Abstract
The paper is a corpus-based analysis of English governed prepositions, which are, due to their considerable frequency, an important part of English grammar. It starts with a discussion of the concept of government, its different applications in linguistics and confusion it often creates. Government is a syntactic relation in which one constituent determines the grammatical form of its dependent. It also has a semantic side to it – the grammatical marking resulting from government denotes the relational meaning of the dependent in the context of the given head word. The paper presents and discusses results of a series of corpus case studies. Each case study examined a grammatical pattern (a head word with a dependent preposition) against a sample of occurrences of the head from the British National Corpus. Detailed analysis of the results aimed to decide whether the given pattern involves government. A general objective was to identify quantitative and qualitative characteristics of government (and non-government). From the empirical perspective of language corpora, government seems to be best envisaged as a gradable phenomenon. While all case studies showed considerable variation in the observed patterns of the head word, much of it is explicable by syntactic, pragmatic or stylistic considerations and does not contradict government. However, some of the tested patterns were judged to be non-governed. These involved inter alia the tested pattern being part of an antonym set or contextual synonym set.
The research has been financed from the budget funds for science in the years 2010–2012 as a research project.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The paper does not adopt the generative concept of government developed primarily by Chomsky (1981).
- 3.
Chalker (1992) mentions the possibility of such an extension. See also Karolak’s (1999) criticism of the inconsistencies in the traditional use of the term. Amendments much in line with his arguments can be found in Saloni and Świdziński (1998). Also Gołąb et al. (1968) include PPs in the scope of government (519).
- 4.
This approach assumes that prepositions are like modifiers (or “analytic inflections”) that serve to link the following NPs to superordinate structures rather than like true legitimate heads of phrases. This is in fact advocated by Biber et al. (1999: 74) and also Dixon (2010: 49, 232). NB some works in Polish linguistics use the term “prepositional-nominal phrase” (trans. JG) for prepositional phrases, cf. the very titles of Kosek (1999) and Grybosiowa (1979). The perspective adopted here runs contrary to the one presented by Pullum and Huddleston (2002: 598–9).
- 5.
Exactly the same analysis applies to equivalents in other languages, e.g. Latin do, dare or Polish dać/dawać.
- 6.
Latin pareo, parere is also polysemous. The meaning ‘to obey’ has an object in the dative and the meaning ‘to appear’ does not.
- 7.
Biber et al. (1999: 414) give more such pairs, e.g. look like and resemble, think about and consider.
- 8.
All the examples of English sentences in the paper are excerpted from the BNC.
- 9.
The data below (Table 9.2) show that with attempt such an analysis is unacceptable for statistical reasons.
- 10.
For conducive all examples from the BNC were analysed.
- 11.
However, hide would likely prove to govern from (with a different meaning).
- 12.
Some spatial prepositions did not surface in the results since the spatial configurations they denote are unsuitable for hiding.
- 13.
- 14.
NB the case studies discussed in the previous section also include synonyms, e.g. hide under and hide beneath, which are synonymous generally.
- 15.
Cf. Charzyńska-Wójcik’s (2010) discussion of a putative Old English ditransitive verb type. Despite having a single attested example of the type, she dismisses it as an active syntactic pattern because the example is unique among all Old English ditransitive structures as well as among the occurrences of the verb it includes (97).
- 16.
Similar alternations exist for other verbs in English, e.g. supply with vs. supply to. In languages where similar phenomena are more regular and grammaticalised, they are called applicative voice (see e.g. Dixon 2010: 169–70).
- 17.
The gradability of government is not a novel idea. Lesz-Duk (1988), for instance, gives an overview of different concept of government, some of which distinguish “strong” and “weak” government (7, 9). The distinctions are defined in terms of syntactic functions and obligatoriness. Hentschel’s (2003) proposal of a continuum of grammaticalisation status of prepositions is closest to the analysis presented here.
References
Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad and E. Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman.
Chalker, S. 1992. Government. In The Oxford companion to the English language, ed. T. Mc Arthur, 445. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.
Charzyńska-Wójcik, M. 2010. The Syntax of Old English clausal ditransitive verbs. In: Verb structures: Between phonology and morphosyntax, eds. E. Cyran and B. Szymanek, 75–109. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.
Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on government and binding: The Pisa lectures. Berlin: Mouton.
Cook, V. J. and M. Newson. 1996. Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Crystal, D. 1997. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Dixon, R. M. W. 2010. Basic linguistic theory. Vol. 1. Methodology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gołąb, Z. 1967. Próba klasyfikacji syntaktycznej czasowników polskich (na zasadzie konotacji). Biuletyn PTJ XXV: 3–43. Wrocław: Ossolineum.
Gołąb, Z., A. Heinz and K. Polański. 1968. Słownik terminologii językoznawczej. Warszawa: PWN.
Grybosiowa, A. 1979. Fraza nominalna przyimkowa w funkcji okolicznika przyczyny. Studia z filologii polskiej i słowiańskiej XVIII: 67–79.
Hentschel, G. 2003. Zur Klassifikation von Präpositionen im Vergleich zur Klassifikation von Kasus. In Präpositionen im Polnischen. Beiträge zu einer gleichnamigen Tagung, Oldenburg, 8. bis 11. Februar 2000. (Studia Slavica Oldenburgensia 11), eds. G. Hentschel and Th. Menzel, 161–191. Oldenburg.
Herbst, Th. 1999. English valency structures - A first sketch. Erfurt Electronic Studies in English (EESE) 6. http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic99/herbst/6_99.html. Accessed 30 June 2010.
Huddleston, R. 2002. The clause: complements. In The Cambridge grammar of the English language, eds. R. Huddleston and G. K. Pullum, 213–321. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Karolak, S. 1999. Rząd. In Encyklopedia językoznawstwa ogólnego, ed. K. Polański, 503–505. Wrocław, Warszawa, Kraków: Ossolineum.
Kosek, I. 1999. Przyczasownikowe frazy przyimkowo-nominalne w zdaniach współczasnego języka polskiego. Olsztyn: UWM.
Lesz-Duk, M. 1988. Czasowniki o składni przyimkowej w języku polskim. Częstochowa: WSP.
Palmer, F. R. 1971. Grammar. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Pullum, G. K. and R. Huddleston. 2002. Prepositions and preposition phrases. In: The Cambridge grammar of the English language, eds. R. Huddleston and G. K. Pullum, 597–661. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Richards, J., J. Platt and H. Platt. 1992. Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. Harlow: Longman.
Rusiecki, J. 2006. Badania korpusowe a ‘lingwistyka gabinetowa’: czy te dwa podejścia kiedyś się spotkają? In: Korpusy w angielsko-polskim językoznawstwie kontrastywnym. Teoria i praktyka, eds. A. Duszak, E. Gajek and U. Okulska, 17–27. Kraków: Universitas.
Saloni, Z. and M. Świdziński. 1998. Składnia współczesnego języka polskiego. Warszawa: PWN.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gaszewski, J. (2011). Governed Prepositions in English: A Corpus-Based Study. In: Pawlak, M., Bielak, J. (eds) New Perspectives in Language, Discourse and Translation Studies. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20083-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20083-0_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-20082-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-20083-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)