Preposition Placement in English

A Usage-based Approach

Thomas Hoffmann author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:6th Jan '11

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Preposition Placement in English cover

A full grammatical account of preposition placement in English, combining experimental and corpus-based approaches, and exploring first- and second-language data.

Preposition placement refers to the competition between preposition stranding (What is he talking about?) and pied-piping (About what is he talking?). This volume provides a full grammatical account of preposition placement in English, and will be of interest to syntacticans, second-language researchers, and those working on variation in English.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.

'… 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

ISBN: 9780521760478

Dimensions: 235mm x 160mm x 20mm

Weight: 650g

320 pages