However, the approach to valency, or 'valence, applied in construction grammar focuses on the semantic aspects, mainly the semantic roles of the sentence elements. In contrast, the focus in this investigation is on the syntactic valency patterns and their function in meaning identification, i.e. the translation choices Due to its versatility and the possibility to investigate language largely independently, at various levels, valency theory is a suitable theoretical framework to undertake contrastive studies 1.3 Corpus investigation The corpus used for the cross-linguistic English-German investigation is the EuroParl corpus, which consists of European Parliament Proceedings published in the 1l official languages of the European Union and thus represents a specif ic language domain. In order to validate the identified syntactic valency patterns of the verb CONSIDER and those of its translation equivalents(TEs) in the Euro Parl investigation the findings are compared with monolingual reference corpora. The reference corpus for English is the Bank of English corpus(BoE; corpus at the University of Birmingham), and for possible ld losyncrasies of word use, i.e. the syntactic patterning, in EuroP ar ei German the Deutsches Referenz Korpus(DeReKo; corpus at the Institute of German Language, Mannheim). Such a comparison with a reference corpus will identify any Differences between corpora are not uncommon in corpus linguistics. These may be due to the different compositions of corpora. For example, while EuroParl is a spoken corpus where mental verbs are an important device used to express stance, the reference corpora are mixed corpora includ ing a number of different genres. Table 1 shows a comparison of the frequencies per million words of CONSIDER, its word-forms, and two complementation patterns, a non-finite ing-clause(example sentence 1)and a the clause(example sentence 2), in EuroParl and the BoE (1) THINGS have been going so badly for Marks Spencer, they should consider hiring a female marketing boss. BoE) (2) We consider that the expenditure relating to the agreement is compulsory. (EuroParl) Table 1. Occurrences coNsider in EuroParl and BoE EuroParl BOE per million permillion CONSIDER 4951 100%253.64 100% consider 3006455%8976 35% considers 52.27 10%11.06 4%6 considered 136.5325%109.7543% considering 60.07 11%43.07 17% CONSIDER+(-ing) 25.73 5%25.73 10%3 However, the approach to valency, or ‘valence’, applied in construction grammar focuses on the semantic aspects, mainly the semantic roles of the sentence elements. In contrast, the focus in this investigation is on the syntactic valency patterns and their function in meaning identification, i.e. the translation choices. Due to its versatility and the possibility to investigate language largely independently, at various levels, valency theory is a suitable theoretical framework to undertake contrastive studies. 1.3 Corpus investigation The corpus used for the cross-linguistic English-German investigation is the EuroParl corpus, which consists of European Parliament Proceedings published in the 11 official languages of the European Union and thus represents a specific language domain. In order to validate the identified syntactic valency patterns of the verb CONSIDER and those of its translation equivalents (TEs) in the EuroParl investigation the findings are compared with monolingual reference corpora. The reference corpus for English is the Bank of English corpus (BoE; corpus at the University of Birmingham), and for German the Deutsches Referenz Korpus (DeReKo; corpus at the Institute of German Language, Mannheim). Such a comparison with a reference corpus will identify any possible idiosyncrasies of word use, i.e. the syntactic patterning, in EuroParl. Differences between corpora are not uncommon in corpus linguistics. These may be due to the different compositions of corpora. For example, while EuroParl is a spoken corpus where mental verbs are an important device used to express stance, the reference corpora are mixed corpora including a number of different genres. Table 1 shows a comparison of the frequencies per million words of CONSIDER, its word-forms, and two complementation patterns, a non-finite ing-clause (example sentence 1) and a that￾clause (example sentence 2), in EuroParl and the BoE. (1) THINGS have been going so badly for Marks & Spencer, they should consider hiring a female marketing boss. (BoE) (2) We consider that the expenditure relating to the agreement is compulsory. (EuroParl) Table 1. Occurrences CONSIDER in EuroParl and BoE EuroParl BoE per million % per million % CONSIDER 549.51 100% 253.64 100% consider 300.64 55% 89.76 35% considers 52.27 10% 11.06 4% considered 136.53 25% 109.75 43% considering 60.07 11% 43.07 17% CONSIDER+(-ing) 25.73 5% 25.73 10%