Grammar and vocabulary:

showing the connections

Susan Hunston, Gill Francis, and
Elizabeth Manning
Although grammar and vocabulary are traditionally thought of as separate
areas of language teaching, new work on word patterns suggests that they
can usefully be combined. All words can be shown to have patterns, and
words which have the same pattern tend to share aspects of meaning. The
patterns V by -ing' and 'V as n' illustrate this. We suggest that language
teachers focus on patterns as a way of encouraging four crucial aspects of
language learning: understanding, accuracy, fluency, and flexibility. Patterns contribute to the teaching of both grammar and vocabulary. They
can form a part of any syllabus, but are most logically associated with a
lexical syllabus.
Introduction

It is common to see grammar and vocabulary as separate areas of

language teaching and learning. Many coursebooks have separate
sections on grammar and vocabulary; syllabuses list grammatical
structures and key vocabulary items separately; students are described
as being 'good at grammar' but having a 'limited vocabulary', or vice
versa; grammar and vocabulary are often tested separately.
Traditionally, language courses were organized around a set of
grammatical points, with vocabulary selected to support the topic of
each course unit. More recently, the importance of vocabulary has been
widely recognized, and word frequency has been used as the organizing
principle of language teaching courses (see, for example, Willis 1990,
Lewis 1993), with grammar brought in as support where necessary.
Where grammar and vocabulary meet in most courses is in units which,
for example, list the particular verbs which are typically followed either
by a to-infinitive, a present participle, or both. For example, learners
must learn that appear and manage are followed by a to-infinitive only;
that finish and suggest are followed by a present participle only; that
begin and like are followed by either form, with roughly the same
meaning; but that forget, remember, stop, and try have different
meanings when used with each form. This approach to the grammar
of individual words, which we call 'patterns', can be extended far beyond
these traditional observations. Focusing on patterns can, we believe,
provide a more comprehensive and useful description of English than
has been available to teachers up to now. What is so new about this work
is that it does not rely on a distinction between grammar and vocabulary,
but provides connections between the two.

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Our work on patterns is based upon a detailed and extensive

examination of the 250 million-word Bank of English corpus at Cobuild.
There are two main points about patterns to be made: firstly, that all
words can be described in terms of patterns; secondly, that words which
share patterns also share meanings.
Words and their
patterns

All words belonging to the main word classes can be described in terms
of the pattern(s) that they typically occur with. Sometimes this
description is extremely simple. For example, the verb eat, meaning
the action of chewing and swallowing, is found with two simple patterns:
it occurs on its own ('He ate') or with a noun group following it ('He ate
a banana'). We label these two patterns 'V and 'V n' respectively.
In other cases, where patterns are quite lengthy and include a number of
elements, the description is more complicated. This is especially true of
patterns which begin with an introductory it (sometimes called
'impersonal if or a 'dummy' subject). For example, the verb expect
has the pattern shown by this example:
It is expected that the new owner will change the yacht's name.
The verb is passive, with an introductory it as subject, and is followed by
a that-clause. The pattern is 'it be V-ed that'.
The adjective easy has the pattern shown by this example:
It's easy to get a seat at the best shows in town.
It is followed by a link verb, the adjective, and a to-infinitive. The
pattern is 'it v-link adj to-inf.
Some senses of some words have several patterns. For example, the
sense of dictate that means 'tell someone what to do' has these patterns:
a. He dictated his wife's appearance and behaviour.
The verb is followed by a noun group. The pattern is 'V n'.
b. He cannot be allowed to dictate what can and cannot be inspected.
The verb is followed by a wh-clause. The pattern is 'V wh'.
c. What gives him the right to dictate to us what we can eat?
The verb is followed by the preposition to, a noun group, and a whclause. The pattern is 'V to n wh'.
d. They were more or less able to dictate terms to successive
governments.
The verb is followed by a noun group, the preposition to, and another
noun group. The pattern is 'V n to n'.
e. The rules of court dictate that a defendant is entitled to all evidence
that may help his case.
The verb is followed by a that-clause. The pattern is 'V that'.
Although some senses of some words have several patterns, some senses
have only one pattern and are identified by it. This means that a word
only means a particular thing when it is used with a particular pattern.
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For example, the verb eat has a sense which indicates whether the food
you commonly eat is good for you, bad for you, or sufficient for you.
This sense has the pattern 'verb followed by adverb', or 'V adv', as in 'I
eat healthily' or 'We ate well'. To take a second example, the noun face
has a sense which means roughly the same as 'aspect', as in 'the
acceptable face of the Cambodian government', 'the public face of
Christianity', or 'the ugly face of Western authoritarianism'. This pattern
can be represented as 'the adj N ofri, and only this sense of face has this
pattern.
It is also true in a more general sense that words with several senses
often have different patterns in the different senses (Sinclair 1991). For
example, the verb reflect is identified in the Collins Cobuild English
Dictionary (1995) as having six meanings. Each meaning has its own
particular set of patterns, as Table 1 shows.
Table 1: Senses of reflect

Meaning

Example

Pattern

1 Show that an attitude

or situation exists

The riots reflected the

bitterness between the
two communities.

Vn

2 Light or heat bounces

off a surface

The sun reflected off the

snow-covered mountains.

V prep
(Verb followed by
prepositional phrase)

The glass reflects light

naturally.

Vn

3 Image can be seen in a

mirror or water

His image seemed to be

reflected many times in
the mirror.

be V-ed

4 Think deeply about

something

We should all give ourselves time to reflect.

I reflected on the child's
future.

V on/upon n

5 A thought occurs to
someone

He reflected that he ought

to write a line to Veronica.

Vthat
(Verb followed by thatclause)

6 Give a good or bad

impression

The affair hardly reflected

well on the British.

V adv on n
(Verb followed by an
adverb and a prepositional phrase beginning
with on)

Your behaviour reflects

on the school itself.

V on n

Patterns and their

meaning

It may appear that in proposing a focus on patterns, we are suggesting an

unreasonable additional load upon learners already struggling to
remember large amounts of vocabulary and understand detailed
grammatical systems such as tense usage. The ways that verbs, for
instance, differ from each other appears to add complexity of an
arbitrary kind to an already full learning syllabus. For example, tell is
followed by a noun group and a to-infinitive ('He told her to go');
suggest is followed by a that-clause; apologize is followed by for, warn is

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followed by of, grumble is followed by about, consider is followed by two

noun groups ('Many people consider her a saint'), but if you use the verb
regard there has to be a preposition as before the second noun group
('Did they regard him as a spy'?). The amount of information that the
learner has to amass about each verb seems to be enormous.
The load upon the language learner is not as great as it looks, however,
because the association between word and pattern is not random.
Groups of words that share patterns also tend to share aspects of
meaning. This becomes apparent if, instead of taking a few examples of
verbs with different patterns, as we have done above, we concentrate on
a single pattern and look at all the verbs that have that pattern. The
common aspects of meaning then become obvious.
For example, about 20 verbs have the pattern 'V by -ing', where the verb
is followed by the preposition by and an -ing clause. Some sentences
with this pattern are:
She started off by breeding budgerigars and cockatiels.
In hot, dry and windy weather, water evaporates from the leaves of
plants which in turn compensate by taking more up through their
roots.
Their aim is to profit by buying replacement shares later at a lower
price.
Most of the verbs with this pattern fall into two meaning groups. They
mean either 'start' or 'finish' {begin, close, end,finish,finishoff,finishup,
open, start, start off, start out); or 'respond to or compensate for
something' {atone, compensate, counter, react, reciprocate, reply,
respond, retaliate). Two other verbs {live and profit) are to do with
gaining resources.
Another example is the pattern 'V at n', where the verb is followed by
the preposition at and a noun group. There are many verbs (over 200)
with this pattern, but again they fall into recognizable meaning groups.
Here are some of the most important:
The first four groups are concerned with communicating with, looking
at, or responding to someone or something.
1 verbs meaning 'shout' or 'make a noise'
These include: bark, bellow, growl, hiss, jeer, laugh, rage, scream, shout,
snap, swear, whistle, yell; and the phrasal verbs blow up, go on, and keep
on, for example
One time Dorothy and Roy had a big argument. She was screaming at
him and threw a chair at him.
2 verbs meaning 'make a facial expression or gesture'
These include verbs meaning 'smile': beam, grin, leer, smile, smirk; verbs
meaning 'frown': frown, grimace, scowl; and other verbs such as blink,
nod, wave, and wink, for example:
Alice was behind the counter and I winked at her without speaking.
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3 verbs meaning 'look'

These include gaze, glance, glare, look, peep, peer, stare, for example:
I stared at him in shock as I realized he was right.
4 verbs meaning 'react'
These include verbs indicating pleasure or humour: chuckle, laugh,
rejoice, thrill; verbs indicating anger: fume, protest, rage; verbs indicating
sorrow or fear: despair, grieve, quail, shudder; verbs indicating distaste:
grumble, scoff, sneer, wince; verbs indicating awe or surprise: exclaim,
marvel, wonder, for example:
Peter shuddered at the notion of those two idiots controlling a missile.
The next three groups are concerned with physical actions, usually
involving force or violence.
5 verbs meaning 'hit' or 'take hold'
These include claw, clutch, dab, grab, grasp, hit out, knock, lash out,
pluck, prod, pull, slash, snatch, stab, swipe, tear, thrash, tug, for example:
He pulled away from me and I was left with a stick in my hands and in
anger I hit out at him.
6 verbs meaning 'eat' or 'eat away'
These include chew, chip away, eat away, gnaw, nibble, peck, pick, suck,
whittle away, for example:
I ate like a mouse, nibbling at a sandwich, drinking a little juice.
7 verbs meaning 'attack' or 'hurry towards someone'
These include aim, fire, shoot, spit, strike; and come, fly, rush, for
example:
During the dramatic car chase, the gunmen fired at the police cars,
injuring one of the policemen slightly in the foot.
There is another group of verbs that are used, when talking about
amounts of money or other measurable values. With these verbs, the
noun group after at always indicates an amount of something.
8 verbs meaning 'have a particular numerical value'
These include verbs that indicate that something always has a particular
value, such as average out, retail, run, sell, stand, work out; and verbs that
indicate that something begins or ends with a particular value, such as
bottom out, close, finish, level out, open, peak, stabilize, for example:
Some flights to popular resorts work out at as little as 20 pence a mile.
And there are two other groups of verbs.
9 verbs meaning 'work'
These are beaver away, toil, toil away, work, work away, for example:
Sinead attempted an extraordinarily difficult song. She worked at it
and gave a very good performance.
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10 verbs meaning 'want to do something' or 'don't want to do

something'
These are jump, leap; and balk, jib, for example:
She jumped at the chance to appear in the movie.
The resources now exist to provide the teacher with ready-made lists of
patterns and the words that have those patterns. Using the Collins
Cobuild English Dictionary (1995) database, and focusing on verbs, we
have been able to list for each verb pattern all the verbs which have that
pattern reasonably frequently in the 250 million-word Bank of English.
We have also been able to show further pattern details, such as, for the
pattern 'V at n', which verbs often have an -ing clause following at,
instead of a noun group, for example:
The government balked at granting the prisoners amnesty for crimes
of violence.
Well over 100 verb patterns have been dealt with in this way.
Patterns and the
language teacher

Why do we recommend that the language teacher focus on patterns as

an important aspect of grammar and vocabulary? We suggest that
patterns are essential to four crucial aspects of language learning:
understanding, accuracy, fluency, and flexibility.

Promoting Because patterns are used with words that share aspects of meaning,
understanding those patterns can themselves be seen as having meaning. This in turn is
useful for a learner who, for example, is trying to guess the meaning of
an unknown word in context. For instance, a learner coming across the
sentence
This work has been hailed as an important step in trying to understand
how life evolved
may not know the word 'hail'. The learner may, however, be familiar
with the pattern 'V n as n' (passive 'be V-ed as n') as used with verbs
such as announce, classify, describe, interpret, label, portray, proclaim,
and regard. If the learner is guided towards using the pattern as a
contextual clue to meaning, he or she may be able to deduce the broad
meaning of 'hail' before perhaps checking its exact meaning in a
dictionary.
Some patterns have such a clear meaning of their own that even when
unusual verbs are used with them, the overall meaning is clear. For
example, the pattern 'V n into -ing' is usually used with verbs such as
blackmail, bribe, charm, coerce, deceive, flatter, fool, force, frighten,
galvanize, manoeuvre, provoke, talk, trick, for example:
She charmed the town fathers into letting her plant bulbs along our
village streets.
He forced a junior official into allowing him to telephone the
president.
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The meaning of the pattern is that someone does something as a result

of the persuasion, charm, or trickery of someone else. Even when a verb
with a very different meaning is used in this pattern, the meaning of the
pattern remains the same. For example, in the Bank of English, the verb
debate is used only once with this pattern, but anyone knowing the
pattern can understand the sentence.
I [worked at improving my mind] as if by doing so I could debate him
into loving me.
Promoting accuracy A knowledge of which patterns are used with which words is essential to
the accurate use of English. Teachers can help raise learners' awareness
of patterns in at least three ways: by asking them to identify given
patterns in texts used in reading classes; by giving (short) lists of words
that share a pattern and asking learners to identify for themselves the
meaning groups; and, if learners have access to English outside the
classroom, by asking them to look and listen for a particular pattern over
a given period of time, noting the words it is used with.
Adopting a 'pattern approach' to vocabulary can lead to more helpful
recording of new vocabulary by learners, as verbs can be grouped
according to their pattern(s) as well as according to their meaning.
Learners are then encouraged to learn the new vocabulary item as part
of a phrase (such as 'he balked at doing something') rather than as an
individual item. This in turn encourages accurate use of the new item
later.
Promoting fluency Fluencythe ability to produce substantial stretches of language
without an undue number of hesitations or false startscan be helped
if the learner has access to a mental lexicon consisting of more or less
ready-made 'chunks' of language. Several writers have suggested lists of
phrases which it is useful for the learner to learn as extended vocabulary
items (see, for example, Pawley and Syder 1983; Nattinger and
DeCarrico 1992). The notion of words and their patterns takes the
'ready-made chunk' principle a good deal further, because it accounts
for a lot more language. Some of the more complex verb patterns, for
example, structure quite long stretches of language, and so can support
fluent output. Table 2 shows some examples.
Also, language can be seen as 'flowing' from the pattern associated with
one word to the pattern associated with another, and so on. For
example, an utterance such as
He understood that she wanted to quarrel with him
is made up of three verb patterns: V that (understood that) + V to-inf
(wanted to quarrel) + V with n (quarrel with him). Learners who
remember patterns as phrases associated with particular words can link
the patterns together with fluency.
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Table 2: Some longer

patterns

Always

They

Promoting flexibility

Table 3: Several ways to

express an idea

Conclusion

V
verb group

n
noun group

about

n
noun group

see

a doctor

about

hearing loss

V
verb group

it

adj
adjective group

that
that clause

find

it

astonishing

that he has made no

attempt to talk to
them.

there

V
verb group

n
iloun group

prep/adv
prepositional phrase or
adverb group

There

was

a fat baby

in the pram.

Words that share a pattern often share aspects of meaning. However,

the converse is not true: one area of meaning is not expressed by only
one pattern. By introducing vocabulary and pattern together, teachers
can encourage learners to develop flexibility in expressing ideas. For
example, to describe someone as liking an idea, we might use any one of
the patterns shown in Table 3.
Pattern

Example

Vn
V ton
Vn n
Vnadj
V n as adj

She
She
She
She
She

liked the idea.

warmed to the idea.
thought the idea a cracker.
considered the idea brilliant.
regarded the idea as brilliant.

In short, then, we argue that patterns are the building blocks of

language, and that they eradicate the artificial divide between
vocabulary and grammar that impoverishes the teaching of both. Each
word has its associated patterns, and it is these patterns that go together
to make idiomatic English. Patterns are not simply idiosyncracies of
form: they also have meaning.
Patterns can form an integral part of a structural or notional syllabus,
but their association with lexis make them a natural accompaniment to a
lexical approach. They can be seen as putting the grammatical 'flesh' on
to the 'bones' of a lexical syllabus.
Received April 1996

Patterns in grammar and vocabulary

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References
Lewis, M. 1993. The Lexical Approach. Hove:
Language Teaching Publications.
Nattinger, J. and J. DeCarrico. 1992. Lexical
Phrases and Language Teaching. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Pawley, A. and F.H. Syder. 1983. 'Two puzzles for
linguistic theory: nativelike selection and nativelike fluency' in J.C. Richards and R.W. Schmidt
(eds.). Language and Communication. London:
Longman.
Sinclair, J.M. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Willis, D. 1990. The Lexical Syllabus. London:
HarperCollins.
The authors
Susan Hunston is a lecturer in applied linguistics
at the University of Birmingham. She was

216

formerly a senior grammarian at Cobuild, and

worked on the grammar information in the Collins
Cobuild English Dictionary (1995). Her main
interests are the study of grammar through
corpora, and evaluation in discourse.
Gill Francis is a senior grammarian at Cobuild,
and worked on the grammar information in the
Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995). She
has published a monograph on lexical cohesion,
and several papers on discourse analysis.
Elizabeth Manning is a senior lexicographer at
Cobuild. She has worked on many Cobuild
publications, including the Collins Cobuild English Grammar (1996). She was senior editor of
Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995) and
Collins Cobuild English Usage (1996).

Susan Hunston, Gill Francis, and Elizabeth Manning