Susan Hunston
Biographic Data
| ID | 179437 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susan Hunston |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susan |
| FAMILY NAME | Hunston |
| SIGNATURE | HUNSTON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6399-0564 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 27 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Corpus Linguistics
A number of features characterize corpus linguistics.
Pattern Grammar
Pattern grammar is based on the corpus investigation of individual words, especially adjectives, nouns, and verbs. It exploits the fact that each word is regularly complemented by specific phrase or clause types and not with others. Pattern grammar has been used to give grammar information in learners' dictionaries and in reference books that list the patterns of English and the words that occur with them. The words that share a pattern also tend…
Contextualising topic models in corpus linguistics
Pattern Grammar
Pattern grammar is based on the corpus investigation of individual words, especially adjectives, nouns, and verbs. It exploits the fact that each word is regularly complemented by specific phrase or clause types and not with others. Phrase types include noun phrases and prepositional phrases. Clause types include that‐clauses and to‐infinitive clauses. Pattern grammar has been used to give grammar information in learners' dictionaries and to prod…
Patterns, Constructions, and Local Grammar
This article takes as its starting point the analysis of adjective complementation patterns and sets this in the context of other studies of phraseology, especially Construction Grammar. The article proposes that a large number of meaning–pattern combinations can be identified as constructions. This endeavour assists and is assisted by the derivation of a local grammar of evaluation. The grammar is made explicit in 22 ‘Analyses’, grouped into fiv…
Language patterns and attitude revisited
This paper investigates the association between language patterns and attitudinal meanings, focusing specifically on adjective complementation patterns and types of attitudes as proposed in the Appraisal framework ( Martin & White 2005 ). The investigation shows that the tripartite division of Attitude into Affect, Judgement and Appreciation can be supported with pattern differentials. The detailed scrutiny of adjective patterns with respect to t…
Adjective complementation patterns and judgement
This study takes a lexical-grammatical approach to exploring the evaluation of human behaviour and/or character. It uses adjective complementation patterns as the starting point to examine the lexical-grammatical resources at risk in the appraisal system of judgement , aiming to explore the extent to which we can arrive at the same categorization of the resources realizing judgement if a formal or lexical-grammatical approach, rather than a disco…
Patterns, constructions, and applied linguistics
This paper proposes an alignment between aspects of pattern grammar ( Francis, 1993 ; Hunston & Francis, 2000 ) and construction grammar ( Goldberg, 2006 ). Pattern Grammar describes the grammatical behaviour of individual words at a specific level of generality. The paper claims that grammar patterns and the groups of words identified as occurring with them can be used to propose candidate constructions. This claim is illustrated with verbs and …
Multi-Dimensional Analysis, text constellations, and interdisciplinary discourse
Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) has been widely used to explore register variation. This paper reports on a project using MDA to explore the features of an interdisciplinary academic domain. Six dimensions of variation are identified in a corpus of 11,000 journal articles in environmental studies. We then focus on articles in one interdisciplinary journal, Global Environmental Change (GEC). It is expected that these articles will diverge suffici…
An inspiring advocate for Systemic-Functional Linguistics
The work of Geoff Thompson, who until his death was an editor of Functions of Language , has had an international reach for over 40 years. He has contributed to advances in Systemic-Functional Linguistics, in particular extending theories of interaction and evaluation in discourse. His Introducing Functional Grammar is an indispensable guide to the field
Adjectives, communities, and taxonomies of evaluative meaning
From a corpus consisting of free text comments submitted to the website RateMyProfessors.com, adjectives describing people have been identified and clustered using Principal Components Analysis. This follows the Meaning Extraction method used by Chung & Pennebaker (2007). The outcome is a set of seven factors, each of which is interpretable as representing a dimension of meaning along which individual professors have been evaluated. These dimensi…
Learning Vocabulary in Another Language
Learning Vocabulary in Another Language Second Edition is an updated version of this key reference work in the area of second and foreign language vocabulary studies. The book provides a detailed survey of research and theory on the teaching and learning of vocabulary with the aim of providing pedagogical suggestions for both teachers and learners. It contains descriptions of numerous vocabulary learning strategies which are justified and support…
Systemic functional linguistics, corpus linguistics, and the ideology of science
This paper considers the relationship between research using systemic functional linguistics and research of the kind referred to as corpus linguistics, specifically in a study of ideology in a popular science text. The paper argues that ideas in SFL and corpus linguistics may be regarded as parallel (register), divergent (grammar and phraseology), and complementary (lexis and taxonomy). Following a review of research in these areas, the paper pr…
Pattern Grammar
Pattern grammar is based on corpus investigation, which encourages the observation of items that regularly occur together.
Genres across the Disciplines
Genres across the Disciplines presents cutting edge, corpus-based research into student writing in higher education. Genres across the Disciplines is essential reading for those involved in syllabus and materials design for the development of writing in higher education, as well as for those investigating EAP. The book explores creativity and the use of metaphor as students work towards becoming experts in the genres of their discipline. Grounded…
The evaluation of status in multi-modal texts
This paper reconsiders the concept of ‘evaluation of status’ and applies it to visual as well as to verbal texts. The paper explores the relationship between ‘status’ and other related concepts such as epistemic modality. It is argued that a conceptual notion of status is useful in analysing texts, particularly those which construe knowledge. Examples of texts where the status of propositions has high social significance are discussed. The paper …
Starting with the small words
This paper proposes a concept of ‘semantic sequences’, that is, series of meaning elements that can be demonstrated to occur regularly either in a general corpus or in one comprising specific types of text. Semantic sequences may be identified by examining the co-text of a lexical item such as make sure , but are also recognisable if grammatical words such as prepositions are treated as the object of investigation. It is argued that semantic sequ…
Semantic prosody revisited
This paper considers the contentious term ‘semantic prosody’ and discusses a number of aspects of the concept described by the term. It is pointed out that although many writers use it to refer to the implied attitudinal meaning of a word, Sinclair uses the term to refer to the discourse function of a unit of meaning. Problems of apparent counter-examples, when a word or unit does not have the semantic prosody that is typical of it, are discussed…
The Corpus, Grammar Patterns, and Lexicography
The automatic recognition of verb patterns
Patterns describe the syntactic behaviour of lexical items by specifying their local environment. This paper reports on a pilot study to automatically recognise those patterns in text. This study has been successful in producing a system that identifies patterns using only limited linguistic knowledge. It also has raised several issues which will have to be dealt with in future work
Lexis, word form and complementation pattern
This paper examines the comparative frequency of two complementation patterns ( that- clause and wh- clause) with the different wordforms of twenty-six verb lemmas. It is found that in the majority of cases the patterns co-occur differentially with the different word forms. In particular, the wh- clause tends to occur most frequently with the base form while the that- clause occurs with the -ed form. This is explained in terms of the phraseology …
Corpora in Applied Linguistics
Corpus linguistics is leading to the development of theories about language which challenge existing orthodoxies in applied linguistics. However, there are also many questions which should be examined and debated: how big should a corpus be? Is the data from a corpus reliable? What are its applications for language teaching? Corpora in Applied Linguistics exams these and other questions related to this emerging field. It discusses these important…
An Empirical Grammar of the English Verb System
Pattern Grammar
This book describes an approach to lexis and grammar based on the concept of phraseology and of language patterning arising from work on large corpora. The notion of 'pattern' as a systematic way of dealing with the interface between lexis and grammar was used in Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995) and in the two books in the Collins Cobuild Grammar Patterns series (1996; 1998). This volume describes the research that led to these publicati…
Evaluation in Text
This is an accessible and wide-ranging account of current research in one of the most central aspects of discourse analsysis: evalution in and of written and spoken language. Evalution is the broad cover term for the expression of a speakers - or writers - attitudes, feelings, and values. It covers areas sometimes referred to as stance, modality, affect or appraisal. Evaluation (a) expresses the speakers opinion and thus reflects the value-system…
Semantic prosody revisited
This paper considers the contentious term ‘semantic prosody’ and discusses a number of aspects of the concept described by the term. It is pointed out that although many writers use it to refer to the implied attitudinal meaning of a word, Sinclair uses the term to refer to the discourse function of a unit of meaning. Problems of apparent counter-examples, when a word or unit does not have the semantic prosody that is typical of it, are discussed…
Starting with the small words
This paper proposes a concept of ‘semantic sequences’, that is, series of meaning elements that can be demonstrated to occur regularly either in a general corpus or in one comprising specific types of text. Semantic sequences may be identified by examining the co-text of a lexical item such as make sure , but are also recognisable if grammatical words such as prepositions are treated as the object of investigation. It is argued that semantic sequ…
The automatic recognition of verb patterns
Patterns describe the syntactic behaviour of lexical items by specifying their local environment. This paper reports on a pilot study to automatically recognise those patterns in text. This study has been successful in producing a system that identifies patterns using only limited linguistic knowledge. It also has raised several issues which will have to be dealt with in future work
Patterns, constructions, and applied linguistics
This paper proposes an alignment between aspects of pattern grammar ( Francis, 1993 ; Hunston & Francis, 2000 ) and construction grammar ( Goldberg, 2006 ). Pattern Grammar describes the grammatical behaviour of individual words at a specific level of generality. The paper claims that grammar patterns and the groups of words identified as occurring with them can be used to propose candidate constructions. This claim is illustrated with verbs and …
Grammar in teacher education
This paper argues for the use of computer‐stored corpora in courses in grammar awareness for teachers of Mother‐Tongue English. It is argued that the ability to do grammar should be seen as a set of skills rather than as a body of knowledge, and that corpora provide excellent data for doing grammar. Some of the observations that can be made using a corpus are presented, and the skills needed to make such observations are discussed. Examples are g…
A corpus study of some English verbs of attribution
With some verbs of attribution, a typical usage can be identified which indicates a particular evaluation. This typical usage can be exploited to implicate evaluation in non-typical cases, a phenomenon which is analogous to that of semantic prosody. ACKNOWLEDGE and INSIST are examples of verbs of this type. With other verbs, there is no consistently typical usage but under specifiable discourse conditions the verb does typically carry a particula…
Verbs Observed
This paper describes the outcome of a project to code the complementation patterns of all the verbs in Collins COBUILD English Dictionary (1995) COBUILD stands for ‘Collins and Birmingham University International Language Database’ The coding is based on the Bank of English corpus at COBUILD and uses a simple notation based on words and word-classes rather than traditional functional categories The result of this exercise is a list of verb patter…
Pattern Grammar
This book describes an approach to lexis and grammar based on the concept of phraseology and of language patterning arising from work on large corpora. The notion of 'pattern' as a systematic way of dealing with the interface between lexis and grammar was used in Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995) and in the two books in the Collins Cobuild Grammar Patterns series (1996; 1998). This volume describes the research that led to these publicati…
Evaluation in Text
This is an accessible and wide-ranging account of current research in one of the most central aspects of discourse analsysis: evalution in and of written and spoken language. Evalution is the broad cover term for the expression of a speakers - or writers - attitudes, feelings, and values. It covers areas sometimes referred to as stance, modality, affect or appraisal. Evaluation (a) expresses the speakers opinion and thus reflects the value-system…
Evaluation
In most holiday destinations, high summer naturally means high season, but around the capital cities of Europe the streets are often practically deserted. This makes July and August the perfect time to catch up on your culture so whilst the Parisians flock to Corsica or the Cote d’Azur, you can enjoy Paris without the traffic jams and experience the city’s many open spaces at their best. Barcelona is perfect for a summer break, and you can be bot…
An Empirical Grammar of the English Verb System
Corpora in Applied Linguistics
Corpus linguistics is leading to the development of theories about language which challenge existing orthodoxies in applied linguistics. However, there are also many questions which should be examined and debated: how big should a corpus be? Is the data from a corpus reliable? What are its applications for language teaching? Corpora in Applied Linguistics exams these and other questions related to this emerging field. It discusses these important…
Lexis, word form and complementation pattern
This paper examines the comparative frequency of two complementation patterns ( that- clause and wh- clause) with the different wordforms of twenty-six verb lemmas. It is found that in the majority of cases the patterns co-occur differentially with the different word forms. In particular, the wh- clause tends to occur most frequently with the base form while the that- clause occurs with the -ed form. This is explained in terms of the phraseology …
The automatic recognition of verb patterns
Patterns describe the syntactic behaviour of lexical items by specifying their local environment. This paper reports on a pilot study to automatically recognise those patterns in text. This study has been successful in producing a system that identifies patterns using only limited linguistic knowledge. It also has raised several issues which will have to be dealt with in future work
The Corpus, Grammar Patterns, and Lexicography
Semantic prosody revisited
This paper considers the contentious term ‘semantic prosody’ and discusses a number of aspects of the concept described by the term. It is pointed out that although many writers use it to refer to the implied attitudinal meaning of a word, Sinclair uses the term to refer to the discourse function of a unit of meaning. Problems of apparent counter-examples, when a word or unit does not have the semantic prosody that is typical of it, are discussed…
The evaluation of status in multi-modal texts
This paper reconsiders the concept of ‘evaluation of status’ and applies it to visual as well as to verbal texts. The paper explores the relationship between ‘status’ and other related concepts such as epistemic modality. It is argued that a conceptual notion of status is useful in analysing texts, particularly those which construe knowledge. Examples of texts where the status of propositions has high social significance are discussed. The paper …
Starting with the small words
This paper proposes a concept of ‘semantic sequences’, that is, series of meaning elements that can be demonstrated to occur regularly either in a general corpus or in one comprising specific types of text. Semantic sequences may be identified by examining the co-text of a lexical item such as make sure , but are also recognisable if grammatical words such as prepositions are treated as the object of investigation. It is argued that semantic sequ…
Pattern Grammar
Pattern grammar is based on corpus investigation, which encourages the observation of items that regularly occur together.
Genres across the Disciplines
Genres across the Disciplines presents cutting edge, corpus-based research into student writing in higher education. Genres across the Disciplines is essential reading for those involved in syllabus and materials design for the development of writing in higher education, as well as for those investigating EAP. The book explores creativity and the use of metaphor as students work towards becoming experts in the genres of their discipline. Grounded…
Learning Vocabulary in Another Language
Learning Vocabulary in Another Language Second Edition is an updated version of this key reference work in the area of second and foreign language vocabulary studies. The book provides a detailed survey of research and theory on the teaching and learning of vocabulary with the aim of providing pedagogical suggestions for both teachers and learners. It contains descriptions of numerous vocabulary learning strategies which are justified and support…
Systemic functional linguistics, corpus linguistics, and the ideology of science
This paper considers the relationship between research using systemic functional linguistics and research of the kind referred to as corpus linguistics, specifically in a study of ideology in a popular science text. The paper argues that ideas in SFL and corpus linguistics may be regarded as parallel (register), divergent (grammar and phraseology), and complementary (lexis and taxonomy). Following a review of research in these areas, the paper pr…
Adjectives, communities, and taxonomies of evaluative meaning
From a corpus consisting of free text comments submitted to the website RateMyProfessors.com, adjectives describing people have been identified and clustered using Principal Components Analysis. This follows the Meaning Extraction method used by Chung & Pennebaker (2007). The outcome is a set of seven factors, each of which is interpretable as representing a dimension of meaning along which individual professors have been evaluated. These dimensi…
An inspiring advocate for Systemic-Functional Linguistics
The work of Geoff Thompson, who until his death was an editor of Functions of Language , has had an international reach for over 40 years. He has contributed to advances in Systemic-Functional Linguistics, in particular extending theories of interaction and evaluation in discourse. His Introducing Functional Grammar is an indispensable guide to the field
Multi-Dimensional Analysis, text constellations, and interdisciplinary discourse
Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) has been widely used to explore register variation. This paper reports on a project using MDA to explore the features of an interdisciplinary academic domain. Six dimensions of variation are identified in a corpus of 11,000 journal articles in environmental studies. We then focus on articles in one interdisciplinary journal, Global Environmental Change (GEC). It is expected that these articles will diverge suffici…
Pattern Grammar
Pattern grammar is based on the corpus investigation of individual words, especially adjectives, nouns, and verbs. It exploits the fact that each word is regularly complemented by specific phrase or clause types and not with others. Phrase types include noun phrases and prepositional phrases. Clause types include that‐clauses and to‐infinitive clauses. Pattern grammar has been used to give grammar information in learners' dictionaries and to prod…
Patterns, Constructions, and Local Grammar
This article takes as its starting point the analysis of adjective complementation patterns and sets this in the context of other studies of phraseology, especially Construction Grammar. The article proposes that a large number of meaning–pattern combinations can be identified as constructions. This endeavour assists and is assisted by the derivation of a local grammar of evaluation. The grammar is made explicit in 22 ‘Analyses’, grouped into fiv…
Language patterns and attitude revisited
This paper investigates the association between language patterns and attitudinal meanings, focusing specifically on adjective complementation patterns and types of attitudes as proposed in the Appraisal framework ( Martin & White 2005 ). The investigation shows that the tripartite division of Attitude into Affect, Judgement and Appreciation can be supported with pattern differentials. The detailed scrutiny of adjective patterns with respect to t…
Adjective complementation patterns and judgement
This study takes a lexical-grammatical approach to exploring the evaluation of human behaviour and/or character. It uses adjective complementation patterns as the starting point to examine the lexical-grammatical resources at risk in the appraisal system of judgement , aiming to explore the extent to which we can arrive at the same categorization of the resources realizing judgement if a formal or lexical-grammatical approach, rather than a disco…
Linguistics (28 works) · Computer Science (24 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Natural language processing (17 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (15 works) · Grammar (13 works) · Lexicography and Language Studies (11 works) · Artificial Intelligence (8 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (8 works)