Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of contributors -- Interrogating corpora to describe grammatical patterns -- References -- Part 1. Patterns in the verb phrase -- Light verb constructions in the history of English -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1 Definition of light verb constructions -- 1.2 Use of light verb constructions and their development -- 2. Studies on the development of light verb constructions in the history English -- 3. Data and method -- 4. Data from the history of English -- 4.1 Old English data -- 4.2 Middle English data -- 4.3 Early Modern English data -- 5. Discussion -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- What happened to the English prefix, and could it stage a comeback? -- 1. The prefix then and now -- 2. Particles and their variation in early English -- 3. The decline of the prefix: Theories -- 4. The decline of the prefix: Quantitative evidence -- 5. The decline of the prefix: Interpretation -- 6. Could the prefix stage a comeback? -- 7. Conclusion -- Sources -- References -- The pattern to be a-hunting from Middle to Late Modern English -- 1. Introduction -- 2. State of the art -- 3. Nineteenth-century evidence -- 4. Retrieval problems involved -- 5. Provisional quantitative analysis -- 6. Concluding interpretation -- References -- The present perfect and the preterite in Late Modern and Contemporary English -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Variation in Modern English -- 3. Corpus evidence from Late Modern and Contemporary English -- 3.1 The Brown quartet of corpora -- 3.2 The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (Extended Version) -- 3.3 The Corpus of Contemporary American English -- 3.4 The Corpus of Historical American English -- 4. Summary and attempted explanation -- Sources -- References.

can and be able to in nineteenth-century Irish English -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Theoretical background -- 2.1 Contact-induced language change -- 2.2 can and be able to in present-day Standard English -- 2.3 Participant-internal possibility in Irish -- 3. Methodology -- 3.1 Irish English data -- 3.2 English English data -- 3.3 Data analysis -- 4. be able to versus can in participant-internal possibility contexts -- 4.2 Language internal factors -- 5. Conclusion -- Sources -- References -- Part 2. Patterns in the noun phrase -- Syntactic constraints on the use of dual form intensifiers in Modern English -- 1. Setting the scene -- 2. The contrast between attributive and non-attributive adjectives -- 3. Intensified adjectives with or without complements -- 4. Discussion -- 5. Conclusions -- Sources -- References -- Ma daddy wis dead chuffed -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Sources of data -- 3. Discussion of the data -- 3.1 Preliminary remarks -- 3.2 Dead in BYU-BNC -- 3.3 Dead in COCA -- 3.4 Dead in ICE-Ireland -- 3.5 Dead in SCOTS -- 3.6 Dead across the varieties examined -- 4. Concluding remarks -- Sources -- References -- The case of focus -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The distribution of pronoun case forms in English: A brief survey -- 3. From case to Focus markers -- 3.1 The motivation for the reanalysis hypothesis -- 3.2 The notion of Focus -- 3.3 From subject pronouns to Focus markers -- 4. Pinning down Focus: the operationalisation of Focus -- 4.1 It-clefts versus it BE sentences -- 4.2 Particularly focussed it BE sentences versus normal it BE sentences -- 5. Additional factors -- 6. Hypotheses -- 7. Data and methodology -- 7.1 Data -- 7.2 Methodology -- 8. Results -- 8.1 The distribution of pronoun case forms in subject predicative complements in the British National Corpus.

8.2 The distribution of pronoun case forms in subject predicative complements in the Corpus of Contemporary American English -- 9. Discussion -- 10. Conclusion -- Sources -- References -- Part 3. Patterns in complementation structures -- Null objects and sentential complements, with evidence from the Corpus of Historical American English -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Covert object control with warn in COHA -- 3. Concluding observations -- References -- A new angle on infinitival and of -ing complements of afraid, with evidence from the TIME Corpus -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Background on afraid in the OED and Wierzbicka (1988) -- 3. The two non-finite complements in three decades of the TIME Corpus -- 4. Concluding observations -- References -- Active and passive infinitive, ambiguity and non-canonical subject with ready -- 1 Introduction -- 2. Background -- 3. Materials and method -- 4. Findings -- 5. Discussion -- 5.1 Ambiguity -- 5.2 Selection of TCpass/TC and humanity of subject -- 5.3 Authors using both constructions -- 5.4 Verbs -- 6. Conclusion -- Sources -- References -- Part 4. Patterns of clause combining -- The diffusion of English absolutes -- 1. Introduction -- 2. An introduction to the absolute construction -- 3. Earlier studies -- 4. Research questions -- 5. Data and methodology -- 5.1 Corpus-based research -- 5.2 Register categories -- 5.3 Factors determining ACs' register distribution -- 6. The results -- 6.1 Factors influencing the AC distribution -- 6.2 Augmentation versus register -- 6.3 The register distribution of predicate types -- 7. Conclusion -- Sources -- References -- It-clefts in English L1 and L2 academic writing -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The definition and delimitation of clefts -- 3. Material and method -- 4. Functional properties of it-clefts -- 5. Corpus investigation -- 5.1 Overall frequencies of clefts across the corpora.

5.2 Grammatical features of it-clefts across the corpora -- 5.3 Information structure and discourse functions -- 6. Concluding remarks -- Sources -- References -- The speech functions of tag questionsand their properties. A comparison of theirdistribution in COLT and LLC -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Speech functions and properties of tag questions -- 2.1 Tag question properties -- 2.2 Classification of tag question speech functions -- 3. TQs in LLC and COLT: Distribution of speech functions of TQsand their properties -- 3.1 Description of the LLC and COLT datasets -- 3.2 Distribution of the TQ speech functions in LLC and COLT -- 3.3 Distribution of TQ properties in LLC and COLT -- 4. Explaining the differences between COLT and LLC -- 4.1 Possible impact of speaker's age, gender and status role -- 4.2 Apparent or real time language change? -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- Appendices -- Author index -- Subject index.