Survey of English Usage
Annual Report 2017
1. News
1.1 In memoriam: Randolph Quirk
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It is with great sadness that we announce the death on 21 December 2017 of Randolph Quirk, Founder of the Survey of English Usage.
Randolph was born on 12 July 1920 on the Isle of Man. He studied at University College London, where he later became Quain Professor in English Language and Literature. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1981 to 1985.
He became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1976 and was knighted in 1985. He was President of the British Academy from 1985 to 1989 and became a life peer as Baron Quirk of Bloomsbury on 12 July 1994.
Quirk is well-known for founding the Survey of English Usage at UCL in 1959, but most of all for the monumental Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), which he co-authored with Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. This book, which became known as ‘Quirk et al.’ is one of the great standard reference grammars of English.
Randolph’s memory will be cherished here at the Survey.
We send our deep condolences to Lady Gabriele Stein.
Quirk’s autobiography (an interview with Keith Brown)
UCL tribute
Telegraph obituary
Guardian obituary
Times obituary
More tributes are available on our blog.
You can add
your own tribute to Randolph on this page.
1.2 ISLE 2018
The fifth bi-annual conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE-5) will be held at UCL from Tuesday 17 July to Friday 20 July at the Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1.
The deadline for abstract submission has now passed, but you are naturally very welcome to attend even without presenting a paper.
For more information, see the ISLE conference site.
1.3 Englicious
The Englicious project makes freely available to pupils and teachers in primary and secondary schools a wide variety of innovative teaching materials, including lesson plans, interactive exercises, projects, etc., as well as background materials for teachers to improve their subject knowledge of English grammar, e.g. a comprehensive glossary and videos. The example sentences used on the site are sourced from the Survey’s corpora.
Englicious
helps pupils and teachers to prepare for the UK Grammar, Punctuation
and Spelling tests (colloquially known as the SPAG test) in Year
2 and Year 6. It will also help secondary school pupils to prepare
for their GCSEs, in which there is a new emphasis on the correct
use of grammar, spelling and punctuation. The site features a detailed
and informative grammar overview, an extensive glossary and Continuous
Professional Development (CPD) materials for teachers.
2017 was another successful year for the Englicious project, which now has over 8,000 registered users. We visited 9 schools to teach Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses, and hosted 8 courses here at UCL, engaging with hundreds of teachers from primary schools through to post-16 level.
Ian Cushing joined the project in January 2017. Before joining UCL, he taught English in secondary schools for six years. He is also conducting doctoral research at Aston University, where he is investigating contextualised grammar and integrated language-literature teaching in Key Stage 3 English. He has published a number of books, chapters and articles related to educational linguistics and stylistics, and delivers regular workshops and talks to teachers about applying linguistics in the classroom. Ian works with Bas Aarts and Sean Wallis on a number of existing initiatives, such as the CPD course English Grammar for Teachers.
In 2017 we started a number of new initiatives. One of these was a new course for teachers, Teaching English Grammar in Context, which was delivered to over 80 teachers at UCL and schools around the UK. This course explores principles and methods for teaching grammar in relation to a range of text types, genres and contexts.
In December, Ian appeared on the Times Educational Supplement podcast, speaking about a range of issues related to grammar teaching and the work we are doing with teachers. He and Mark Brenchley have begun a regular column for the Times Educational Supplement.
Listen
to the podcast
Ian and Mark's Grammar
Bites TES column
We also branched out into creating physical classroom resources, in the form of grammar Knowledge Organisers, wall posters and flash cards. These are sold via UCL’s XIP platform. You can click on the links above to order.
We presented our work about Englicious and grammar teaching at the following conferences:
- Grammar in the Classroom: Not Whether But How. University of Exeter, UK, February 2017
- English and MFL ResearchED. University of Oxford, UK, April 2017
- National Association for the Teaching of English. University of Nottingham, UK, June 2017
- Exploiting Parsed Corpora. National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tokyo, Japan, December 2017
You may also be interested in watching a series of videos on English
grammar that the project has produced. They are available on the
Englicious YouTube Channel.
You can follow Englicious on Twitter
and Facebook.
1.4 Continuous Professional Development
As noted above, the Survey has begun offering Professional Development courses on the National Curriculum Grammar requirements for teachers in UK primary and secondary schools.
English Grammar for Teachers
Teaching English Grammar in Context
We also offer ‘Inset Teaching’ where we provide training to teachers in schools. For more information, email the Survey.
1.5 English Grammar Day 2017
Together with the University of Oxford and Jonnie Robinson of the British Library (BL), the Survey organised the third English Grammar Day on Monday 3 July 2017 at the British Library. Speakers for 2017 were Times journalist, Oliver Kamm; language specialists Professor Geoffrey Pullum, Dr Devyani Sharma, Dr Marcello Giovanelli and Dr Lucy Dipper; and secondary school teacher Eleanor Trafford. The panel was chaired by UCL English Professor John Mullan.
The next English Grammar Day will be held on Monday 9 July 2017 at the British Library.
Speakers for 2018 are linguist and broadcaster Professor David Crystal (who will have a double slot for this lustrum event), Rebecca Woods, Jonnie Robinson, Lynne Murphy and Suzannah Ferguson. There will also be a panel discussion chaired by John Mullan.
For a brief video impression of an earlier English Gramar Day, see below.
2. Research
2.1 ICECUP
The
latest version of our ICECUP software is compatible with versions
of Windows from XP to 10 and is fully 64-bit compatible. It contains
a number of additional enhancements over ICECUP 3.1 which are documented
on our website and in the rewritten help file.
As a service to the Corpus Linguistics research community, the software is available as a download 'release candidate' from here. This means that if you have already got a licence for ICE-GB R2 or DCPSE you can upgrade to the latest version of the software from our website for free.
2.2 Blogs
Bas Aarts continues his blog for teachers of English grammar in schools, GRAMMARIANISM.
Sean Wallis continues his blog on the subject of statistics for corpus linguistics at corp.ling.stats.
We have also launched a Survey blog.
2.3 Survey seminars and other events
The following seminars took place during 2017:
- Tuesday 28th February: Ellen Smith-Dennis (University of Warwick), Contact with a contact language.
- Wednesday 15th March: Rob Lawson (Birmingham City University), A socio-corpus analysis of language and masculinity in an online ‘Pick Up Artist’ community (with Mark McGlashan).
- Thursday 16 November: Dr Chloe Harrison (Coventry), Action chains, grounding and ‘narrative urgency’ in Enduring Love.
- Tuesday 12 December: Dr Sylvia Shaw (Westminster), Representing political speech in writing - from Official Reports to linguistic transcripts.
For the 2018 seminars, see our website.
Kathryn Allan was a co-organiser (with Marc Alexander and Fraser Dallachy, both University of Glasgow) of Kay Day, a one-day symposium in honour of Christian Kay, held in Glasgow in June 2017.
Kathryn organised the ‘Lunch for Linguists’ at UCL in November 2017: this involved colleagues from different departments in the faculty. The lunch was funded by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and several collaborative projects are being planned as a result.
2.4 Research publications and presentations
For an overview of research publications, presentations, etc. by members of the Survey, see section 4.
3. Teaching
3.1 Summer School in English Corpus Linguistics
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The Summer School in English Corpus Linguistics was held for the fourth time from 5-7 July 2017. For the second year running we were at full capacity. Students from all over the world took part in our concentrated three-day graduate course in corpus linguistics.
The 2018 Summer School will take place from 2-4 July.
For details, see here.
3.2 MA in English Lingustics
Our MA program in English Lingustics (with pathways in English Corpus Linguistics and English in Use) continues to attract students from all over the world.
Our graduates have gone on to PhD scholarships in the UK and abroad, as well as careers in teaching, publishing, and public relations.
For more information, see this
prospectus.
4. Publications, conference presentations, talks, theses and other studies using Survey material
Please let us know if you would like us to include your publications based on SEU material. We will appreciate it if you send us offprints of any such publications.
Aarts, B. (2017) ‘The UCL approach to grammar teaching’. Presented at the symposium Grammar in the classroom: not whether, but how. Centre for Research in Writing. University of Exeter. (With Ian Cushing.)
Aarts, B. (2017) ‘Grammar teaching in schools: good or bad?’ Plenary lecture presented at ResearchED Conference English and Modern Foreign Languages. University of Oxford.
Aarts, B. (2017) ‘Innovative teaching using internet-based corpus linguistics resources.’ Plernary lecture presented at the 3rd International Conference The Magic of Innovation: New Dimensions in Linguistics and Teaching Foreign Languages. Moscow Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Russian Federation.
Aarts, B. (2017) ‘-Ing clauses in English: structure, usage and recent change’. (With S. Wallis and J. Bowie) Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague, Czech Republic.
Aarts, B. (2017) ‘Addressing the grammar gap: teaching grammar across primary and secondary level’. (With Ian Cushing.) Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for the Teaching of English. Nottingham.
Aarts, B. (2017) ‘Corpus linguistics in a pedagogical setting’. Paper presented at the Anglistisches Seminar, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
Aarts, B. (2017) ‘Exploring the grammar of spoken English using DCPSE’. Plenary lecture presented at the International Symposium on Diachronic Speech Corpora. National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tokyo, Japan.
Aarts, B. (2017) ‘English word classes: lumping and splitting’. Paper presented at Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan.
Algama, S. (2017) ‘Here and men as discourse markers in spoken Sri Lankan English: a corpus based pilot study’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Allan, Kathryn (2017) ‘Degrees of lexicalization’ in the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary and the nature of categories’. Paper presented at the Kay Day, a one-day symposium in honour of Christian Kay, Glasgow, June 2017.
Allan, Kathryn (2017) ‘Borrowing and polysemy in Early Modern English’, Paper presented at the University of Augsburg, Germany.
Baumann, U. (2017) ‘Caught between convention and innovation – the case of the progressive in spoken British English’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Bernaisch, T., B. Heller and S. Th. Gries (2017) ‘Empirical perspectives on two potential epicenters: the genitive alternation in Asian Englishes’. ICAME Journal 41. 111-144.
Bowie, J. (2017) ‘-Ing clauses in English: structure, usage and recent change’. (With B. Aarts and S. Wallis) Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Brenchley, M. and I. Cushing, I. (2017) 10 Things Every Teacher Should Know About Grammar. Times Educational Supplement 5278.
Cribble, L. and M.J. Cuenca (2017) Discourse markers in speech: characteristics and challenges for corpus annotation. Dialogue and discourse 8.2. 149-166.
Cushing, I. (2017). Conceptualisations and representations of grammar in schools. Paper presented at Language Variation in the Classroom, Queen Mary University of London.
Cushing, I. (2017). Cognitive stylistics as a pedagogical grammar. Paper presented at the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, University of Kent.
Cushing, I. & Giovanelli, M. (2017). Cognitive linguistics and L1 grammar teaching. Paper presented at the British Association of Applied Linguistics, University of Leeds.
Cushing, I. (2017). 'Suddenly, I am part of the poem': text world theory as a pedagogical grammar in schools. Paper presented at the International Association of Literary Semantics, University of Huddersfield.
De Felice, R. (2017) ‘The Hillary Clinton emails: corpus linguistics meets the real world’. Paper presented in the English Department, Unversity College London..
De Felice, R. and Murphy, M.L. (2017) ‘“Thank you in anticipation”: a corpus-pragmatic investigation of thanking behaviour in British and American emails’. Paper presented at the Corpus Linguistics Conference 2017, University of Birmingham.
Evert, S. (2017) ‘Measures of productivity and lexical diversity’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Filppula, M. (2017) Convergent developments between “old” and “new” Englishes. In: M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 639-656.
Garretson, G. and R. De Felice (2017) ‘The Hillary Rodham Clinton emails: examining world leaders through corpora’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Gries, S. Th. and and Andrea L. Berez (2017) ‘Linguistic Annotation in/for Corpus Linguistics’. In: N. Ide and J. Pustejovsky (eds.) Handbook of Linguistic Annotation, Berlin and New York: Springer. 379-409.
Gries, S. Th. and G. J. Kootstra (2017) Structural priming within and across languages: a corpus-based perspective. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20.2. 235-250.
Heller, B., T. Bernaish and S. Th. Gries (2017) ‘A corpus-linguistic account of the history of the genitive alternation in Singapore English: evidence for the transition from nativisation to endonormativity?’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Hoffmann, S., A.-K. Blass and J. Mukherjee (2017) ‘Canonical tag questions in Asian Englishes: forms, functions and frequencies in Hong Kong English, Indian English, and Singapore English’. In: M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 697-714.
Kirk, J. and V. Viana (2017) ‘How homogenous are academic registers in ICE? a corpus-driven approach’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Kolbe-Hanna, D. (2017) ‘Variation in complementizer choice between if and whether’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Mair, C. (2017) ‘World Englishes and corpora’. In: M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 103-122.
Mehl, S. (2017) ‘Corpus frequency and cognitive salience: finding correlations’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Meriläinen, L. and H. Paulasto (2017) ‘Embedded inversion as an angloversal: evidence from inner, outer, and expanding circle Englishes’. In: M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 676-696.
Murphy, M. L. and R. De Felice, R. (2017) ‘“Thanks for your attention”: thanking expressions in British and American email corpora’. Paper presented at the International Pragmatics Association Conference, Belfast.
Nelson, G. and J. Kirk (2017) ‘The International Corpus of English (ICE) project: the next 25 years’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Pöldvere, N., C. Paradis, and V. Johansson (2017) ‘The London-Lund Corpus 2: A new corpus of spoken British English in the making’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Polzenhagen, F. and H.-G. Wolf (2017) ‘World Englishes and Cognitive Linguistics’. In: M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ronan, P. and G. Schneider (2017) ‘Directive Speech Acts in SPICE Ireland and beyond’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Wallis, S. (2017) ‘What might a corpus of spoken data tell us about language?’ Paper presented in the UCL Digital Humanities Seminar Series, University College London, 15 November. Also presented at Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan, 9 December.
Wallis, S. (2017) ‘Exploiting parsed corpora in grammar teaching’. Invited paper presented at the International Symposium on Exploiting Parsed Corpora 2017, National Institute of Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tokyo.
Wallis, S. (2017) ‘-Ing clauses in English: structure, usage and recent change’. (With B. Aarts and J. Bowie) Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Wolk, C. (2017) ‘Gender-based variation in part-of-speech patterns across the inner and outer circle’. Paper presented at the 38th meeting of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), Charles University Prague.
Bas Aarts
Director
January 2018
This page last modified 17 February, 2023 by 7Survey Web Administrator.