Douglas Biber
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 204263 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Douglas Biber |
| NOMBRES | Douglas |
| APELLIDO | Biber |
| FIRMA | BIBER D |
| AFILIACIONES | Northern Arizona University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7024-505X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 81 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 440 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 80 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1981 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Grammatical Analysis Is Required to Describe Grammatical (and “Syntactic”) Complexity
Our response is focused on the analysis of grammatical complexity1 in learner language. We fully support the distinction between complexity and difficulty advocated by Bulté et al., and we agree with their characterization of “complexity” (as opposed to “difficulty”) as referring “to the structural characteristics of linguistic items/structures and texts.” We are surprised, though, by Bulté et al.’s recommendation that this construct of grammatic…
Achieving stability in corpus-based analysis of word types
Rank-ordered lists of word types are ubiquitous in corpus linguistics and applied linguistics. Word lists are commonly developed as aids for language teaching and learning, vocabulary testing, and language description. Yet, these lists are often produced and used without evaluation of their stability — or replicability — across corpus samples. Our primary objective in this paper is to describe the cumulative state of knowledge regarding the stabi…
Expanding the scope of grammatical variation
Most studies of genitive variation in English have considered only the choice of two variants ( 's versus of ), based on analysis of only tokens that are judged to be interchangeable. We argue in the present article that research on genitive variation can be usefully extended in both respects: including premodifying nouns as a third variant; and attempting to account for all tokens of the genitive. In addition, we extend the scope of analysis to …
Dimensions of Text Complexity in the Spoken and Written Modes
In many studies, grammatical complexity has been treated as a single unified construct. However, other research contradicts that view, suggesting instead that the different structural types and syntactic functions of complexity features are distributed in texts in fundamentally different ways. These patterns have been documented in general corpora that include a wide range of spoken and written registers. One question that has not been fully addr…
Writing Trajectories of Grammatical Complexity at the University
Grammatical complexity has been established as a key indicator of language and writing development (Ortega 2003; Bulté and Housen, 2014; Crossley and McNamara 2014). The present study uses the Register-Functional approach to complexity (Biber et al. 2022) to compare the development of L1 English and L2 English writers across year of study and discipline in the British Academic Written English corpus. It also introduces a novel method of examining…
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Grammar of Spoken and Written English
The completely redesigned Grammar of Spoken and Written English is a comprehensive corpus-based reference grammar. GSWE describes the structural characteristics of grammatical constructions in English, as do other reference grammars. But GSWE is unique in that it gives equal attention to describing the patterns of language use for each grammatical feature, based on empirical analyses of grammatical patterns in a 40-million-word corpus of spoken a…
A new multidimensional model of writing for research publication
Scholarly knowledge in contemporary academia is created and communicated primarily through writing for research publication. It is through this particular form of knowledge dissemination that a rich body of scientific knowledge about a given phenomenon is accumulated. The present study sought to investigate the linguistic characteristics of knowledge communication in research writing from multiple perspectives. For this purpose, a multivariate ap…
Identifying and describing functional discourse units in the BNC Spoken 2014
On the surface, it appears that conversational language is produced in a stream of spoken utterances. In reality conversation is composed of contiguous units that are characterized by coherent communicative purposes. A large number of important research questions about the nature of conversational discourse could be addressed if researchers could investigate linguistic variation across functional discourse units. To date, however, no corpus of co…
Towards a taxonomy of conversational discourse types
Investigating grammatical complexity in L2 English writing research
Methodological issues in contrastive lexical bundle research
This study explores the influence of corpus design when comparing lexical bundle use across groups, examining how the number of texts and average length of texts can impact conclusions about group differences. The study compares the use of lexical bundles by L1-English versus L2-English writers, based on analysis of two sub-corpora of academic articles that are matched for discipline, writer expertize, time of publication, and audience. However, …
Lexical dispersion and corpus design
Lexical dispersion is typically measured across arbitrary corpus parts of equal size. In this study, we apply D A – a new dispersion index designed for unequal-sized corpus parts – to the British National Corpus (BNC) in a series of cases studies to show that the dispersion of a word is strongly influenced by the corpus units or parts it is measured across. Our results show that dispersion should be measured and interpreted based on corpus units …
Register, Genre, and Style
A fully updated and expanded second edition of this flagship work, which introduces methodological techniques to carry out analyses of text varieties, and provides descriptions of the most important text varieties in English. Part I introduces an analytical framework for studying registers, genre conventions, and styles, while Part II provides more detailed corpus-based descriptions of text varieties in English, including spoken interpersonal var…
Discipline, Level, Genre
While there have been many investigations of academic genres, and of the linguistic features of academic discourse, few studies have explored how these interact across a range of university student writing situations. To counter misconceptions that have arisen regarding student writing, this article aims to provide comprehensive linguistic descriptions of a wide range of university assignment genres in relation to multiple situational variables. …
Linguistic Perspectives on Register
Language users change their written and spoken language according to the situational characteristics and communicative purpose of production—that is, according to the register being produced. Research on registers has focused on register description or patterns of register variation, on detailed analysis of individual linguistic features or an account for the use of a broad range of linguistic features, and on the distinction between written and …
Comparing patterns of L1 versus L2 English academic professionals
Academic Writing Development at the University Level
Using the British Academic Written English corpus, this study focuses on the use of grammatical complexity features in university level texts written by first language (L1) English writers to demonstrate knowledge and perform other specialized tasks required of advanced academic writers. While the primary focus of the analysis is on writing development from first-year undergraduate to graduate students, we also consider interactions with discipli…
Predicting Patterns of Grammatical Complexity Across Language Exam Task Types and Proficiency Levels
In the present article, we explore the extent to which previous research on register variation can be used to predict spoken/written task-type variation as well as differences across score levels in the context of a major standardized language exam (TOEFL iBT). Specifically, we carry out two sets of linguistic analyses based on a large corpus of TOEFL iBT responses: one investigating the use of 23 grammatical complexity features, and the second b…
On the (non)utility of Juilland’s D to measure lexical dispersion in large corpora
This paper explores the effectiveness of Juilland’s D as a measure of vocabulary dispersion in large corpora. Through a series of experiments using the BNC, we explored the influence of three variables: the number of corpus-parts used for the computation of D , the frequency of the target word, and the distributions of those words. The experiments demonstrate that the effective range for D is greatly reduced when computations are based on a large…
Toward more accountability
Whereas the alternation between the s -genitive ( the New Year's message ) and the of -genitive ( the message of the New Year ) is well documented, our study offers a more accountable analysis of genitive variation by including noun-noun (NN)-genitives ( the New Year message ). We consider four different variable contexts ( s versus of , NN versus of , NN versus s , and NN versus s versus of ), which we analyze using regression analysis. The data…
Register and discourse analysis
Evaluating reliability in quantitative vocabulary studies
Recent methodological advances have been used to create word lists based on large corpora. The present paper explores whether these corpora — and the associated lists — are unequivocally more representative. Corpus design considerations have usually focused on issues of external representativeness (representing the target discourse domain), while disregarding issues of internal representativeness (whether the corpus permits reliable descriptions …
Lexico-grammatical stance in Spanish news reportage
The small South American country of Ecuador has recently come to international attention for perceived threats to journalistic freedom: first a major defamation lawsuit against El Universo (filed in March 2011) for unfounded criticisms of President Correa, and more recently passage of a highly controversial law of communications in June, 2013. Due to these developments, there is reason to believe that media reportage in Ecuador will currently be …
Pay Attention to the Phrasal Structures
If you look at
Journal Article If you look at ...: Lexical Bundles in University Teaching and Textbooks Get access Douglas Biber, Douglas Biber Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Susan Conrad, Susan Conrad Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Viviana Cortes Viviana Cortes Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Applied Linguistics, Volume 25, Issue 3, Sept…
Should We Use Characteristics of Conversation to Measure Grammatical Complexity in L2 Writing Development
Studies of L2 writing development usually measure T‐units and clausal subordination to assess grammatical complexity, assuming that increased subordination is typical of advanced writing. In this article we challenge this practice by showing that these measures are much more characteristic of conversation than academic writing. The article begins with a critical evaluation of T‐units and clausal subordination as measures of writing development, a…
Adverbial stance types in English
The present paper identifies various speech styles of English as marked by stance adver‐bials. By stance we mean the overt expression of an author's or speaker's attitudes, feelings, judgments, or commitment concerning the message. Adverbials are one of the primary lexical markers of stance in English, and we limit ourselves in this paper to adverbial marking of stance (the attitudinal and style disjuncts presented in Quirk, Green‐baum, Leech, & …
Spoken and Written Textual Dimensions in English
Although similarities and differences between speech and writing have often been studied, contradictory claims concerning the linguistic relationship between the two modes are still common. These contradictions can arise from basing global conclusions on restricted methodologies—such as assigning undue weight to individual linguistic features, or to choice of particular text samples and text types. The present study uses a ‘multi-feature/multi-di…
A corpus-driven approach to formulaic language in English
The present study utilizes a corpus-driven approach to identify the most common multi-word patterns in conversation and academic writing, and to investigate the differing pattern types in the two registers. The paper first surveys the methodological characteristics of corpus-driven research and then contrasts the linguistic characteristics of two types of multi-word sequences: ‘multi-word lexical collocations’ (combinations of content words) vers…
Speaking and Writing in the University
The dozens of studies on academic discourse carried out over the past 20 years have mostly focused on written academic prose (usually the technical research article in science or medicine) or on academic lectures. Other registers that may be more important for students adjusting to university life, such as textbooks, have received surprisingly little attention, and spoken registers such as study groups or on-campus service encounters have been vi…
Historical patterns for the grammatical marking of stance
English has a rich supply of grammatical devices used to express “stance”: epistemic or attitudinal comments on propositional information. The present paper explores historical change in the preferred devices used to mark stance. By examining the entire system of stance devices, the study attempts to investigate the underlying patterns of change. Three major patterns are possible: 1) changes in social norms could result in speakers and writers ex…
A typology of English texts
Why has this article been so influential?Well, a glib response might be that I was brash in my choice of a title, and the editors allowed me to get away with it!Although at least I didn't claim to be presenting the typology of English texts!But seriously, I think the article was highly innovative for its time in its methodology, and that it made important descriptive and theoretical contributions to the study of text typologies.Methodologically, …
Sociolinguistic perspectives on register
Drift and the Evolution of English Style
The present study uses a multidimensional approach to trace the historical evolution of written genres of English. We briefly present a model of stylistic variation developed in our previous work, focusing on three empirically defined dimensions of linguistic variation that are associated with differences among ‘literate’ and ‘oral’ varieties: ‘Informational versus Involved Production’; ‘Elaborated versus Situation-Dependent Reference’; and ‘Abst…
Strategies of Discourse Comprehension
Longman grammar of spoken and written English
On the complexity of discourse complexity
The present study uses a theory‐based statistical approach to investigate the dimensions of discourse complexity in English, analyzing the distribution of 33 surface linguistic markers of complexity across 23 spoken and written registers. The study shows that discourse complexity is a multidimensional construct, that different types of structural elaboration reflect different discourse functions, and that different kinds of texts are complex in d…
On the (non)utility of Juilland’s D to measure lexical dispersion in large corpora
This paper explores the effectiveness of Juilland’s D as a measure of vocabulary dispersion in large corpora. Through a series of experiments using the BNC, we explored the influence of three variables: the number of corpus-parts used for the computation of D , the frequency of the target word, and the distributions of those words. The experiments demonstrate that the effective range for D is greatly reduced when computations are based on a large…
Toward more accountability
Whereas the alternation between the s -genitive ( the New Year's message ) and the of -genitive ( the message of the New Year ) is well documented, our study offers a more accountable analysis of genitive variation by including noun-noun (NN)-genitives ( the New Year message ). We consider four different variable contexts ( s versus of , NN versus of , NN versus s , and NN versus s versus of ), which we analyze using regression analysis. The data…
A Textual Comparison of British and American Writing
M ANY AMERICANS REGARD BRITISH ENGLISH as more formal and proper than American English, while the British in turn consider American English to be markedly informal and relaxed. Observers commonly attribute these attitudes to differences in pronunciation, which are the most readily apparent distinctions between the two dialects. Correspondingly, nearly all linguistic comparisons of British and American English have focussed on phonological feature…
Investigating macroscopic textual variation through multifeature/multidimensional analyses
Towards a taxonomy of conversational discourse types
Evaluating reliability in quantitative vocabulary studies
Recent methodological advances have been used to create word lists based on large corpora. The present paper explores whether these corpora — and the associated lists — are unequivocally more representative. Corpus design considerations have usually focused on issues of external representativeness (representing the target discourse domain), while disregarding issues of internal representativeness (whether the corpus permits reliable descriptions …
Lexical frames in academic prose and conversation
While lexical bundles research identifies continuous sequences (e.g. the end of the, I don’t know if), researchers have also been interested in discontinuous sequences in which words form a ‘frame’ surrounding a variable slot (e.g. I don’t * to, it is * to). To date, most research has focused on a few intuitively-selected frames, or has begun with frequent continuous sequences and then analyzed those to identify associated frames. Few previous st…
Linguistic Perspectives on Register
Language users change their written and spoken language according to the situational characteristics and communicative purpose of production—that is, according to the register being produced. Research on registers has focused on register description or patterns of register variation, on detailed analysis of individual linguistic features or an account for the use of a broad range of linguistic features, and on the distinction between written and …
Lexical dispersion and corpus design
Lexical dispersion is typically measured across arbitrary corpus parts of equal size. In this study, we apply D A – a new dispersion index designed for unequal-sized corpus parts – to the British National Corpus (BNC) in a series of cases studies to show that the dispersion of a word is strongly influenced by the corpus units or parts it is measured across. Our results show that dispersion should be measured and interpreted based on corpus units …
A Register Perspective on Grammar and Discourse
This article explores the importance of register variation for analyses of grammar and discourse. The general theme is illustrated through consideration of variability in the form and use of English complement clauses. First, the patterns of use for four related grammatical constructions are considered: that-clauses and to-clauses, headed by verbs and by nouns. The differing discourse functions of each construction type are explored by considerin…
Dimensions of register variation in Somali
The present study uses a multidimensional approach to analyze the linguistic characteristics of Somali spoken and written registers. Somali is unusual in that it has a very short history of literacy (only since 1973), but at present it has a wide range of written and spoken registers, including governmental, educational, and public information uses. It thus represents a very different language type from previously described languages. We analyze …
Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics by Paul Baker Corpus and Sociolinguistics
The Lexical Representation of Contour Tones
The Historical Reconstruction of Southern Cushitic Phonology and Vocabulary
Differential competence in Somali
Central Somali
The canonically anomalous shape of Syriac verb ekah 'to find' is shown to result from a convergence of diachronic pressures on an intersection of phonological weak spots and morphosyntactic imbalance. The effect of the changes is a trade-off of morphosyntactic defectiveness for moderate phonological anomaly. The developmental hypothesis adopted underscores the importance both of multiple factors in diachronic change and of homeostasis in linguist…
The Waata Dialect of Oromo
Man and Mankind
Pragmatic roles in central Somali narrative discourse
This paper compares the marking of pragmatic roles in Central Somali oral narrative discourse and elicited question-answer pairs to illustrate the claim that information structure must be studied within the context of particular discourse genres. The study of pragmatic roles in Central Somali is especially interesting because clause-level focus is explicitly marked through the particle yaa. The functions of this particle in elicitation question-a…
Early Reading Acquisition
On the Surface of Discourse
Investigating macroscopic textual variation through multifeature/multidimensional analyses
Strategies of Discourse Comprehension
Spoken and Written Textual Dimensions in English
Although similarities and differences between speech and writing have often been studied, contradictory claims concerning the linguistic relationship between the two modes are still common. These contradictions can arise from basing global conclusions on restricted methodologies—such as assigning undue weight to individual linguistic features, or to choice of particular text samples and text types. The present study uses a ‘multi-feature/multi-di…
Computers in Linguistics
A Textual Comparison of British and American Writing
M ANY AMERICANS REGARD BRITISH ENGLISH as more formal and proper than American English, while the British in turn consider American English to be markedly informal and relaxed. Observers commonly attribute these attitudes to differences in pronunciation, which are the most readily apparent distinctions between the two dialects. Correspondingly, nearly all linguistic comparisons of British and American English have focussed on phonological feature…
Variation across Speech and Writing
Similarities and differences between speech and writing have been the subject of innumerable studies, but until now there has been no attempt to provide a unified linguistic analysis of the whole range of spoken and written registers in English. In this widely acclaimed empirical study, Douglas Biber uses computational techniques to analyse the linguistic characteristics of twenty three spoken and written genres, enabling identification of the ba…
Adverbial stance types in English
The present paper identifies various speech styles of English as marked by stance adver‐bials. By stance we mean the overt expression of an author's or speaker's attitudes, feelings, judgments, or commitment concerning the message. Adverbials are one of the primary lexical markers of stance in English, and we limit ourselves in this paper to adverbial marking of stance (the attitudinal and style disjuncts presented in Quirk, Green‐baum, Leech, & …
Styles of stance in English
Somali-English Dictionary
Drift and the Evolution of English Style
The present study uses a multidimensional approach to trace the historical evolution of written genres of English. We briefly present a model of stylistic variation developed in our previous work, focusing on three empirically defined dimensions of linguistic variation that are associated with differences among ‘literate’ and ‘oral’ varieties: ‘Informational versus Involved Production’; ‘Elaborated versus Situation-Dependent Reference’; and ‘Abst…
Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area
Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties
Frequency Analysis of English Vocabulary and Grammar
The computational analysis of English
Factor Analysis of Linguistic Variables in Speech and Writing
Dimensions of register variation in Somali
The present study uses a multidimensional approach to analyze the linguistic characteristics of Somali spoken and written registers. Somali is unusual in that it has a very short history of literacy (only since 1973), but at present it has a wide range of written and spoken registers, including governmental, educational, and public information uses. It thus represents a very different language type from previously described languages. We analyze …
Linguistics (77 obras) · Computer Science (60 obras) · Philosophy (44 obras) · Psychology (38 obras) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (35 obras) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (29 obras) · Natural language processing (28 obras) · Second Language Acquisition and Learning (22 obras) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (21 obras) · Sociology (20 obras)