Make us difficult
Portrait of a non-standard construction
Seth Mehl | University of Sheffield
This paper introduces a previously undiscussed English construction, termed the make us difficult
construction. Examples of the construction are presented, from the International Corpus of English and the
Corpus of Global Web-Based English, and a quantitative analysis is conducted of the construction’s text
frequency and variant rates. Quantitative data on specific usage patterns is employed to inform an analysis of the construction
and its productivity, and recommendations are made for future research.
Keywords: corpus linguistics, International Corpus of English, GloWbE, World Englishes, complex transitive, extraposition
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Preliminary observations on the standard in GloWbE
- 3.The make us difficult construction: Corpus examples
- 3.1The ICE corpora
- 3.2The GloWbE corpus
- 4.Variant rates for the make us difficult construction
- 4.1The ICE corpora
- 4.2The GloWbE corpus
- 5.Usage patterns and productivity
- 6.Conclusion
- Note
-
Sources -
References
Published online: 09 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00054.meh
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00054.meh
References
Sources
Davies, Mark
2013 Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries (GloWbE) https://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/.
The International Corpus of English
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle and Åke Viberg
Greenbaum, Sidney
Hampe, Beate
Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum
OED Online
Oxford: Oxford University Press https://www.oed.com (accessed December 1, 2018).
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, Jason Grafmiller, Joan Bresnan, Anette Rosenbach, Sali Tagliamonte, and Simon Todd