Pattern Grammar

Abstract Pattern grammar is based on the corpus investigation of individual words, especially adjectives, nouns, and verbs. It exploits the fact that each word is regularly complemented by specific phrase or clause types and not with others. Pattern grammar has been used to give grammar information in learners' dictionaries and in reference books that list the patterns of English and the words that occur with them. The words that share a pattern also tend to share aspects of meaning. This observation has been used in language teaching and also in discourse analysis. Pattern grammar has been aligned with theoretical approaches such as frame semantics, construction grammar, and systemic‐functional linguistics.