Delphi module

10.2
The lexical syllabus

10.2.1
The impact of corpus linguistics

Renouf (in Sinclair, 1987b) gives an account of the origins of the lexical syllabus for language teaching, which arose from the COBUILD dictionary project. This was a project that used computerized corpora, whereby banks of written and spoken texts in English were inputted and could be processed. Examples in context of any vocabulary item one might choose could be displayed on the computer screen. The chosen vocabulary item appeared as the central word in a series of isolated sentences, known as concordances, representing all the available occurrences in the bank of texts. From these occurrences, the lexicographers working on the dictionary project could work out how many meanings the chosen vocabulary item had, which were the most frequent uses, how it was pronounced, and which were its forms and functions.

If we look, for example, at a few lines of concordances for the word 'any':

that allows me to cope with almost	any	circumstances, and to make
the secretary's desk to see if there were	any	messages for him
with one of these passes you can travel	any	distance. You can go more or less
serviced regularly, and if you have	any	problems contact us

we might notice something that struck the COBUILD lexicographers, namely that these examples shake the commonly held notion that 'any' is used with negatives and interrogatives but rarely used in affirmative sentences (examples from Willis,1990).

Activity 5

Look at the set of concordances for the word 'way' and try to classify them in any way you feel might be helpful to learners. Which uses and meanings are most common?

Fewer still had premises in any	way	Suitable; some turned out to be
Assertively un-urban that we affected a	way	of dressing quite unsuited to
Attention if he became too excitable, a	way	Whose success was, I think, due to
And a manned craft was the best	way	of preserving flexibility. Photos
to the idea very gradually. The best	way	to do this, I decided, was to
burn and the island beaches. I went by	way	of my family home in the south of
but not in the seemingly calculated	way	that is born of deprivation
lifeless, and I began in a desultory	way	to review in my mind various
the bath; it had become an established	way	of quieting him when he was
the retaliatory strategy had to give	way	to the flexible response
be thrown. Such pebbles that came his	way	seem mainly to have been on the
strip of garden from the road. On his	way	home, but never on his way out,
on his way home, but never on his	way	out, Mij would tug me in the direct
in his small body. He would work his	way	under them and execute a series of
converse with them. It was his	way	for the most part to wander in those
panic that he could hardly make his	way	home, tottering on us feet: and ear
could not even turn to make his	way	back, and with a fifty-foot sheer
but I soon found an infallible	way	to distract his attention if he
and when it had to fight its	way	against Soviet sea and air
he went on in a leisurely	way	with his underwater exploration. It
on the rocks west of Canna, by a long	way	the nearest to me of their colonies
occasions, and most of them a long	way	off. No doubt they have often
Camusfearna is a very long	way	from a vet. The nearest, in fact,
strange sea monster has ever come my	way	since I have been here, though in
as it had been before. I was on my	way	back to the scullery when I stopped
I had the impression that he was in no	way	taxing his powers, and could
Once Morag asked me, in an offhand	way	behind which I sensed a tentative
chittered at it in a pettish sort of	way	and then, convinced of its now
the water is low, one my pick one's	way	precariously along the rock at the
mackerel fishers. There was only one	way	of extraction, and a very painful

(Concordances reprinted from Willis, 1990: 29)

What is the equivalent to 'way' in the language you teach?

How are your notions of 'vocabulary' and 'grammar' affected by these extracts? How do you feel now about the usefulness of the traditional division between grammar and vocabulary?

Is it possible to use a vocabulary item without knowing about how it operates grammatically?

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