Preposition Placement in English

A Usage-based Approach

By: Thomas Hoffmann

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Hardcover | 14 February 2011

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318 Pages

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Preposition 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.

Industry Reviews

'... Hoffmann's book is a pleasure to read and the arguments are easy to follow. I recommend it highly to anyone who has ever wondered about preposition placement in English.' Hans C. Boas, English World-Wide

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Published: 17th July 2014

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List of Figures	p. x
List of Tables	p. xiv
List of Abbreviations	p. xvii
Acknowledgements	p. xix
Introduction	p. 1
Preposition placement: The need for corroborating evidence	p. 1
World Englishes, usage-based linguistics and preposition placement	p. 3
Outline	p. 7
Corroborating evidence: Data and methodology	p. 9
'What counts as evidence in Linguistics'	p. 9
Exhibit A: Corpus data	p. 14
The International Corpus of English (ICE) corpora	p. 15
ICE-GB	p. 15
ICE-EA	p. 17
Forensic tools I: Goldvarb, R, Coll.analysis 3 and HCFA	p. 18
Exhibit B: Introspection data	p. 26
Experiment design	p. 26
Methodology: Magnitude Estimation	p. 28
Forensic tools II: SPSS	p. 32
Case notes: Independent factors	p. 35
Construction-specific constraints	p. 35
Relative clauses	p. 36
Type of displaced element	p. 40
Beyond bound relative clauses	p. 40
Bound relative clauses: Secondary effects	p. 47
Different variable effects across clause types	p. 51
Diachronic and typological evidence	p. 56
Type of PP	p. 65
PP complements vs PP adjuncts	p. 65
Types of PPs: The complement-adjunct cline	p. 66
Idiosyncratic lexical effects	p. 72
Obligatorily pied-piped prepositions	p. 72
Obligatorily stranded prepositions	p. 74
Antecedents which induce obligatory pied-piping	p. 75
Level of formality	p. 76
PPs embedded in NPs and AdjPs	p. 84
Complexity	p. 93
Gries's multivariate corpus study (2002)	p. 94
Complexity-related and -specific factors	p. 96
Second-language effects: Kenyan English	p. 98
L2 language learning	p. 99
General properties of L2 preposition placement	p. 101
English in Kenya: Focus on preposition placement	p. 104
Evidence I: Corpus results	p. 113
Coding decisions	p. 113
Categorical clause contexts	p. 120
ICE-GB results	p. 120
ICE-EA results	p. 125
HCFA: ICE-GB vs ICE-EA	p. 129
Variable clause contexts: ICE-GB vs ICE-EA	p. 133
Tokens displaying no variation	p. 133
Non-standard ICE-EA tokens	p. 133
Accidental and systematic gaps I	p. 134
Idiosyncratic effects: Obligatorily stranded prepositions and the effect of to be	p. 137
Categorical PP types: Accidental and systematic gaps II	p. 141
Obligatory pied-piping PP types	p. 146
Logistic regression analysis	p. 147
Relative clauses	p. 157
Non-finite relative clauses	p. 158
Categorically pied-piping PPs	p. 160
Logistic regression analysis	p. 165
HCFA: Stranded finite relative clauses	p. 170
Summary	p. 172
Evidence II: Experimental results	p. 175
Preposition placement in simple relative clauses	p. 175
British English	p. 177
Kenyan English	p. 183
Preposition placement in relative clauses of varying complexity	p. 188
British English	p. 192
Kenyan English	p. 203
Preposition placement in interrogative clauses	p. 212
British English	p. 214
Kenyan English	p. 219
Summary	p. 224
Preposition placement: The case for a Construction Grammar account	p. 226
Construction Grammar: A descriptively and explanatorily adequate linguistic theory	p. 226
Preposition placement: The minimum complete-inheritance construction network	p. 236
Variable preposition placement	p. 241
English relative clauses and Construction Grammar	p. 247
Categorically stranding contexts	p. 257
Preposition placement: The enriched usage-based construction network	p. 264
Conclusion: The verdict	p. 276
Online appendix	p. 279
References	p. 280
Index	p. 295
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Preposition Placement in English

A Usage-based Approach

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

Other Editions and Formats

Paperback

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