ABSTRACT
This chapter considers why individual language users and researchers may find it difficult to identify patterns. A pattern is essentially repetition. A symbol may occur once only: but when it occurs twice or more it becomes a minimal pattern. The identification of pattern in a corpus implies a connection between theory, method and technique. To summarise: observing pattern in concordance lines essentially involves grouping those lines together. Expanding the concordance lines allows ambiguities to be resolved. In short, obtaining a manageable sample of concordance lines for a very frequent word can make it difficult to observe patterns reliably. The dominant pattern is indeed an anticipatory it and an evaluative adjective. For example, expanding the lines where view is followed by that shows that there are two distinct patterns – view + appositive clause and view + relative clause: The chapter has made some assumptions about the notion of 'frequency'; some of these will be made explicit.
