A Corpus-Based Study of Complex Prepositions in a Non-Native English Variety

Abstract

This corpus-based study examined the occurrence and distribution of complex prepositions of the preposition-noun-preposition (PNP)-construction in a non-native English variety with a view to characterising it in the grammar. The data comprised 63 PNP-constructions with 585 occurrences retrieved from the 1,010,382-word International Corpus of English-Nigeria (2015). Motivated by the dearth of works on non-native varieties and underpinned by Construction Grammar, the study revealed an occurrence rate of 579 per million words (pmw). The PNP-constructions were one-and-a-half times more frequent in written (755 pmw) than in spoken (464 pmw) English and were most frequent in the domain Governance & Law (1368 pmw) and least frequent in General Interest Texts (402 pmw). Administrative Writing was the text type with the highest frequency of PNP-construction occurrence (2151 pmw), followed by Parliamentary Debates (1686 pmw); Demonstrations figured the least (49 pmw). In terms of, in addition to, in spite of and on behalf of were the prominent forms, respectively occurring 144, 37.6, 35.6 and 30.7 times pmw. Respect was the highest manifesting semantic category (49 percent) and its respect/disregard strain was dominant in Unscripted Speeches and Administrative Writing; time posted the lowest (0.2 percent). Whereas all the 63 PNP-constructions featured in the British National Corpus (BNC), only 6.1 percent of BNC’s132 low frequency forms also occurred in ICE-Nigeria. While 17 percent of BNC’s 30 most frequent PNP-constructions did not manifest in ICE-Nigeria, 64 percent of those present occurred more frequently in BNC than in ICE-Nigeria, with the differential as wide as 33:2.