ABSTRACT
This paper utilizes a corpus-driven approach in examining the multifunctional English quasi-modal auxiliary be able to. With consideration to previous studies that have connected be able to to the usage categories “ability” (e.g. Hermerén 1978) “ability” and “permission” (e.g. Facchinetti 2000) or the aforementioned along with “possibility” (e.g. Coates 1983) this study draws on data from the British National Corpus (BNC) to investigate the uses and frequencies for be able to (sample of 400 tokens from 29904 tokens of be able to in the 100-million-token BNC). Through manual coding of instances inclusive of expanded context the multifunctional uses of be able to are identified comprising additional usage categories to what has been found in previous studies.
Next with a focus on English language learners the English language coursebook series New Headway (NH) is used to investigate how the 76 tokens of be able to in the 441760-token NH are presented in these texts focusing on the frequencies and uses of be able to in each of the coursebook levels from beginner to advanced. Through comparison of both data sources this study identifies similarities and differences in the representation of be able to with the most salient difference being the lack of context surrounding instances of be able to in NH. Finally it is the aim of this study that these corpus-driven findings will inform classroom pedagogy; therefore pedagogical recommendations are made for English language instructors.
