COLLINS COBUILD
COLLINS Birmingham University International Language Database
ENGLISH GRAMMAR
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©William Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1990
First published 1990
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Editorial team 2
Introduction 2
Note on Examples 7
Guide to the Use of the Grammar 8
Glossary of Grammatical Terms 9
Cobuild Grammar Chart 18
Chapter 1 Referring to people and things 19
Nouns 21
Pronouns 38
Determiners 48
Chapter 2 Giving information about people and things 61
Adjectives 62
Possessives 89
Quantifiers 91
Numbers 97
Qualifiers 107
Chapter 3 Making a message 113
Transitivity 113
Complementation 139
Phase 147
Chapter 4 Varying the message 153
Mood 153
Negation 162
Modality 169
Chapter 5 Expressing time 188
Verb tenses 189
Adjuncts of time 197
Chapter 6 Expressing manner and place 213
Adjuncts 213
Manner 216
Place 223
Chapter 7 Reporting what people say or think 235
Chapter 8 Combining messages 254
Subordination 255
Coordination 274
Chapter 9 Making texts 282
Cohesion 282
Ellipsis 290
Chapter 10 The structure of information 293
The Reference Section 317
Index 338
Editor-in-Chief John Sinclair
Managing Editor Gwyneth Fox
Editors Stephen Bullon
Ramesh Krishnamurthy
Elizabeth Manning
John Todd
Assistant Editors Mona Baker
Jane Bradbury
Richard Fay
Deborah Yuill
Senior researcher Rosamund Moon
Computer Officer Tim Lane
Clerical Staff Sue Smith
Jane Winn
Consultants Gottfried Graustein
M.A.K. Halliday
Collins Publishers
Annette Capel, Lorna Heaslip, Douglas Williamson
Many other people have been involved with the project at both research and editing stages. Patrick Hanks, who was the Editorial Director of Cobuild throughout the project, made a valuable contribution both in policy and in detail. Dominic Bree, Jane Cullen, and Clare Ramsey worked as researchers in the early stages, and Ron Hardie helped from the beginning until quite late in the editing process. David Brazil gave us great help and encouragement during the early editing of the book. Without his support, this would have been a more difficult task. Helen Liebeck and Christina Rammell were influential in the early stages of editing. Michael Hoey and Charles Owen, members of the Department of English, University of Birmingham, and PhD and MA students in the department, in particular Richard Francis, Agnes Molnar, Iria Garcia, Ramiro Restrepo, Christopher Royal-Dawson, and Bob Walter, worked on and read drafts of the text.
The publishers and editorial team would also like to thank the following people who read and commented on the text John Curtin: Brazil; Henri Bejoint, John Hall, Sue Inkster, and Anne Pradeilles: France; Georgina Pearce and Herman Wekker: Germany; Marcel Lemmens: Holland; Nicholas Brownloes, Tony Buckby, Anthony Harvey, and Georgina Pert: Italy; Roger Hunt, Andy Kennedy, Christopher Pratt, and Tony Sanchez: Spain; Mary Snell-Hornby: Switzerland; Katy Shaw and Tom Stableford: UK; Adriana Bolivar: Venezuela.
Teachers from many countries participated in workshops where material from the Grammar was presented. We are grateful to all of them for taking part in these workshops, especially those organized by the British Council, Singapore, the British Council, Paris, the Britannia School, Rio de Janeiro, the ENPULJ Conference, Natal, Brazil, and the JALT Conference, Okayama, Japan.
This grammar is for anyone who is interested in the English language and how it works. Many people will come to this book because they are learning English and trying to master the structure of the language. As soon as they have enough practical English to master the text, they will find this grammar helpful to them although it has been written primarily for students of advanced level.
The information the book contains, however, will also engage the attention of a different sort of student—those who make a study of English because they are simply interested in language and languages. They include teachers, examiners, syllabus planners and materials writers. The grammar has several unique features which will give them very useful information.
The information in this book is taken from a long and careful study of present-day English. Many millions of words from speech and writing have been gathered together in a computer and analyzed, partly by the computer and partly by a team of expert compilers. It is the first grammar of its kind, and it is deferent in many respects from other kinds of grammar.
This grammar attempts to make accurate statements about English, as seen in the huge Birmingham Collection of English Texts. The main patterns of English are picked out and described, and the typical words and phrases found in each pattern are listed.
This is what a grammar ought to do, but only very recently has it been possible. For a long time there has been a credibility gap between a grammar and the language that it is supposed to describe. Many of the rules seem too abstract to apply to actual examples. There is no room to show how the strong structural patterns can be varied and developed to allow users great freedom of expression.
A Grammar of Functions
People who study and use a language are mainly interested in how they can do things with the language—how they can make meanings, get attention to their problems and interests, influence their friends and colleagues and create a rich social life for themselves. They are only interested in the grammatical structure of the language as a means to getting things done.
A grammar which puts together the patterns of the language and the things you can do with them is called a functional grammar.
This is a functional grammar: each chapter is built around a major function of language, such as 'concept building', 'making up messages', and 'reporting what someone said'. Each of these functions is regularly expressed in English by one particular structure. For example, concept building is usually expressed structures built around a noun, called noun groups; messages are very often expressed in clauses; and reports typically involve a pair of clauses, with one of them containing a reporting verb such as 'say', and the other one beginning with 'that' or having quote marks (' ') round it.
This grammar is based on these important correspondences between structure and function, which are set out in the Cobuild Grammar Chart on the following pages. The skeleton of English grammar is seen in this chart.
However, there are many minor features of English that cannot appear on a simple summary chart. The grammar of a language is flexible, and with the passage of time there are changes in meaning and use of grammatical forms.
For example, although it is true to say that the noun group is the structure we choose for the things we want to talk about, it is not the only one. Sometimes we want to talk about an event or an idea that is not easy to express in a noun group. Instead we can use a clause as the subject of another clause.
All I want is a holiday.
We can also use a clause as the object or complement of another clause.
That's what we've always longed for.
By extending the basic grammar occasionally, speakers of English can express themselves more easily and spontaneously.
The same kind of extension works in the other direction also: noun groups are not only used as subjects, objects and complements. They can function as adjuncts of time, for example, among a range of minor uses.
He phoned back with the information the very next day.
But there is a major area of English grammar based on prepositions (see Chapter 6), which allows noun groups to be used in all sorts of subsidiary functions in the clause.
I went to a village school.
This has been my home for ten years now.
With a click, the door opened.
So it can be seen that the structural patterns can have more than one function, and that different structures can have similar functions. This may sound confusing, and it can be confusing if the grammar is not carefully organized around the major structures and functions.
This grammar follows up each major statement (often called 'rule' in other grammars) with a detailed description of the usages surrounding that statement—including 'exceptions'. Other ways of achieving the same sort of effect are then presented, with cross-references to the main structural patterns involved. Later in the chapter, the various extensions of use of a structure are set out, with cross-references to places where those functions are thoroughly treated.
These extensions and additions to the functions of a structure are not just random. Usually they can be presented as ways of widening the scope of the original function. For example, the basic, central function of reporting verbs (Chapter 7) is to introduce what someone has said.
He said he would be back soon.
It can easily be extended to include what someone has written:
His mother wrote that he had finally arrived home.
Then it can be widened to include thoughts and feelings; these do not need to be expressed in words, but the report structure is very convenient.
The boys thought he was dead.
From this we can see the reporting clause as a more general way of introducing another clause. The reporting clause becomes a kind of preface, commenting on the other clause, which contains the main message.
It is true that some children are late talkers.
The subject of the reporting clause is the pronoun 'it', which refers forward to the 'that'-clause. The verb is now a link verb (Chapter 3) and not a special reporting verb.
A Grammar of Examples
All the examples are taken from texts, usually with no editing at all. It is now generally accepted that it is extremely difficult to invent examples which sound realistic, and which have all the features of natural examples. I am convinced that it is essential for a learner of English to learn from actual examples, examples that can be trusted because they have been used in real communication.
From a Cobuild perspective, no argument is needed. At Cobuild there are file stores bulging with examples, and we do not need to invent any. By examining these real examples closely, we are gradually finding out some of the ways they differ from made-up examples. Until we know a lot more about naturalness in language we do not think it is safe to use invented examples.
There is a special note developing this point, which can be found immediately after this Introduction.
A Grammar of Classes
The actual words and phrases that are regularly used in each structure are printed in the grammar in a series of lists. Instead of just a few illustrative examples, this grammar gives information about the grammar of a large number of words. The student can get a good idea of how large or small a grammatical class is, how many words a certain rule applies to. The teacher has the raw material for making up exercises that suit a particular group of students, and can point to general features of a grammatical class.
Most of these lists, as far as we know, have never been available before. They are worth detailed investigation by student and teacher, because these lists provide the main link between the abstractions of grammar and the realities of texts.
In grammar lists of this kind are called 'classes'; a class is the grouping together of words and phrases which all behave in the same way. Hence this grammar is very much a grammar of classes because it features so many lists of words and phrases.
The job of preparing the lists has been one of the most interesting and challenging problems in the preparation of this book. The computer does the first stage, and produces a fist by searching out all the words that fit a pattern it is given. For example, it might be asked to pick all the words that end in '-ing' and do not have a corresponding form without the '-ing'. The first list it produces includes such words as 'overweening', and 'pettifogging', which are not very common, and which in our view can be left to a later stage of language learning. Also ...
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