Corpus linguistics and English reference grammars

The present paper begins with a discussion of major conceptual and methodological differences between the new Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CamGr), the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), and the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (LGSWE). The different approaches in the three grammars are associated with different extents to which corpus data come into play in the grammars at hand. The present paper argues that, for various reasons, the combination of CGEL and LGSWE provides a first important step towards genuinely corpus-based reference grammars in that a theoretically eclectic descriptive apparatus of English grammar is complemented by qualitative and quantitative insights from corpus data. However, there are several areas in which future corpus-based grammars need to be optimised, especially with regard to the transparency of corpus design and corpus analysis and the balance between a language-as-a-whole and a genre-specific description.