Preferred sequences of words in NS and NNS speech

As human beings, we are all creatures of habit. Most, if not all, aspects of our everyday lives, including language use, are in greater or lesser measure marked by routine and recurrence. This paper reports on some of the major findings of a large-scale corpus-driven analysis of the recurrent sequences of more than two single words that native speakers of English and advanced EFL learners tend to use as their routinized building blocks or preferred ways of saying things in spoken and written discourse (De Cock 2003). The aim of this paper is to explore the use of recurrent sequences of words in NS and NNS speech both from a quantitative and a more qualitative point of view. In the quantitative analysis I set out to test the validity of Kjellmer's often quoted but largely unproven assumption that learners'"building material is individual bricks rather than prefabricated sections" (1991:124). The more qualitative analysis concentrates on some of the major functional differences between native speakers' and learners' preferred ways of saying things.