ABSTRACT
Historically, grammar has been based on received knowledge and prescription of paradigms. With the advent of digital tools and language databases (corpora) within the field of corpus linguistics (CL), there has been a move away from prescription to a more descriptive view of how grammar is really used in English. Since the 1980s, as data storage capacity has increased, the size of language corpora has grown exponentially, to the point, nowadays, where cloud-based storage removes the limits of sample size. Within CL, there has been a steady flow of work focusing on grammar, both of first language and second language users. One of the main findings in the body of research from CL has been the clarity brought to the differences between ‘spoken grammar’ and ‘written grammar’. Corpora have also allowed for the tracking of diachronic change in grammatical patterns (e.g. reduction in the use of shall as a modal verb, or the changing patterns of reported speech). A number of detailed empirical grammar descriptions have also emerged from the use of CL in the study and description of grammar. These in time will become baselines for quantifying language change. These corpus-based grammars have also provided better-informed pedagogical materials for language learners and the study of learner grammar has also received attention by corpus linguists. Over the years, in the field of English language teaching (ELT), an intuitive and tacit understanding has been in place as to what grammar learners of English should be taught at each level. The notion of level itself has also been implicitly understood within the community of ELT practitioners. The advent of corpus-based research and the development of learner corpora has allowed for studies to be undertaken into the grammar that learners really use. Initially, learner grammar was studied in terms of contrastive analysis between the learners’ L1 grammar patterns and the grammar patterns of the L2. More recently, work on learner grammar has focused on learner grammar competency across language learning levels (as described within the Common European Framework of Reference for Language). Within this research paradigm, learner grammar is looked at in terms of what grammar competencies learners ‘can do’ across each level of language learning. This chapter will showcase an example of this, as well as work on the grammar of L1 users.
