Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Endre Abkarovits: The -ing form after finite verbs in the reference books of the nineties

database, might make the false impression that these are unimportant patterns, but this need not necessarily be the case.) possessive accusative recall 22 66 recommend 2 0 remember 44 481 resent 27 25 tolerate 8 3 The figures seem to justify the choice of forms for the examples in the Oxford dictionary, but it can also be the result of how the compilers feel instinctively about the acceptibility of a form, rather than that of the careful analysis of corpus data, as the indication of possible patterns and their illustration with examples do not show some systematic approach otherwise. It is not the absolute numbers, but the tendencies that matter in the case of the corpus data: a balanced occurrence of both forms or the predominance of one. Of course the relative frequency of certain words and patterns should also be observed when teaching a foreign language. 5 Conclusion The main table of this paper shows a lot of discrepancies among the dictionaries, although all of them claim to have used a corpus. If these corpora were reliable and all compilers used reliable methods, there should not be so many differences. This either proves that the corpora are not big enough yet to draw safe conclusions, or the methods to analyse the corpus data are not sufficiently developed. Besides this, in our case it seems that dictionary compilers are not equally interested in certain grammatical constructions and without examining a grammatical phenomenon carefully, they may dismiss it with some generalization. (Eg. It is only a matter of style which form is preferred.) Overlooking data is not unknown either. Grammarians, who show more interest in these issues, often correct the information offered by the dictionary of the same publisher. 89