Chapter Four: The study of the lexical items in the British National Corpus

The objective of this chapter is to present the procedure and results of the study of the lexical items on the basis of the BNC. One hundred concordance lines have been examined for the words except for befall, eventuate and pass off in order to establish what different meanings the corpus provides regarding each lexical item. Appendixes E, F and G demonstrate the output of the research illustrated with a number of examples of the concordances.

4. 1. Happen, befall and occur

The first lexical item to be introduced is happen. Eight different meanings have been distinguished here on the basis of the corpus-based analysis, whereas the dictionaries include only six. One hundred random selections were studied from 8512 concordance lines the BNC contains. These concordances are concrete examples for happen taken from various collections of sources whether they are spoken or written language. The high number of concordances containing happen indicate the vast frequency of the lexical item in English language. For one search fifty random lines are free-available from the corpus at once. Therefore, as a result of two searches one hundred lines can randomly be gained to conduct the corpus-based study.

The eight different meanings of happen are listed below in the order of their frequency on the basis of the one hundred concordance lines gained at random from the BNC. The abbreviations in brackets indicate the sources where the concordances are taken from. In the first three examples the complete source indicated by the abbreviations is presented:

Take place (23 references):
“I haven’t tried adding additional globules so I’ve no idea what would happen.” (AN1 666: LM Potencies. Tomlinson, John; Schore, R M; Dey, S P. Norfolk: The Homeopathic Supply Company, 1991, pp.??. 691 s-units, 15650 words)

Take place in a particular way (7 references):

“Lee (1992) discusses the ways in which this might happen.” (F9T 1890: Curricula for Diversity in Education. Swann, W; Booth, T; Masterton, M; Potts, P. London: Routtledge & Kegan, Paul pic, 1992, pp 9-113. 22978 s-units, 42204 words)

Take place at a particular time (4 references):

“That will happen in a few days.” (J1H 2141: [Leeds United e-mail list]. u. p., n. d., pp.??. 4079 s-units, 46681 words)

Take place at a particular place (2 references):

“The reverse tends to be the case with Ventura which is both extremely complex as a program and is further hampered by a user interface that is not exactly a model of the way things happen in the real world.” (G00 1069)

Take place, especially without being planned, occur (18 references):
“But if the worst did happen, the necessary condition for a depression; a dramatic collapse of economic confidence, and the inability of governments to restore it; might well be met.” (ABD 2332)

With accident: “And when did these accidents happen?” (FPL 267)

Take place as a result of something (17 references):
“Tends to happen”- ”The other thing that tends to happen in post Olympic years is people look at rule books and different types of competition and there is a sort of atmosphere of I think we ought to change this.” (J3W 57)

“Has been known to happen”- “Each change introduces other variants of how to do the job, seldom if ever a total change of direction, although even has been known to happen.” (EA8 883)

Go on (11 references):
“Continue to happen”- ”As we can now see this is exactly what has happened and what will continue to happen as we continue to expand educational activities alongside the many practical projects which compete for scarce resources.” (HJM 676)

Happen to - have an effect on somebody or something (9 references):
“The model behaves so much like the real thing that the Berkeley scientists believe they can predict what would happen to the building during an earthquake.” (B7L 1224)

Happen to - to do something by chance (4 references):
“And perhaps RTI: I happen to know that Joe’s been very impressed with your work.” (GUU 4039)

To put something into practice, to realise something (4 references):
“Make it happen” - “Douglas McIldoon, of the EC said: This document demonstrates that you have come a long way in this region and it will give us great pleasure in working with you to make it happen.” (K3G 379)

“Anything can happen” - it is not possible to know what the results will be. (1 reference):
“And on those points where they’re not continuous, anything can happen.” (GYX 1206)

To make the results more clear, some further examples of the concordances representing the different meanings of happen are presented in Appendix E.

References to the meanings gained from the concordances such as “go on” and “realise something” are not involved in the dictionaries, whereas only one phrasal verb (“happen to”) and one expression with happen (“anything can happen”) occur in the corpus.

The following lexical item is “befall”. In this case the researcher cannot find more than seventy-four lines in the corpus. The few number of lines refer to the low frequency of befall in the language. That is why seventy-four concordance lines the BNC includes have been studied to point out the different meanings of befall. Based on the analysis, from the seventy-four lines fifty-three have a reference to its meaning such as “something bad, unpleasant or dangerous to happen”, whereas only one line refers to “something good happening”. Furthermore, three concordances include the third meaning of befall that is “events happening at a particular time or place”. Thirteen further lines have a reference to the following meaning such as “to happen to somebody as if by fate”. Eventually, three expressions with befall in four concordances were found during the corpus-based analysis.

The references of the seventy-four lines gained from the corpus to the meanings of befall represent the following order of their frequency:

Something unpleasant, dangerous or bad happening to somebody (53 references):
“For his own good she frequently reminded him of the horrors and deprivations that would befall him.” (ACW 739)

“Think of the cataclysmic consequences that could befall the nation if some ruthless Norwegian baker tried to foist fresh bread on people on the weekend.” (ABS 1067)

“I mean, would this be the source of many prophecies that some evil would befall the King?” (BMN 1208)

Events that happen to somebody at a particular time or place (3 references):
“There remains the more fundamental question of why it should befall a particular person at a particular time and place.” (CS0 809)

“So that you’ve got a vague idea of what’s going to befall you for the rest of the day?” (H47 146)

Something good to happen to somebody (1 reference):
“Ultimately the most memorable lines in this volume must be those penned by Bonnard to Matisse in January 1940; When I think of you, I think of a mind cleansed of every old aesthetic convention, and it is that alone that permits a direct view of nature, the greatest joy that can befall a painter.” (CKW 1231)

Happen to somebody as if by fate (13 expressions):
“Warning that a similar fate would befall other convicted killers, the interior ministry said the three, two brothers and a relative, had killed three people wounded a policeman.” (A5M 269)

“Anyone who find, Hobbes’s view intellectually attractive will easily hit upon his thesis that someone who feels pity is simply moved by the self-centred thought: that the like calamity may befall himself, and that people are benevolent only because this produces self-satisfaction. (ABM 234)

Expressions with befall (4 references):
“Let not this befall” - “I beseech ye let not this befall it at the end, for the good fortune of man is only accomplished at his end.” (ASW 649)

“What might befall” - “Who knew what might befall the car if left unattended.” (J10 2098)

Nothing terrible will befall you” - “Nothing terrible will befall you if you eat a piece of pizza; only if you exist on a diet of nothing but pizza.” (AYK 457)

Four different meanings and three expressions with befall were found, whereas the dictionaries contain only two meanings (“something bad happening to somebody” and “happen to somebody as if by fate”) and no expressions of the same lexical item.

The last lexical item to be studied in this section is “occur”. One hundred random selections from 5542 lines of the corpus were examined to be able to distinguish its different meanings. The vast number of concordances indicate the high frequency of occur in the language. On the basis of the analysis, seven different meanings of occur were found during the research. They are listed below in the order of their frequency:

Take place or exist (63 references):
At a particular place (24 references):
“Certainly thorn trees occur along leys, and planting is a way of establishing a mark with relatively little effort.” (BMT 60)

In a particular situation (23 references):
“Reflex training can occur when the mother places the baby on the potty after feeds.” (CGT 1560)

In a particular way (10 references):
“Movements occur simultaneously over many parts of the embryo with sheets of sells streaming past each other, contracting and expanding.” (ASL 161)

At a particular time (3 references):
“This is probably true of all human beings irrespective of culture and simply means that some degree of maturation of the ego must occur at around the age of seven even if the culture does not choose that moment for the installation of the superego.” (HTP 717)

Exist (3 references):
“County Durham’s old folk have a possible means of ensuring greater attention from the council, however: should reincarnation occur, they can come back as a dog in a drain.” (K54 297)

Happen (25 references):
Happen (12 references):
“Why did it occur?” (AD0 1184)

“Bound to occur”- “When human life could be expected to last two or three times as long as it had done in the Middle Ages, great changes were bound to occur in the way men thought about themselves.” (CM6 396)

Happen as a result of something (9 references):
“Might proliferation occur because the cells in question lacked the essential material and got out of control?” (ARF 996)

Happen unexpectedly (2 references):
“Check whether any part of the job is to be subcontracted and who will be liable if problems occur.” (AYP 2323)

“With accident” (2 references):
“According to a report commissioned by Greenpeace, a serious accident could occur.” (E9P 218)

Have an effect on somebody or something, be experienced by (5 references):
“This obviously does not occur with well-grown potted plants.” (C97 1157)

Occur to somebody (4 references):
Happen to somebody (3 references):
“It does not occur to the reader that the baby might have cried one year in Singapore and be picked up by its mother a year later in Aden.” (F9V 1046)

Come into mind (1 reference):
“I found out next morning that this boat was in Halfway House, but when I first saw him I had no idea he was a Moila man, and it didn’t occur to me that he would know the morning there.” (CKF 1589)

Come from, be descended from (1 reference):
“It is unlikely that Nizan was entirely duped, for example, by the Stalinist purges and Moscow trails that were to occur from 1935.” (FTW 486)

Appear (1 reference):
“It is now generally agreed that some kind of predisposition to schizophrenia is inherited, but that certain environmental factors will increase the likelihood that disorder will occur and recur.” (J14 590)

Realise something, put it into practice (1 reference):
“This receptiveness is the key feature in oestral behaviour, enabling natural mating to occur.” (EER 851)

To compare the data gained from the corpus and the dictionaries, whereas on the basis of the lines of the BNC seven different meanings and one expression of occur the researcher can establish, the dictionaries include only four of them (“happen”, “exist” or “be found somewhere”, “come into mind” and “happen to somebody”.) Appendix E gives a hand for better understanding.

4. 2. Take place, eventuate and fall

From the 3264 concordance lines one hundred selections were studied in order to find the meanings of the lexical item in the corpus. The number of lines refers to the frequent occurrence of take place in the language. Due to the analysis, fourteen different meanings of take place can be distinguished which are listed below in their frequency order:

Happen, especially after being planned, at a particular place (19 references):
“When will the BBC wake up to the possibilities open to it when covering the biggest annual golfing event to take place in Europe?” (C9E 1291)

Happen, especially after being planned (17 references):
“And if these patterns, with their changing lexical content, are never experienced except distorted or fragmented form, the necessary accommodation will not take place.” (EF8 1616)

Happen, especially after being planned, at a particular time (16 references):
“In London, volunteer training programmes will now take place every September and February and will require an individual’s time for one evening a week over a six-week programme.” (A00 226)

Happen, especially being planned, in a particular situation (9 references):
“Once they even won by default the over 40s section of a marathon race which happened to take place as they were passing.” (BMF 1505)

Happen as a result of something (9 references):
“In the Select Committee system which can report to the House, after it a full debate can take place.” (ASB 1163)

Happen, especially after being planned, in a particular way (7 references):
“They were both awed by the vastness of the forest in which so much could take place unseen.” (BMX 2019)

Be done or exist, put something into practice (6 references):
“The London Sports Council produced a report on the Abolition of ILEA and requested comments before negotiations on implementation take place.” (KAJ 1074)

Happen, something is expected to happen (6 references):
“Due to take place”- “He’ll tip us off when he knows where and when the hit is due to take place so that it can be stopped in time.” (EF1 886)

“It tends to take place” - “One unfortunate consequence of this rather cavalier approach to the notion of class by sociolinguists is that meaningful debate on the question of how linguistic variability can most pertinently be related to social structure tends not to take place.” (FRG 471)

“It will take place” - “That some community events will not take place.” (KGX 152)

Happen, especially after being planned, at a particular time and situation ( 3 references):
“Before such restorations take place, it is essential that remains of the structures are fully recorded.” (F96 1031)

Happen, especially after being planned, at a particular time, place (3 references):
“A diesel hauled rail trip, from various pick-points in the West Midlands, will take place on Saturday, 5 May, organised by Bill Morris Coaches, Bromyard.” (HHG 45)

Happen unexpectedly, without being planned (2 references):
By day, Claxby signal box is warm and friendly and it is difficult to believe that any mysterious events could take place there. (CE9 599)

Continue happening, going on (1 references):
“Continue to take place” - “In succeeding years of wartime the annual conference continued to take place, though not at the seaside and not usually for a full week.” (HP2 1398)

Happen at a particular time, place, situation (1 reference):
“This school trip was not an annual event, but a newly-organised affair, to which the school’s attention had been drawn by the tireless Miss Haines; it was to take place in Clara’s last year, when she was seventeen, a year after her father’s death.” (EFP 419)

Experience something, or be experienced by something (1 reference):
“There has been a rhythm between the small group where specialized catechesis can take place and the large group where the sense of belonging in a board and powerful manner can be experienced.” (HS7 169)

Whereas the one hundred concordances gained from the corpus distinguish fourteen different meanings of take place, the dictionaries contain references only to two basic meanings of the lexical item that are “happen” or “happen, especially after previously being arranged or planned”. Appendix F helps interpret the results of the research regarding take place.

The following lexical item to be dealt with in this part is “eventuate”. Interestingly, only six concordance lines containing eventuate are available from the BNC to be able to interpret its meanings. The very few number of concordances refers to the low frequency of eventuate in both written and spoken language. The dictionaries refer to eventuate as “happening as a result of something” or “happening at the end of a process or period of time”. However, only two of the dictionaries contain any references to it. In the corpus similarly only few pieces of information are available about eventuate. Based on their analysis, two basic meanings of the lexical item can be distinguished here: 1. “Happen at the end of a process, a period of time” (FBE 749, H9D 241). One line (FBE 840) refers to “an event happening or being realised, carried out at the end of a process”. Two further concordances (FDC 276, HHB 2554) present eventuate as “something to be done or experienced at the end of a process”. Finally, one line (FBE 987) has a reference to eventuate as “happening as a result of something”. To provide a more clear interpretation of the meanings of eventuate, the concordance lines containing the lexical item are represented in Appendix E.

The last lexical item to be presented in this part is “fall”. One hundred random selections from 10890 concordance lines of the BNC were studied to establish the meanings of the lexical item, and to find those that have references to fall as “happen”. The occurrence of fall is high in the language as it is indicated by the great number of concordances.

On the basis of the analysis, twenty-one meanings of fall can be distinguished here, but only seven meanings refer to happen. These are “happen to somebody” that is the ninth in the frequency order of the meanings with three references such as “Why do rebounds (after Lukic slaves) always fall to opposition players?” (J1E 1432) The second one (12th meaning) is “happen on a particular day or time” (14th meaning) with two references, for example “The date was subsequently brought forward to February 27th after the National Moon Sighting Committee advised the election commission that a Moslem holiday was likely to fall on March 2nd.” (HL2 307) The third one (20th meaning) is a reference to “happen at a particular place” such as “More dangerous by far are the carbon dioxide (from both sources), the oxides of nitrogen from the cars, and the oxides of sulphur from power station, that fall on distant countries.” (AMS 1663) The last one ((21st meaning) refers to “something that fails to happen” with one reference that is “I hope it doesn’t all fall through.” (KBS 652) All dictionaries also include one reference to fall as “happen”.

The further ninety-three concordance lines gained from the corpus having been analysed contain references to the following seventeen meanings of the lexical item:

(See Appendix F)

Fall: Meanings: References:
1. “Decrease, become lower in amount” 24
2. “Belong to a group” 13
3. “Be defeated, lose power, control” 12
4. “Move from or into a particular direction, position” 8
5. “Collapse, move quickly to the ground” 7
6. “Slope, move downwards” 6
7. “Change to another state” 6
8. “Be killed, die” 3
10. “Conform, coincide with” 3
11. “Take place, occur, be realised” 2
13. “Become responsible for” 2
14. “Season” 2
5. “Do or commit something” 1
16. “Return somewhere” 1
17. “Start doing something” 1
18. “Become loose, drop out” 1
19. “Fall out with” - “have an argument with” 1

4. 3. Pass and go on

Based on the analysis of the one hundred random selections from the 7363 concordance lines of the corpus referring to its high frequency in the language, twenty-six meanings of pass have been distinguished involving three references to its meaning as “happen” (7th meaning). For example, “And it came to pass.” (CE6 390) The references also include the expressions “come to pass” (FP3 181) and “passed unnoticed” (CCN 865).

The further ninety-seven lines contain the following twenty-six meanings of pass:

(See Appendix G)

Pass: Meanings: References:
1. “Move or go into a particular direction or position” 25
2. “Pass on” - “give” 25
3. “Be successful in an exam” 6
4. “Mountain path” 6
5. “Make law” 5
6. “Time to go by” 4
8. “Ignore, not mention something” 3
9. “One of the several stages of a process” 2
10. “Become greater in amount” 2
11. “Declare satisfactory result” 2
12. “Document allowing something” 1
13. “Urinate from body” 1
14. “Succeed” 1
15. “Make a judgement” 1
16. “Leave” 1
17. “Pass muster” - “survive” 1
18. “Allow something” 1
19. “Pass up”- “miss or fail something” 1
20. “Approve, accept” 1
21. “Does not know the answer” 1
22. “Change, turn into” 1
23. “Do or complete” 1
24. “Bus fair” 1
25. “Appear” 1
26. “Pass a resolution” - “decide” 1
27. “Pass off” - “pretend”. 1

As all dictionaries contain one reference of the phrasal verb pass off to “happen”, in addition to the one hundred lines eighteen further concordances gained from the corpus and including pass off were studied to come across those references to “happen”. Based on their analysis, six meanings can be distinguished here, among those “happen or take place in a particular way” with four references. Two of them refer to “happen or something that is completed well, successfully” - “pass off well” (ANR 498) and “I’m sure it’ll pass off!” (FEE 204) One line contains a reference to “happen in a particular time” that is “These should pass off within two or three days.” (FEX 1344) One further concordance refers to “happen in a particular way” such as “He would pass off an Angela Brickell sort of scandal with laugh.” (ADY 2340) The further meanings involve 1. “Pretend” (9 references). 3. “Move somewhere” (2 references). 4. “Pass off something as a joke” (1 reference). 5. “Stop, end” (1 reference). 6. “Pass off with” -“prove something” (1 reference). (See Appendix G)

The last lexical item to be presented at the end of this part is “go on”. During the analysis one hundred random selections were studied from 7558 concordance lines of the corpus in order to find those that refer to “happen”. The concordances indicate the wide range of occurrences of go on in English language. Except for OPDTW, each dictionary contains a reference of fall to “happen” or “take place”. Due to the corpus-based research, seventeen different meanings of go on were found, among that there is “Continue happening” (4th meaning) with six references such as “Wickham wondered how long that sort of thing could go on.” (GWG 290) The second one is “Happen or take place” (9th meaning) with three references, for example “What other things go on in the flats?” (FYF 106) or “let it go on” - “So I dunno how long they are supposed to let it go on, you know?” (KE6 3684) The third one refers to “happen to somebody” (11th meaning) with one reference that is “Trouble is, trouble is you see if you, if you leave her alone you don’t know just how she’s gonna go on, do ya?” (KCS 474)

Based on the corpus-analysis, the following seventeen meanings can be distinguished and are listed here in their frequency order:

(See Appendix G)

Go on Meanings: References:
1. Continue doing something” 29
2. “Encourage somebody to do something” 23
3. “Start an activity” 17
5. “Join something” 5
6. “Doing something next” 4
7. “Move to a particular direction” 2
8. “Walk into a place before someone else you are with” 2
10. “Turn to somebody for doing something” 2
12. “Exist, expand” 1
13. “Start being in a particular state, position” 1
14. “Have an opinion, decide” 1
15. “Keep is time” 1
16. “Be kept somewhere” 1
17. “Go on the dole” - “get unemployment benefit 1

4. 4. Discussion

The content of the corpus provides a larger set of information about each lexical item than the dictionaries do. For example, whereas the one hundred random selections of the corpus contain eight different meanings of happen, the four dictionaries altogether include only four. In the case of befall, the dictionaries describe only two different meanings of the lexical item, but the corpus distinguishes four meanings and one expression. Besides, four meanings of occur are listed in the dictionaries, whereas the corpus provides seven. The difference is remarkable in the case of take place, when the dictionaries include two different meanings of take place opposite the fourteen meanings provided by the corpus. Eventuate is listed only in two of the dictionaries with two meanings, whereas the six references gained from the corpus make a difference between three meanings of the lexical item. References to fall as “happen” are contained in each dictionary, whereas the seven concordances of the corpus distinguish four meanings within the category of “happening”. Pass is listed in every dictionary as a synonym of happen, and three references of the corpus confirm this meaning of the lexical item. Finally, one meaning of go on as “happen” is described in the dictionaries, however, the concordance lines of the corpus make a difference between three meanings of go on as “happen”.

The corpus proved to be an exact source and useful device for analysing the language. The aim of the corpus-based analysis was to focus on the meaning of lexical items. Meaning in corpus linguistics is described as something “being verbally communicated between the members of a discourse community” (Teubert, 2005, p 2). That is why corpus linguistics looks at the language from a social perspective. It does not use the corpus only to extract the examples which fit with the linguist’s hypothesis, but goes further and wants to describe that cannot be explained. (Teubert, 2005, p 2) Therefore a corpus is used in various fields of language study and has an increasing role in linguistics. For example, in teaching practice a corpus-based research can be applied for students at intermediate or advanced level of English to explore the meanings of lexical items that are not described in monolingual dictionaries. For example, students can be encouraged to work in groups and search for the meanings of unknown words by concordances gained from the corpus. Their task is to find different meanings of the same lexical item after reading and interpreting the lines including them. In the case of teaching synonyms, students can be encouraged to search for the frequency of synonymous words and expressions on the basis of the concordance lines of the corpus. Students can be persuaded to count the number of the occurrences of synonymous lexical items in a number of concordance lines and set up a list of their frequency. These are further possible applications of using corpora in pedagogy that are worth trying. In most cases applying corpora in pedagogy is combined with computer use, which also makes students highly motivated in the learning process. They are not just given a list of words to study but have to explore the new information and set up the rules themselves. This new technique makes students more interested and involved in their learning process, and they must be active at the lesson as well. During teaching the main role is the students’, the teacher just needs to control them.

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