second posting: analysis on concordance; based on the lecture slide

Traditional grammar classifies words based on eight parts of speech: the verb, the noun, the pronoun, the adjective, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection Based on this, my group has analysed the lecture slides on Concordance about the used of article 'a' and the prepostition word 'about'.

Article 'a' always occurs after preposition, verb, and noun words.
Examples:
1. with a darkness that might be felt (preposition) (shows what is the thing (an abstract noun;darkness) that has being the object of the sentence)
2. we found a paper of the directions after his death. (verb) (found expresses the action of the noun we)
3. Just at this moment a dog bark. (noun) (moment is an absract thing that follows a demonstrative pronoun this)

We can make a conclusion that the article 'a' that occurs after the preposition, verb, and noun is used to determine name of thing, person, or place that involved in the story/ phrase/ sentence.

Article 'a' normally occurs before noun, adjective and adverb.
Examples:
1. a minute before (noun) = its states the time (an abstract thing)
2. a good opinion of Gregory (adjective) (good is describing the attribution of the opinion)
3. a pretty quick pace (adverb) (pretty shows manner of the quick; it is a kind of adverbial)

Function of the 'a' when it occurs after a noun, adjective and adverb is it shows the plurality of the noun that occur after each of the form stated.

The coordinator 'about' always occurs after noun, verb, and adverb.
Examples:
1. to guide herself about the house (noun)
2. did not often think about him (verb)
3. but only about four by the fells (adverb)

In this context, 'about' is functioning as a connector of the extra information of the topic (normally a verb) with the main topic. In other word, it connect the main clause with the subordinate clause.

'about' always before preposition, determiner and a pronoun.
Examples: 1. about in wild alarm (preposition)
2. about him (pronoun)
3. about the farm (determiner)

The function is also to connect the clause to another clause; which can by either a main clause at the beginning and the subordinate clause at the end or the opposite. As a conclusion, from the examples given we can summarize that about is used before a noun phrase or clause only.

In someways, 'about' is used as a phrase with the 'partner'. For examples: 1. move about = moving but not far from the base
2. running about = running in a certain area only

My group also summarized the article on "BEYOND CONCORDANCE LINES: USING CONCORDANCE TO INVESTIGATE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT" that written by Arshad Abdul Samad, Universiti Putra Malaysia.

From the article, we know that the language corpus offers a useful resource in language pedagogy. The language corpus has commonly been used as the basis of dictionary and teaching materials (Woolard,2000). These software help in tedious task of analyzing language data and greatly extend the potential of a corpus language pedagogy. Corpora often help to inform how many words and grammatical constructions are used as teachers, researches and even language learners typically examine concordance line to discover them. Schmit (2000:34) also argues that among the benefit of using copus in language teaching and learningis that it may help student to enjoy the systematicity of a language. But in Malaysia, its use is limited and is buy-and-large unavailable.