The Leverhulme Project was devised to investigate the patterns of clause relationships in spoken and written English, and to determine the dominant patterns.
Linguists differ as to whether the spoken or the written language is more complex.
For our research we used a corpus of just over 89,000 words from the British component of the International Corpus of English. Clause Relationships in Spoken and Written English', Functions of Language 2, 1-21. Positions of adverbial clauses in British English', World Englishes 15, 69-81. Complement clauses in English', Using Corpora for Language Research , eds. Elliptical clauses in spoken and written English', The Clause in English , eds Peter Collins and David Lee, 111-126.