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Description
Corpus-based frequency lists have traditionally focused on single-word items, leaving the instructional status of multi-word units such as phrasal verbs unclear. This study examines where previously identified high-frequency phrasal verbs fall within a single-word frequency framework using COCA data. By analyzing bigrams, trigrams, and four-grams and integrating these into a lemma-based frequency list, the study finds that 48 phrasal verbs occur within the top 3,000 frequency level, supporting their instructional priority.
References
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.
Gardner, D., & Davies, M. (2007). Pointing out frequent phrasal verbs: A corpus-based analysis. TESOL Quarterly, 41, 339–359.
Garnier, M., & Schmitt, N. (2015). The PHaVE List: A pedagogical list of phrasal verbs and their most frequent meaning senses. Language Teaching Research, 19(6), 645-666.
Liu, D. (2011). The most frequently used English phrasal verbs in American and British English: A multicorpus examination. TESOL quarterly, 45(4), 661-688.
Abstract
Corpus frequency-driven wordlists have been widely used, particularly for single-word items. However, comparatively little attention has been given to identifying which multi-word items should be prioritized for instruction. This gap motivated studies by Biber et al. (1999), Gardner and Davies (2007), Liu (2011), and Garnier and Schmitt (2015), which developed frequency-based lists of phrasal verbs (PVs) ranging from 31 to 150 items. Despite these efforts, it remains unclear how these PVs align with single-word frequency lists.
This presentation investigates whether any of these PVs occur within the top 3,000 most frequent “words,” or whether some are relatively infrequent and therefore less suitable for instructional prioritization. Addressing this question requires corpus data that allows PVs to be analyzed on the same scale as single-word items. Using data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), this study examined bigrams to identify PV occurrences, as well as trigrams and four-grams to capture PVs with intervening words. Frequency counts were calculated across all verb tenses, after which the proportion of n-grams functioning as PVs was determined based on corpus evidence. In the final step, these data were integrated into a COCA lemma frequency list to allow direct comparison between PVs and single-word items. The results show that 48 phrasal verbs fall within the 3,000-word frequency level.
Short summary
Corpus-based frequency lists have traditionally focused on single-word items, leaving the instructional status of multi-word units such as phrasal verbs unclear. This study examines where previously identified high-frequency phrasal verbs fall within a single-word frequency framework using COCA data. By analyzing bigrams, trigrams, and four-grams and integrating these into a lemma-based frequency list, the study finds that 48 phrasal verbs occur within the top 3,000 frequency level, supporting their instructional priority.
| Scheduling preference | Anytime on Sunday |
|---|---|
| Title | Which Phrasal Verbs Should Be Taught? A Corpus-Based Frequency Analysis |