A hallmark of corpus linguistics is the study of patterns of language use. In this book, the studies presented all use corpora to investigate patterns of lexis from various perspectives. Though situated at different points on a continuum between lexical and grammatical emphasis, the studies all confirm the inseparability of lexis and grammar.

1. List of contributors; 2. Introduction (by Hasselgard, Hilde); 3. Sequence and order; 4. Sequence and order: The neo-Firthian tradition of corpus semantics (by Stubbs, Michael); 5. Mom and Dad but Men and Women: The sequencing of sex-determined noun pairs in American English (by Dant, Doris); 6. Sequences of size adjectives in text: Great big, tiny little, and less frequent combinations (by Coffey, Stephen); 7. Competing constructions; 8. The competition between the intensifiers dead and deadly: Some diachronic considerations (by Blanco-Suarez, Zeltia); 9. Has go-V ousted go-and-V?: A study of the diachronic development of both constructions in American English (by Bachmann, Ingo); 10. The construction cannot help -ing and its rivals in Modern English (by Rohdenburg, Gunter); 11. From reduction to emancipation: Is gonna a word? (by Lorenz, David); 12. Complex prepositions and variation within the PNP construction (by Smith, Adam); 13. Emerging patterns; 14. A finer definition of neology in English: The life-cycle of a word (by Renouf, Antoinette); 15. A corpus-based study of gender assignment in recent English loanwords in Norwegian (by Graedler, Anne-Line); 16. The return of the prefix? New verb-particle combinations in blogs (by Diemer, Stefan); 17. Correlating patterns and meaning; 18. Modality and the V wh pattern (by Vincent, Benet); 19. Assessing corpus search methods in onomasiological investigations: Exploring quantity approximation in business discourse (by Goossens, Diane); 20. Author index; 21. Subject index