Survey of English Usage
Annual Report 2021
1. News
1.1 David Crystal awarded an honorary doctorate at UCL
We are very pleased that UCL approved the award of the degree of
Honorary Doctor of Literature (DLit) to Professor David Crystal.
David has had a long association with the Survey, which he describes
in the extract of his autobiographical sketch published
on our website and in his autobiography Just
a phrase I’m going through: my life in language.
Due to the pandemic the celebration of this occasion was postponed.
1.2 New FutureLearn course English Grammar for Teachers
Our
popular course English Grammar for Teachers, which we have
been teaching for many years in face-to-face format has been delivered
synchronously online recently, due to the pandemic.
Bas Aarts has now developed an asynchronous version of this course on the FutureLearn platform.
This course covers the entire grammar of English, starting with the word classes, and moving on to phrases and clauses. It combines a modern and innovative approach to the study of grammar with the opportunities that technology offers. It is designed for participants who either start from scratch in the study of grammar or who have a gap in their knowledge. The focus is on how grammatical structures communicate meaning and how they offer different ways of expressing the same idea. Links will be made to age-appropriate texts.
Topics
include:
- the role of grammar in the UK education system
- grammatical subject knowledge and terminology
- how to teach English grammar in context
- how to use the free resources on the Englicious website
The course is integrated with the Englicious platform, developed at the Survey.
1.3 New publication: Bas Aarts, April McMahon and Lars Hinrichs (eds.) The Handbook of English Linguistics, second edition
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The second edition of the Handbook of English Linguistics brings together stimulating discussions of the core topics in English linguistics in a single, authoritative volume. Edited by Bas Aarts, Alice McMahon and Lars Hinrichs, the chapters cover syntax, methodology, phonetics and phonology, lexis and morphology, variation, stylistics, and discourse, and also provide discussions of theoretical and descriptive research in the field.
The revised edition:
- presents thirty-two in-depth, yet accessible, chapters that discuss new research findings across the field, written by both established and emerging scholars from around the world;
- builds upon the very successful first edition, published in 2006;
- incorporates new trends in English linguistics, including digital research methods and theoretical advances in all subfields;
- suggests future research directions.
Table of Contents
- Introduction, Lars Hinrichs, Bas Aarts, and April McMahon
Section 1: Methodology
- Description and Theory, Kersti Börjars
- English Corpus Linguistics, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi and Laura Rosseel
- Experimental Approaches, Lauren Squires
- English Grammar Writing, Andrew R. Linn
- Data Collection, Charles F. Meyer and Gerald Nelson
Section 2: Syntax
- English Word Classes and Phrases, Bas Aarts and Liliane Haegeman
- Clause Types, Peter Collins
- Complements and Adjuncts, Alexander Bergs
- Tense in English, Laura A. Michaelis
- Aspect and Aspectuality, Robert I. Binnick
- Mood and Modality in English, Ilse Depraetere and Susan Reed
- Information Structure, Martin Hilpert
- Current Changes in English Syntax, Christian Mair and Geoffrey N. Leech
- Constructions in English Grammar, Hans C. Boas
- Syntactic Variation in English: A Global Perspective, Bernd Kortmann
Section 3: Phonetics and Phonology
- English Phonetics, Jennifer Nycz
- English Phonology and Morphology, Samuel K. Ahmed, Samuel Andersson, and Bert Vaux
- Prosodic Phonology, Michael Hammond
- Intonation, Francis Nolan
- Phonological Variation: A Global Perspective, Paul Foulkes
Section 4: Lexis and Morphology
- English Words, Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell
- Compounds and Minor Word-Formation Types, Laurie Bauer
- Productivity, Ingo Plag
- Lexical Semantics, Éva Kardos
- English Lexicography: A Global Perspective, Stefan Dollinger
Section 5: Discourse, Styles, and Usage
- Speaking and Writing English, Jim Miller and Andreea S. Calude
- English on Social Media, Brook Bolander
- Gender, Sexuality, and the English Language, Evan Hazenberg
- Language and Literature: Stylistics, Peter Stockwell
- English Usage: Prescription and Description, Pam Peters
- Mobility and the English Language, Amelia Tseng and Lars Hinrichs
This book is an essential reference work for researchers and students working in the field of English language and linguistics.
1.4 English Grammar Day
Due
to the pandemic we have not been able to run the English Grammar
Day for the last two years, but the good news is that the event
will go ahead on 8 July 2022 at UCL.
The speakers are:
- Tim Clist, teacher
- Shareen Wilkinson, teacher and educator
- Steven Dryden, British Library
- Michael Rundell, Chief Lexicographic Officer, Lexical Computing Ltd
- Michaela Mahlberg, University of Birmingham
- Bas Aarts, UCL
The day ends with a panel discussion.
Date: Friday 8 July, 2022
Location: Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, Wilkins Building, UCL Quad, Gower Street.
More information and how to book
2. Research
For a full overview of research publications, presentations, etc. by members of the Survey, see section 5.
2.1 Nuffield Grammar Project
The training programme was delivered in 2021, after a break caused by the pandemic.
This project, which combines the expertise of scholars in two UCL faculties, has now been completed. An end-of-project dissemination conference took place on Tuesday 23 November 2021.
Although the project team found evidence that the grammar content of England’s national curriculum can be taught in a more beneficial way, the main outcome of our research leads to questions about whether the type and amount of grammar content in the national curriculum is the most appropriate focus to help children learn to write.
As a result of the findings from our research, and the findings from previous research on grammar and writing, this report concludes that the lack of robust research evidence to underpin the grammar requirements in England’s national curriculum is a concern. The team argue that a review of the requirements for grammar in England’s national curriculum is needed in order to evaluate the programmes of study in relation to robust research evidence on how primary pupils can be best taught to write.
2.2 New project: The semantics of word borrowing in late Medieval English and French
In October 2021, Dr Kathryn Allan (as Co-Investigator) started a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Westminster on the Leverhulme-funded project ‘The semantics of word borrowing in late Medieval English and French’, led by Professor Louise Sylvester. The project explores the relationship between the vocabularies of English, Latin and French in the medieval period, looking specifically at whether the meanings of words borrowed into English from French or Latin develop independently or show influence from developments in the source languages. It also focuses on the speakers who imported the loanwords and the extent of their fluency in the Latin and French as well as English.
2.3 Collaboration with Uppsala University
In the academic year 2020-2021, Dr Rachele De Felice was on leave for two terms. During this time, she enjoyed being a visiting researcher at Uppsala University’s English Department, which was a very generous host. Although pandemic restrictions limited the opportunities for face-to-face contact, it was a productive and interesting stay. Rachele was able to meet several colleagues there, both through Zoom meetings and outdoor group walks, participate in the Department’s seminars, and exchange ideas about pedagogy through their dedicated teachers’ forum. It was also a great chance to have more focused research time with her Sweden-based collaborators, Dr Gregory Garretson and Dr Nele Põldvere, resulting in conference presentations and progress on a joint manuscript. Rachele is very grateful for the warm hospitality of Uppsala and looks forward to further collaborations ahead.
2.4 PhD awarded to Zhen Wu
We are very pleased that Zhen Wu successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Exocentric noun phrases in English late in 2020. Here’s the abstract:
The term ‘exocentric noun phrase’ (ENP) refers to a noun phrase without a head noun. The category of ENPs contains a range of nominal constructions including phrasal ones (e.g. the rich, the dead, whose head nouns denoting human references are missing) and clausal ones (e.g. I’ll eat what you give me, in which there seems to be a missing nominal antecedent). Although these constructions have been studied before, there has been very little comprehensive research on ENPs as a category.
This thesis has two aims to accomplish: first, it fully examines ENPs with the support of contemporary and historical corpus data; secondly, based on this direct syntactic examination of ENPs, it critically evaluates the possibility of a unified theory.
The first aim is addressed in Chapters 3 to 8, in which I conduct systematic reviews of four representative kinds of ENPs in English, i.e. Generic Constructions (ENPs with a pattern of ‘determinative + adjective’ such as the rich or the sublime), referential metonymy (e.g. Shakespeare is on the bookshelf, where Shakespeare refers to his works), compound pronouns (indefinite pronouns with compounding morphology such as someone or anything) and free relatives (relative clauses without explicit antecedents, e.g. She is who I refer to). Syntactic explanations are proposed for each of these ENPs.
The second aim is addressed in Chapter 9, based on the proposals of the previous chapters. I argue, contra Huddleston & Pullum et al. (2002) and Payne et al. (2007), that there cannot be a unified solution for all ENPs, including their ‘fusion of functions’ theory (FFT): although ENPs share a superficially similar syntactic structure characterised by the lack of head nouns, the forms of the missing head nouns and the mechanisms underlying the absence of these head nouns vary (historical ellipsis, compounding, conjunction of clauses, etc.). As a result, each kind of ENP needs an individual, more specific account that takes into consideration its own syntactic behaviour and historical development.
Dr Wu now teaches at Shandong University in China. The full text of the dissertation is available from the UCL library.
2.5 Statistics in Corpus Linguistics Research: book tour and further research
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Sean Wallis’s book, Statistics in Corpus Linguistics Research: A New Approach (Routledge, 2021) is an important contribution to the methodology of corpus linguistics that focuses on statistical argumentation from first principles. It addresses issues in statistics teaching that are often skipped over and generally poorly understood, and shows how a sound grasp of statistics and linguistically justified research design allows researchers to engage with data in new ways.
Over the last year he has been doing book launches and talks about the book (contact him for information).
He has also begun new work in statistics, developing a general mathematical method for computing accurate confidence intervals of algebraic combinations and functions of independent properties. For more information see his corp.ling.stats blog.
2.6 Survey seminars
Survey seminars are occasions when staff and students at the Survey of English Usage invite scholars to share their research outputs. The seminars are open to everyone, and are announced on the Survey website (see ‘Events’). The following research seminars took place during 2021:
- Tuesday 2 February 2021, Dr Nele Pöldvere, University of Oslo, ‘The London-Lund Corpus 2: A new resource for spoken English’.
- Tuesday 9 March 2021, Dr Anna Čermáková, University of Cambridge, ‘Discussing wordless films: provisionality language in children’s talk’.
- Tuesday 23 November 2021, Dr Robbie Love, Aston University, ‘Modality in spoken British English’.
- Thursday 9 December 2021, Professor Hans-Jörg Schmid, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität-München, ‘Deconstructing constructions and reconstructing them in a more dynamic way’.
3. Teaching
3.1 Summer School in English Corpus Linguistics
Our UCL Summer School in English Corpus Linguistics ran from Thursday 1 July to Friday 2 July 2021. Due to the pandemic the event was held online as a short two-day course, timed to allow everyone from Europe to Japan to attend. We reduced our prices and tripled our numbers, from our usual 28 (limited by physical space) to 87 attendees. Attendees came from all over the world, with large groups from Japan, Korea and the Philippines.
We are pleased to announce that in 2022 we have decided to return to our traditional three-day format. The Summer School will take place from Monday 20 to Wednesday 22 June 2022. Again, it will be held online in the same time-window in order to be as inclusive as possible, due to the likelihood of ongoing restrictions on travel.
More information and how to book
3.2 Englicious and Continuous Professional Development courses for schoolteachers
The Englicious project is continually being enhanced with new functionality and resources. Among other things last year we introduced a Grammar Subject Knowledge Test and a 10-lesson guided course for Primary Year 2 pupils.
What is Englicious?
- an entirely free online library of original English language teaching resources, especially grammar.
- closely tailored to the linguistic content of 2014 National Curriculum for England
- relevant for students and teachers at Key Stages 1-5.
- includes grammar, punctuation and spelling test practice material.
- uses examples from natural language corpora.
Englicious
will help students:
- learn about English grammar in a fun way, using interactive online resources, including exercises, projects and games, all of which can be projected onto an interactive whiteboard
- develop their literacy skills, with a focus on spelling, punctuation and writing
- stimulate their enjoyment of (using) language, both in spoken and written form
- enhance their confidence
- improve their test scores, especially the Year 2 and Year 6 Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling tests in UK schools
Englicious offers teachers:
- year-by-year overview of the new programmes of study and attainment targets in the 2014 UK National Curriculum
- hundreds of fully prepared lesson plans, including everything from bite-sized starters to larger projects, for use in the classroom
- assessments for evaluating student attainment and progress
- a complete and rigorous overview of English grammar
- the entire 2014 National Curriculum Glossary, enhanced with new terminology enabling teachers to use terminology consistently throughout the Key Stages
- professional development materials for teachers to brush up on their own knowledge
CPD
The Survey offers Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses to teachers in primary and secondary schools who need to teach the requirements for grammar, punctuation and spelling in the National Curriculum for England.
- English Grammar for Teachers: a subject knowledge course covering the fundamentals of National Curriculum English grammar, relevant for KS1-5 teachers.
- Teaching English Grammar in Context: a course for KS3-5 teachers, where we explore methods, tools and approaches for teaching grammar in relation to literary and other texts.
- Primary to Secondary English Grammar for Teachers: a course specifically aimed at KS3 teachers, focusing on how to bridge the gap with primary school grammar, and support reading and writing of non-fiction in English and other subjects.
English Grammar for Teachers is now also available on the FutureLearn platform, as described above.
The Survey also offers bespoke courses for teachers in schools (INSET courses). For more information, email the Survey.
More information, and how to book
3.3 MA in English Linguistics
Most Survey colleagues teach on the MA in English Linguistics (with pathways in English Corpus Linguistics and English in Use) which attracts 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.
4 Social media
The Survey has three blogs:
- Bas Aarts’s Grammarianism blog.
- Sean Wallis’s corp.ling.stats blog.
- And the Survey blog.
You can follow us on Twitter via @UCLEnglishUsage and @EngliciousUCL.
5. Publications, conference presentations, talks, dissertations and other studies using Survey material
Please let us know if you would like us to include your publications based on SEU material. We would appreciate it if you send us offprints of any such publications.
Aarts, B., A. McMahon and L. Hinrichs (2021)(eds.) The handbook of English linguistics. Second edition. Oxford: Wiley.
Aarts, B. (2021) (With D. Wyse, J. Anders, A. de Gennaro, J. Dockrell, Y. Manyukhina, S. Sing and C. Torgerson) Grammar for writing in England’s National Curriculum: a randomised controlled trial and implementation and process evaluation of Englicious. London: UCL Institute of Education and Survey of English Usage.
Aarts, B. (2021) ‘The history and future of oblique predicative constructions with for’. Presentation at the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL), Leiden, The Netherlands.
Aarts, B. (2021) ‘Corpus-based research in English grammar’. Plenary lecture at the LIV International Conference of the Linguistic Society of Italy (SLI), Florence, Italy.
Aarts, B. (2021) ‘Using corpus resources to teach grammar at school’. Plenary lecture ate the Anglistentag: Annual conference of the German Association for the Study of English (Deutscher Anglistenverband), University of Jena.
Aarts, B. (2021) ‘Celebrating grammar: forget about the politics’. Presentation at the conference ‘Getting to Grips with Grammar’, organised by the UK Literacy Association.
Aarts, B. (2021) ‘Plonker of a politician NPs’. Presentation at the launch event for the written component of the BNC 2014 Corpus, Lancaster University.
Allan, K. and S. Mehl. (2021) ‘Keywords and onomasiology. Decolonizing, diversifying or liberating the curriculum?’ In: G. Kristiansen, K. Franco, S. De Pascale, L. Rosseel and W. Zhang (eds.) Cognitive Sociolinguistics Revisited. Berlin: de Gruyter, 58-68.
Allan, K. (2021) ‘Metaphor, metonymy and polysemy: a historical perspective. In: A. Soares da Silva (ed.) Figurative Language – Intersubjectivity and Usage. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 287-305.
Allan, K. (2021) ‘A historical linguistic perspective on a metaphorical source: the vocabulary of Speed’. Seminar presented at Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest.
De Felice, R. (2021) (with G. Garretson) ‘Detecting and analysing problem-solving talk in an email corpus’. Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
De Felice, R. (2021) (with N. Põldvere and C. Paradis) ‘Advice-giving and advice uptake in conversation: a corpus pragmatic study’. Presentation at Corpus Linguistics 2021, Limerick, Ireland.
Callies, M. (2021) ‘Challenges in the annotation and analysis of learner corpora’. Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
Gabrielatos, C. (2021) ‘If-conditionals: corpus-based classification and frequency distribution’. ICAME Journal, 45, 1-25.
Garretson, G. and R. De Felice (2021) ‘Detecting and analysing problem-oriented language in an email corpus’. Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
Gilquin, G. and L. Meriläinen (2021) ‘Constrained communication in EFL and ESL: the case of embedded inversion’. Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
Green, C. and H. Sun (2021) ‘Global estimates of syntactic alignment in adult and child utterances during interaction: NLP estimates based on multiple corpora’. Language Sciences 85. 1-14.
Hober, N. (2021) Hybrids compounds in World Englishes. Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
Leuckert, S. and A. Yurchenko (2021) ‘The plurality of Indian English(es): syntactic variation in the Corpus of Regional Indian Newspaper English (CORINE)’. Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
Põldvere, N., V. Johansson and C. Paradis (2021a). ‘On The London–Lund Corpus 2: design, challenges and innovations’, English Language and Linguistics 25.3. 459-483.
Põldvere, N., V. Johansson and C. Paradis (2021b). ‘Challenges of releasing audio material for spoken data: the case of the London-Lund Corpus 2, Research in Corpus Linguistics 9.1: 35–62.
Schneider, E. (2021) ‘Lexicosemantic variability in World Englishes: a case study of prospective verbs’. Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
Schneider, E. (2021) ‘Parameters of epicentral status: requirements and traces’. Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
Vetter, F. (2021) Issues of corpus comparability and register variation in the International Corpus of English: theories and computer applications. Dissertation, University of Bamberg.
Viana, V. and J. Kirk (2021) Academic prose across countries: an investigation of the Humanities and Technology Texts in the International Corpus of English. In: A. Čermáková and M. Malá (eds.) Variation in time and space: observing the world through corpora. Berlin: De Guyter. 283-320.
Wallis, S.A. (2021a). Statistics in Corpus Linguistics research: a new approach. New York/London: Routledge.
Wallis, S.A. (2021b) ‘Grounding linguistic research, from raw data to sound conclusions: how can we be sure of our data, and what is the role of statistics?’ Presentation at the ISLE 6 Workshop on Replication and Reproduciblity in ECL. University of Eastern Finland.
Wallis, S.A. (2021c) ‘What can corpora tell us about language?’ Invited talk at the University of Verona, Friday 9 April 2021.
Wallis, S.A. (2021d) ‘What everyone should know about statistics (but are too afraid to ask).’ Invited talk at the University of Verona, Friday 16 April 2021
Wallis, S.A. (2021e) Book launch: ‘Statistics for Corpus Linguistics Research.’ Invited talk at the University of Helsinki, Friday 7 May 2021
Wallis, S.A. (2021f) ‘How do we understand significance?’ Presentation at the 42nd conference of the International Computer Archive of Medieval and Modern English. Technical University Dortmund.
Bas Aarts
Director
January 2022
This page last modified 17 February, 2023 by Survey Web Administrator.