Corpus Perspectives on Patterns of Lexis -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC page -- Table of contents -- List of contributors -- Introduction -- References -- Sequence and order -- Sequence and order -- 1. The neo-Firthian tradition -- 2. Sequence and order -- 3. An example: The went-and-verbed sequence -- 4. Induction? -- 5. Sinclair's model of units of meaning -- 6. Research problems: Lexis and text -- 7. Sinclair and Searle -- 8. Concluding comments -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Mom and Dad but Men and Women -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Gendered nouns that are rarely or never paired -- 3. The preferred sequencing of the actualized pairs -- 3.1 The metrical constraint -- 3.2 Deficiencies of the power constraint as the first or second constraint -- 3.3 The family relationship constraint -- 3.4 The problems with frequency as an overriding constraint -- 3.5 The power constraint as the third constraint -- 3.6 The odd case of witches and warlocks -- 4. Conclusion -- Corpus -- References -- Sequences of size adjectives in text -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Aims of the present study -- 2.1 Presentation of data -- 3. Adjectives of size -- 3.1 What type of size, and what type of adjective? -- 4. Sequences of big adjectives: Corpus findings -- 4.1 "Great big" -- 5. Sequences of small adjectives: Corpus findings -- 5.1 "little tiny" and "tiny little" -- 6. Adjective sequences with intervening commas -- 7. Size adjectives: Summary and further discussion -- 7.1 General characteristics of size adjective sequences -- 7.2 Intensification -- 8. Adjectives from other semantic fields: An exploratory study -- 9. Conclusions -- References -- Competing constructions -- The competition between the intensifiers dead and deadly -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Sources of evidence -- 3. A first approach: Evidence from historical dictionaries.

4. Analysis and discussion of the data -- 4.1 Introductory remarks -- 4.2 The subjectification and grammaticalisation of dead and deadly: Evidence from the databases -- 4.3 The competition between dead and deadly in the databases -- 5. Conclusions -- References -- Sources of material -- Has go-V ousted go-and-V? -- 1. Introduction and research aim -- 2. Literature review -- 3. Methodological aspects -- 4. The diachronic development of go-V and go-and-V in general -- 5. The development of go-V and go-and-V: Focus on grammatical context -- 6. Analysing meaning developments: The problem of identifying and limiting V2 -- 7. Brief discussion of results -- 8. Outlook -- References -- The construction cannot help -ing and its rivals in Modern English -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Major Developments and Resulting Regional Contrasts -- 2.1 A General Overview Using the OED Quotations Database -- 2.2 Early contrasts between British and American English -- 2.3 The situation in the 1990s and beyond -- 3. Distributional constraints -- 3.1 Genre and medium -- 3.2 Differential degrees of lexical diversity -- 3.3 Basic and non-basic structures -- 4. Conclusion -- References -- Primary electronic sources -- From reduction to emancipation -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Approach and data -- 3. The variation of going to and gonna -- 3.1 Speaker's age -- 3.2 Speaker's education and dialect region -- 3.3 Speech rate -- 3.4 Preceding element -- 3.5 Type of modality -- 3.6 Summary of the variation -- 4. Reduction of going to and gonna -- 4.1 Speaker's age -- 4.2 Dialect region -- 4.3 Speech rate -- 4.4 Preceding element -- 4.5 Summary of reduction -- 5. Change in the variation and realization of going to and gonna -- 5.1 Age-grading of variation -- 5.2 Age-grading of reduction -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- Complex prepositions and variation within the PNP construction.

1. The status of the CP as a grammaticalised unit -- 2. Types of variation -- 3. Variation and grammaticalisation -- 3.1 Previous studies on the grammaticalisation of PNP sequences -- 4. Representation of CPs in contemporary grammars -- 5. The definite article and the semantics of the noun in CPs -- 6. Investigation of evidence of use of CPs in corpora -- 6.1 Summary of corpora used -- 6.2 Approach to using corpora -- 7. Patterns of loss of the definite article -- 7.1 in (the) place of -- 7.2 by (the) force of -- 7.3 on (the) ground(s) of -- 7.4 in (the) light of -- 7.5 at (the) risk of -- 8. Complementation patterns -- 8.1 Collocates for at (the) risk of -- 8.2 in (the) process of -- 9. CPs that invariably include the definite article -- 10. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- Corpora -- References -- Emerging patterns -- A finer definition of neology in English -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1 Intuitive definition of a neologism -- 1.2 Neologisms in a static, synchronic corpus -- 1.3 Neologisms in a dynamic, diachronic corpus -- 1.4 Semantic neology -- 1.5 Grammatical neology -- 2. The life-cycle of a word in diachronic text -- 2.1 Stage in life-cycle: Birth -- 2.2 Stage in life-cycle: Increase in frequency - gradual, or sudden if in vogue -- 2.3 Stage in life-cycle: Orthographic adjustment -- 2.4 Stage in life-cycle: Lexical Productivity -- 2.5 Stage in life-cycle: Creativity -- 2.6 Stage in life-cycle: Settling down -- 2.7 Stage in life-cycle: Obsolescence -- 2.8 Stage of life-cycle: Death -- 3. Elaboration on the 'life-cycle' model: Second comings -- 3.1 Stage in life-cycle: Semantic neology -- 3.2 Stage in life-cycle: Re-birth or Revival -- 4. Closing summary -- References -- A corpus-based study of gender assignment in recent English loanwords in Norwegian -- 1. Introduction -- 2. What is gender? -- 3. Some underlying assumptions for gender assignment.

4. Gender assignment in recent English loanwords -- 5. Recent English loanwords - and how to find them -- 6. Distribution -- 7. Semantic assignment rules -- 8. Loanwords with neuter gender -- 9. "Crazy rules" - plausible or not? -- 10. Other assignment principles -- 11. Some preliminary conclusions -- Corpora -- References -- The return of the prefix? New verb-particle combinations in blogs -- 1. The decline of the prefix and recent trends -- 2. Corpus and method -- 3. Examples of new prefix verbs -- 3.1 Verbs with the prefix in- -- 3.2 Verbs with the prefix on- -- 4. Discussion of results -- Corpora -- References -- Correlating patterns and meaning -- Modality and the V wh pattern -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Investigating the association between the infinitive form and the V wh pattern -- 2.1 Corpus and sampling procedure -- 2.2 Ascertaining whether there is an association between the infinitive and V wh -- 2.3 Quantitative evidence for the sequence 'modal/modal-like + verb + wh-clause' -- 3. Modal meaning and the 'to + verb + wh-clause' sequence -- 3.1 Categorising 'to VVI wh' sequences into meaning groups: Procedure and broad categories -- 3.2 Results regarding meaning groups -- 4. Discussion -- 5. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- Corpus -- References -- Assessing corpus search methods in onomasiological investigations -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Data -- 3. Corpus search methods -- 3.1 Starting from annotated data -- 3.2 Starting from automatically extracted word lists -- 4. Establishing a corpus methodology for onomasiological investigations -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- Appendix 1. Numerical approximators in BENews and LOCRA_B -- Appendix 2. Non-numerical approximators in BENews and LOCRA_B -- Author index -- Subject index.