s
going on.
 What does the
Introduction introduce?
• Their purposes
• Their methods
• Their beliefs about language
• Their So?
work
Whaton another
methods do theygrammar
use? For whatbook
ends?
called the Longman Grammar of Spoken
and Written English
• The relationship between LGSWE & our
text
 Corpus-based grammar
• The information in this reference book comes from the study of a
collection of 40,000,000 words of text. Their corpus combines
written English with spoken English.
• Using corpus data means that they achieve some important goals:
– Real examples
• they haven’t made these up. They can show us how English is really used.
– Coverage of language variation
• they show how English grammar is alike and different when used for 4
different kinds of communication
– Coverage of preference and frequency
• they tell us what speakers of English tend to do most of the time when we
communicate in particular ways
– Interpretation of frequency: context and discourse
• they tell us about which grammar and vocabulary tend to show up in
particular places
– Lexico-grammatical
• Ok, a big new word deserves its own slide….please continue….
 Lexico-grammatical
• Lexico = “words” and “vocabulary” as in lexical,
lexicographer, and so on.
• Lexico-grammatical patterns…that’s the usual combination
• What does the word mean?
– Combinations of words and grammar
– Combinations that often (or always) happen together
• Verbs followed by that: believe that….
• Two-words verbs: look up [the meaning of something]
• Verb and prepositions that often come together: think about….
• Verbs that are used more in past tense than other tenses: said
– All words are used in particular grammatical patterns. Words
are not “grammar free.”
• Why does the concept matter to us?
– Because it turns out that we need to be teaching particular
vocabulary along with grammar rather than separating them
into 2 different parts of the curriculum
 Register
• Register: a sub-set of English, a particular communication setting, a genre
– Newspaper English
– Academic English
– Conversational English
– Fiction
– Poetry
– Specialized English like “aviation mechanic English” or “ESL teacher English” with
special vocabulary and special uses of the vocabulary-grammar
• We’ll see this word with this meaning through the whole semester.
• Research has shown us that English is used in particular ways for particular
kinds of communication.
• Think about the differences between a U.S. history textbook and a
psychology textbook.
– The history uses a lot of past tense and a lot of proper nouns for the names of
people, places, & events.
– The psychology uses a lot of present tense for generalizations about behavior
and a lot of abstract nouns to name theories and kinds of behaviors.
– There are other details but we can see that the English of U.S. history and the
English of psychology have distinctive differences.
• So….as teachers we need to know about the various ways that English is
used so that we can teach English vocabulary-grammar accurately.
 Dialect
• We will not be paying much attention to what linguists call
dialects.
• Dialects tend to be social…the language used by a particular
set of people in a particular location.
• Dialects are really interesting but information about them
is not of as much help to an ESL/EFL teacher as information
about registers.
• The textbook will provide some information about dialect
differences, especially at a high level of generality about
differences between American English and British English.
• Our basic focus will be on ways that grammar and
vocabulary work together for particular kinds of
communication and particular kinds of meaning.
 Standard vs. Non-standard
• On the whole, “standard” refers to the English used by
educated speakers who are in political control of a country
or culture.
• On the whole, “non-standard” refers to the English used by
speakers who are not as schooled in the language used by
the people in control of the country or culture.
• Differences between the 2 kinds of English are hard to pin
down. People can use features of both types for different
purposes.
• Because the book is corpus-based, samples of both types of
English show up in their explanations. But their samples are
primarily of “standard English.”
– Their basic interest is in the “standard” English that’s found in
the kinds of discourse that they analyze: newspapers and
academic writing are basically presented in standard
vocabulary/grammar.
– However, conversational English and some newspaper writing
(columns, sports writing, interviews) can show features we
associate with non-standard uses. And of course fiction can
include dialogue that attempts to imitate the speech of
speakers from all walks of life.
 Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Grammar
• Take a look at page 7 on the differences between “prescriptive”
and “descriptive” grammars.
• This topic is presented as a sub-set of the broader topic
“Standard and non-standard (vernacular) English.”
• Why’s that? Why this topic at this point?
• Prescriptive grammarians want to tell us how to avoid errors in
usage so that we can present ourselves as socially part of the
educated upper middle class. On the whole, prescriptive
grammarians stick to a narrow range of topics and work from
traditions about what we should do without always paying enough
attention to what educated speakers really do.
• Our approach will be descriptive…looking at lots of real usage to
find out how English is really used for particular types of
communication.
• Teaching ESL/EFL actually needs to start from descriptive work
to find out about English vocabulary and grammar and then to
become neo-prescriptive in that we teach students how to use a
particular kind of language.
– The danger for us is in skipping over the descriptive stage! We have to
base our presentation of English grammar-vocabulary on what is really
done. We do not want our students to use the grammar of academic
writing in their conversations or the grammar of conversations in their
academic writing.
• Description first; then, teaching materials based on that descriptive
information.
 Core Registers
• Please look at Table 1.2 on page 8
• Throughout the semester, we’ll be learning about English grammar
in 4 settings:
– Conversation
– Fiction
– News
– Academic Prose
• Our basic questions are…..
– ”What’s the grammar like?
– When we have a conversation in English, what grammar do we use?
– What grammar tends to be used in English fiction?
– What grammar tends to be used in the newspaper?
– What grammar tends to be used in academic writing?
 Spoken English in Their
Corpus
• Transcription: Notice that a corpus is written
materials that a computer can analyze.
• So, the spoken part of a corpus has to be changed
into written format.
• For this corpus, the samples of conversational
English have been put into a written format that
uses regular spelling rather than a phonetic
system. That’s because we’re interested in
grammar and vocabulary rather than in
pronunciation.
 Visible Frequency
• Here’s something really important for us to notice
about how this book presents materials
• Tables & Figures are central to their presentation
of data. These are not for decoration!!
• Always take the time to figure them out. Never
rush past a figure or a table! If you can’t figure
out what’s going on, please email me with the page
number and your question! It’s important to take
the time to understand the data!!!
 Normed frequency
• Now don’t get all uptight about this topic
• It’s really pretty straightforward
• Here’s their problem:
– Different sub-sections of their corpus have different numbers of words
– But they want to be able to compare fiction to conversation to academic writing
to newspaper writing
• How can they compare frequency in the different sub-sets if the sub-sets
are not of the same lengths?
– They do a little arithmetic called “norming.”
– They figure out how many times a particular word is used “per so many words.”
Per 100 or 1000 or a million…what ever unit is reasonable based on the data
– Then, they can compare frequencies in terms of “per 100 words” or “per million
words”
– Our challenge is to read their figures and tables carefully to be sure we know
what units and numbers they are presenting
• Look at the figure on the next slide from Quiz 1.3.
 Normed frequencies
• This figure is from Quiz 1.3.
• The figure tells us about the
number of times the words or,
but, & and are used in the 4
registers.
• The numbers are normed per
million words
• The graph is done in terms of
1000s to have easy to read
numbers.
• So, and is used 20,000 per million
words in conversation; but is used
about 6000 times per million
words in conversation; or is used
about 3000 times per million
words; the 3 words together are
used about 29,000 times per
million words.
 Ok. Read it!
• Now that you have an overview of the chapter,
read it.
• Try the quizzes.
• And email me with your question-of-the-week!
Remember that I want to have a chance to work
with you on grammar…and need to know which part
of your reading on grammar are confusing for you.
So, please, email me with your grammar questions
when you find puzzling information or statements
in the assigned reading.