English Grammar (COBUILD)

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Summary: A new kind of pedagogic grammar
Review: The editors, working within the framework of the COBUILD project, have put together an excellent study aid for advanced learners of English and for teachers of English as a foreign language. The departure point for this book was the 100 million word electronic corpus of texts of the COBUILD project. These texts, representative of the language, were analyzed for frequency of words and for their patterning. The grammar is the second main work which resulted from this initiative by Birmingham University and Collins, the other being a Dictionary. All the examples in the book are taken from this enormous database, and there are 'real' rather than made up to illustrate a point. The other useful feature is boxes of words that behave like the point under discussion. This allows users to 'do things' with the langauge rather than just understand it.