The introductory it pattern: Variability explored in learner and expert writing

•A few high-frequency subpatterns account for the bulk of the tokens.•The introductory it pattern is thus relatively invariable lexico-syntactically.•With one noteworthy exception the learners use the pattern similarly to the experts.•The it V ADJ to-inf subpattern was significantly overused by the learners.•There seems to be a frequency effect in play for the it V ADJ to-inf subpattern.

The introductory it pattern, as in it is interesting to note the changes made, is a versatile pattern of great importance to academic writers. However, very little attention has been paid to its syntactic and lexical variability. The present study investigates the degree of variability of the pattern with regard to its syntactic and lexical make-up in expert and apprentice learner writing, and whether the variability and/or frequency of particular realizations found in expert writing has an effect on the use of the pattern in learner writing. The study uses data from the Advanced Learner English Corpus (ALEC) and the Louvain Corpus of Research Articles (LOCRA). The results show that the pattern is relatively invariable overall, as certain high-frequency realizations account for the bulk of the tokens in both corpora. With some noteworthy exceptions, the learners use the pattern similarly to the experts, which suggests that the learners generally are proficient users of the pattern. However, the it V ADJ to-inf subpattern, possibly due to its particularly high token frequency in the expert data, was significantly overused by the learners, as was its most frequent realization it V POSSIBLE to-inf; there thus seems to be a frequency effect in play.