| Research Abstract |
I am proud to report that I have constructed a spoken English corpus consisting of approximately 11,000,000 words, unfortunately, though, this corpus will not be offered for public use because of copyright problems. I have made extensive use of this corpus and made public various research results on spoken English in journals and at conferences. In the process of this research, I have made clear that textbooks and dictionaries are waiting for improvement in terms of the description and analysis of natural spoken" English, or English uttered spontaneously in natural situations. The analysis of English, especially in this country, has long been based on written materials (textbooks for "English conversation" and "English communication" classes present spoken materials, but they have not been used as important sources of materials for linguistic analysis), and, as a result, the materials themselves as well as the results of linguistic analysis of those materials presented to students in the form of grammars, textbooks and dictionaries consist mainly of written materials. Regarding the present situation surrounding English language education here in this country, spoken English corpus is indispensable for research purposes and for the purpose of making textbooks veered to spoken English. "
The continuous and extensive research led me to two main findings', (1) spoken English is governed by different set of rules that are not to be found in written English - proximity and linearity, among others. (2) Quite a few of rules stated in textbooks and presented in English-Japanese dictionaries ＆ not go well together with the materials obtained from the spoken English corpus. It must be added that some frequently used spoken expressions have not found their way into the textbooks and dictionaries.
The present researcher is sure that this corpus will present very important materials for the discourse and conversational analysis, as well as discourse markers.
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