MICASE Kibbitzers

The originator of the Kibbitzer pages was Tim Johns (Birmingham University). Each kibbitzer page contains the discussion of a language problem, supported by data from MICASE. These language investigations cover a wide range of language areas, including lexical (to do with vocabulary), syntactic (mostly to do with grammar), and discoursal (how ideas are linked), or it may be from more than one of these areas.

If you have a Kibbitzer you would like to add to this page, please contact us at .

• 1. Criteria/data: Uncountable or Countable?

  Do MICASE speakers prefer to say “the data is” or “the data are”? Or is it more complicated than this? This small study explores such questions.

• 2. Among or Between?

  The traditional rule recommends “between” for two things and “among” for more than two. Do MICASE speakers follow this rule? What are some of the variables involved?

• 3. Hyperbole in Academic and Research Speech

  In ordinary speech, hyperbole (or exaggeration) is common, as in “I’ve got a million emails to sort out”. What happens in academic speech? Do we still find these exaggerations (which we would not find in academic writing)? Or are MICASE speakers more careful? Find out in this Kibbitzer.

• 4. Less and Fewer?

  Do MICASE speakers use “less” with uncountables (e.g. less money) and “fewer” with countables (e.g. fewer dollars)? Or are there other factors at play?

• 5. Making Suggestions in MICASE

  Do people use the verb “suggest” to make suggestions, or other kinds of language? This kibbitzer provides some surprising answers to this question.

• 6. Modal Contractions in MICASE: The case of will/’ll

  When do we say “will” and when do we shorten it to “’ll”? This careful quantitative study attempts to answer this question. (Amazingly, the first author was a first-term undergraduate when she did this project.)

• 7. No Way

  The expression “no way” is often used among friends to express strong denial (“can you lend me fifty dollars? No way!”). In academic speech, is it used for some other purposes?

• 8. Announcements of Self-Repair

  When we speak, we sometimes recognize that we have misspoken in some way, and so we try again. At times, we ‘announce’ that we are going to rephrase. What are the common ways of doing this in MICASE? And are these rephrasings typically longer or shorter than the originals? This kibbitzer attempts to answer these and similar questions.

• 9. “Anyone” and “Anybody” in MICASE

  These very similar pronouns play an important role in instructor-student interaction. When are they used in the full question form (“does anyone wanna guess?”), or when in a shortened structure (“anyone wanna guess?").

• 10. The Distribution of Anaphoric 'So' in MICASE

  The use of “so” in such phrases as “I guess so” is not that common in MICASE. With which verbs does it occur? In which speech-events? Do other languages use a similar structure?

• 11. Pre- and post-dislocations in MICASE

  In written English, the standard structure of a sentence is subject-verb-complement. However, in speech, variations are possible, and we actually move the subject into different positions. Example: “the test will be easy” (standard); “the test, it will be easy” (pre-dislocation); How common are the non-standard forms? Where do they occur, and why?

• 12. Vocatives in MICASE

  Vocatives, such as “okay, John, let’s move on”, are known to be hard to explain to English learners. This study investigates the following kinds of question. What types of vocatives are there in MICASE? Which kinds of speech-event tends to attract vocatives? Do vocatives have different functions when they occur at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of utterances?

• 13. 'End up' in MICASE

  This phrasal verb is one of the five most common in MICASE. Why is this? What are its functions? Does it have some special uses in academic speech? And what about the uses of “end up with”?

• 14. Interactional Query Formulae in MICASE: “you know what I mean?"

  This Kibbitzer investigates the phrases that English speakers use to check for audience or listener comprehension, like “do you see what I’m saying?” or “does that make sense?”. Which phrases are most common?

• 15. Vague Language in Academia

  This Kibbitzer examines the phrases that speakers use to end a list of examples that they do not wish to say in full (ex: “and so on and so forth”, “etcetera etcetera”, “and things like that”). What are the most common phrases in MICASE, and who uses them more frequently, instructors or students?

• 16. Just so stories from MICASE

  This Kibbitzer focuses on clarifactory phrases beginning “just so”. Why are these phrases useful for presenters and instructors?

• 17. 'We' across academic disciplines and registers in MICASE

  Does the frequency of we vary across different academic disciplines and registers? In this kibbitzer, we examine MICASE samples from the physical sciences and compare our results with earlier studies.