Now I want to show you how to get maximum benefit from the
British National Corpus.
Diabetes written the sentence.
She misses you alot.
And he wants to be certain that
it is correct. It is correct.
But David doesn't know that and he wants to be certain.
He goes to the British National
Corpus. And puts the whole sentence in the search box.
He is hoping that the exact phrase occurs in the British
National Corpus.
If it occurs at least two or three times used by different
writers in published writing.
Well. That would be excellent.
Unfortunately there are no hits.
That phrase doesn't occur.
In the British national corpus.
That doesn't mean it's wrong, of
course. There are lots of perfectly correct phrases
that don't occur in the British national Corpus.
But can we get evidence from the British national corpus that
will prove that the sentence she
misses you alot? Is correct?
Well. Next, David tries the phrase she misses you.
This time he gets four hits.
And one of them is.
She misses you badly.
Well. She misses you badly.
He's a very elegant way of saying she misses you alot.
It shows just the kind of rich vocabulary that will improve
marks in an exam.
Good.
David changes his sentence too.
She misses you badly.
But because he still curious?
He continues his investigation.
Can you prove that she misses you alot is also correct.
Well. Although the sentence she misses you alot doesn't occur in
the British National Corpus.
If David could find, say.
John misters alot.
That would also be proof.
If you can say.
John misters alot.
Then you can say she misses you alot.
We've changed the subject of the verb.
We've changed the tense of the verb.
How do we change the object of the verb?
But we still have evidence.
To the structure miss someone
alot. His good English.
So David tries lots of phrases like miss them a lot, missing me
a lot, missed it alot, misses him a lot.
Lots of the phrases he tries don't occur.
But he does find both.
Miss you a lot.
Hand. Missed her or not.
So now he knows that his original sentence is correct.
Now it's your turn.
Here is a sentence.
He makes me very happy.
It is correct.
But it's not in the British National Corpus.
Imagine that you didn't know that it was correct.
Can you get evidence from the
British National Corpus? That will prove that will
prove that it is correct.
Data hearing from the British National Corpus Online Service
managed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of
the PNC consortium.
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