A Computer-Assisted Language Analysis System (CALAS) was developed as a syntactic and semantic analyzer of machine readable text in English. CALAS includes a set of computer programs, an algorithm for implementation, and human editors who assist the computer and its programmer in the processing of data. Data analysis is accomplished in three stages: (1) syntactic analysis of text, identifying each work in sequence in terms of its grammatical equivalent; (2) aggregation of the individual words into phrases identified in terms of their grammatical equivalents; and (3) aggregation of phrases into clauses, with component phrases identified in terms of the roles each plays and exhibited to display a main or independent clause. Discussion of the literature focuses on the relative frequencies with which the different types of verb phrases are used, and the measure of structural or stylistic complexity. (JEG)