Preposition Placement in English: A Usage-based ApproachPreposition placement, the competition between preposition stranding (What is he talking about?) and pied-piping (About what is he talking?), is one of the most interesting areas of syntactic variation in English. This is the first book to investigate preposition placement across all types of clauses that license it, such as questions, exclamations and wh-clauses, and those which exhibit categorical stranding, such as non-wh relative clauses, comparatives, and passives. Drawing on over 100 authentic examples from both first-language (English) and second-language (Kenyan) data, it combines experimental and corpus-based approaches to provide a full grammatical account of preposition placement in both varieties of English. Although written within the usage-based construction grammar framework, the results are presented in theory-neutral terminology, making them accessible to researchers from all syntactic schools. This pioneering volume will be of interest not only to syntacticians, but also second-language researchers and those working on variation in English. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
Independent factors | 35 |
Corpus results | 113 |
Experimental results | 175 |
The case for a Construction Grammar account | 226 |
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Common terms and phrases
adjunct PPs analysis ANOVA antecedent British and Kenyan British English data Brown corpus claimed clause types complement complex constraint Construction Grammar construction network contexts corpora corpus data Corpus Linguistics displaced element effect embedded English relative clauses English study entrenched example fact factor group favour stranding Figure filler set finite free relative clauses frequency Furthermore Ginzburg and Sag Goldvarb Gries HCFA HPSG Huddleston ICE-EA ICE-GB idiosyncratic informal interaction interrogative clauses Jane relied judgements Kenyan English Kenyan English data language learners level of formality lexical linguistic log odds logistic regression Means for PREPOSITION non-restrictive Ø-subject obligatory optional p-value pied-piped prepositions preference preposition placement preposition stranding preposition-stranding prepositional verbs processing pronoun Pullum relativizers saw the teacher scores semantic sentences significant statistical stranded prepositions stranding and pied-piping structures syntactic Table talked text types tion Trotta ungrammatical fillers usage-based varieties wh-interrogative wh-relative clauses wh-relativizers wh-word