ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on complement clauses to compare the kinds of grammatical information presented in traditional grammars/textbooks with the actual patterns of use discovered from corpus analysis of native and L2 student texts. It summarizes traditional descriptions of complement clauses from both reference grammars and ESL/EFL textbooks and presents empirical results about the language use patterns for each type of complement clause, comparing native English registers to L2 student essays. The chapter examined the two structural variants for that-clauses, considering the extent to which that is omitted in native vs. learner texts and the grammatical factors favouring omission in both cases. At the same time, there were major differences found in the distribution of structural types. Both corpora were automatically tagged, using the grammatical tagger developed by Biber for multi-dimensional analyses of register variation, this tagger has been modified and extended for analyses relating to the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English.
