1. PIC (pattern in context)
Pattern concordancing for pedagogical purposes
2. Challenge the commonsense
1. Is English really made up of
individual words?
2. Is English organised and
ruled only by grammar?
Metaphors:
Fillers and slot
Bricks and mortar
3. Let’s GO!
E.g. His eyes are going, so he is going to hospital.
Like (like father, like son)
Defeat (n/v)
Terrific (pro/con?)
Bill (pay/pass)
“You should judge a word
by the company it keeps. ”
4. Gone beyond grammar
Case: -ing & -ed participles
Go doing vs. go to do
go shopping
go swimming
go looking for
go flying
go scouting
“Any hope, doc?” “Sorry, she’s gone.”
5. Initial findings
Words are living in groups. Rather than functioning in
isolation, they work collaboratively with other words
in neighbourhood to make meaning. The same word in
different combinations tends to have different
meanings, sometimes opposite.
Words are not subordinate to grammar. They are not
obediently ruled, but have their own preference and
specific “code of conduct”.
6. A functional view
The “building block” of language seems to be actually a
multi-word item lying between vocabulary and grammar
Language is one phenomenon; vocabulary and grammar
the same thing seen by different observers, forming a
continuum with the two items on the two ends
Are we still going to teach vocabulary and grammar in a
separate way?
7. Grammar patterns: a candidate
[A] pattern is a phraseology frequently associated with (a
sense of) a word, particularly in terms of the prepositions,
groups, and clauses that follow the word … patterns are
closely associated with meaning, firstly because in many
cases different senses of words are distinguished by their
typical occurrence in different patterns; and secondly
because words which share a given pattern tend also to
share an aspect of meaning. (Hunston & Francis, 2000, p.
3):
8. Lexis-grammar interface
Patterns are neither single words nor abstract
grammatical structures, but results of a synthesis of lexis
and grammar.
ADJ of -ing
16 hen she says. ‘They are afraid of losing their friends. They
17 guy, I was desperately afraid of being alone again and a bi
25 way, both because I was afraid of seeming too needy and bec
26 ld in college — but was afraid of disappointing his father.
9. A link with meaning (1)
A word may have several patterns,
each of which tends to represents
a word sense.
E.g.
go to do – move or travel
go to sleep
go + adj. – become, esp. in a bad
way
go sour
Sth. go – be used or given
The Oscar goes to …
10. A link with meaning (2)
A pattern can be associated with variant words, which
might be divided into a few meaning groups as they share
aspects of meaning.
E.g.
Linking V. + adj.
1. feeling: sound, smell, look, feel
Sounds good, I feel sick
2. condition: become, get, stay, remain
Stay healthy, remain unnoticed
11. Pedagogical values
Teaching patterns may make an approach combining both
vocabulary acquisition and grammar consciousness-raising
More accessible to learners, because it focuses on
the surface behaviour of individual words
Useful for language development in both accuracy and
fluency, with description of detailed language use, word
sense distinguishing and presentation of learnable chunks.
12.
13. PIC (Pattern in Context)
Derived from KWIC (key word in context)
KWIC is a list of all of the occurrences of a particular search
term (mostly an individual word) in a corpus, presented
within the context in which they occur.
for this was Minnesota, where [people] guarded their emotions, a tra
have occurred when religious [people] -- including Chris tians -- a
t, and people get to meet the [people] who grew their food. Tailgate
e offering a $2,500 bounty to [people] who help it find worthy job c
-- all that information about [people] and places, developing skills
Inherit KWIC as enriched and enhanced input for learners,
while require special query techniques
14. 1. Lock on a certain word class
Different word classes apparently
influence the way a word is used,
and also the associated patterns
E.g.
left vs. right
Adj.
Adv.
Noun
Verb
15. 2. Insensitive to inflections
KWIC is very sensitive to
inflections, i.e. different
word forms, like the plural
form of a noun and the
past participle of a verb.
E.g.
woman - women
go – goes – went – going –
gone
16. 3. Allow for word variances
Patterns should skip over
variant word combinations, esp.
noun phrases in the middle.
E.g.
leave + noun phrases + adj.
leave me alone
don’t leave your belongings
unattended
17. leave + noun phrases + adj.
constituent part of society) [leaves it susceptible] to criticism from psychologists
und Nora 's decision to [leave her family insupportable] , perhaps did not apprec
rmation recorded logically [leaving the information fragmented] and dislocated. //
but even hive pests were [leaving these colonies alone] . /Now bees have
periodically
go + adj.
just keeps increasing it never [goes negative] if it does something really
//uh but Math one-sixteen 's [going fine] it 's not Math one-sixteen
need something to do. //you [go crazy] when you like stagnate and h
one of their, plants that [went undetected] for, a couple months i <@36>
18. 4. One pattern at a time
Patterns associated with a word may not share the same
number of occurrences. It is impossible in KWIC to focus
on one pattern, which may be overwhelmed by other uses.
In MICASE (1.8 million words)
Patterns Hits
go + V-ing 8
go + adj. 62
go + to + NP 801
go + to + inf. V 915
19. Patterns highlighted
PIC can directly and accurately retrieve and display
grammar patterns.
Patterns can be made much more apparent and accessible
to learners: the same structure is underlined in a non-
repetitive manner, while various lexical options are
assembled around a fixed form.
Method: POS (part-of-speech) tagging, regular expression
