Chapter published in:
Changing Structures: Studies in constructions and complementation
Edited by Mark Kaunisto, Mikko Höglund and Paul Rickman
[Studies in Language Companion Series 195] 2018
► pp. 151–167

Patterns of direct transitivization and differences between British and American English

| Universität Bremen

Rohdenburg (2009) found that prepositions are increasingly omitted in several types of verbs, marking a shift in complementation from an intransitive pattern with a prepositional object to a transitive pattern featuring a direct object noun phrase. In particular, the decrease of prepositional objects after antagonistic verbs (appeal, battle, fight, protest) and verbs of leaving (depart, escape, flee, resign) has been interpreted in line with an ongoing tendency in the history of English to functionally expand the category of the direct object at the expense of prepositional phrases in particular. Other verbs that are said to allow the preposition-less variant are mentioned only sporadically in the literature but have not yet been examined systematically on a broader empirical basis. This chapter provides corpus data from British and American English suggesting that several other verbs may also be in the process of undergoing direct transitivization.

Keywords: verb complementation, direct transitivization, omission of prepositions, grammatical economy, British English, American English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Direct transitivization
  • 2.Lexicographic treatment of the different complementation patterns
    • 2.1 Graduate
    • 2.2 Impact
    • 2.3 Shop
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1 Graduate
    • 4.2 Impact
    • 4.3Shop
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 May 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.195.09cal
References
Algeo, John
1988 British and American grammatical differences. International Journal of Lexicography 1(1): 1–31. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2006 British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Burnard, Lou
2007  Reference Guide for the British National Corpus (XML Edition) . < http://​www​.natcorp​.ox​.ac​.uk​/docs​/URG/> (12 August 2016).Google Scholar
Davies, Mark
2004- BYU-BNC. Based on the British National Corpus from Oxford University Press. < http://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/bnc>
2008- The Corpus of Contemporary American English , < http://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/coca>Google Scholar
2010- The Corpus of Historical American English, < http://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/coha>Google Scholar
2013- Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 Billion Words from Speakers in 20 Countries. < http://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/glowbe>Google Scholar
Davies, Mark & Fuchs, Robert
2015 Expanding horizons in the study of World Englishes with the 1.9 billion word Global Web-based English Corpus (GloWbE). English World-Wide 36(1): 1–28. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Galinsky, Hans
1952 Die Sprache des Amerikaners, Band II: Wortschatz und Wortbildung - Syntax und Flexion. Heidelberg: Kerle.Google Scholar
1974 Amerikanisches und Britisches Englisch. Einführung in Einheit und Verschiedenheit einer Weltsprache, 3rd edn. München: Hueber.Google Scholar
Herbst, Thomas, Heath, David, Roe, Ian F. & Götz, Dieter
(eds) 2004 A Valency Dictionary of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hundt, Marianne
1998 New Zealand English Grammar - Fact or Fiction? A Corpus-Based Study in Morpho-Syntactic Variation [Varieties of English around the World G23]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 Colonial lag, colonial innovation or simply language change? In One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English, Günter Rohdenburg & Julia Schlüter (eds), 13–37. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jespersen, Otto
1927 A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Part III: Syntax, Vol. 2. London: Allen & Unwin and Copenhagen: Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Kirchner, Gustav
1955 Direct transitivation. English Studies 36: 15–23. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1959 Zur transitiven und intransitiven Verwendung des englischen Verbums. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 7(4): 342–399.Google Scholar
1972 Die syntaktischen Eigentümlichkeiten des amerikanischen Englisch,, Band 2. München: Hueber.Google Scholar
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Online version. < http://​www​.ldoceonline​.com> (February 2017).
Mair, Christian
2002 Three changing patterns of verb complementation in Late Modern English: a real-time study based on matching text corpora. English Language and Linguistics 6(1): 105–131. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Marckwardt, Albert H. & Quirk, Randolph
1964 A Common Language: British and American English. London & Washington DC: The British Broadcasting Corporation & The United States Government.Google Scholar
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
Online version < http://​www​.m​-w​.com> (February 2017).
Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary
< http://​www​.learnersdictionary​.com> (February 2017).
Oxford English Dictionary
3rd ed. Revised and updated online version < http://​www​.oed​.com> (February 2017).
Rohdenburg, Günter
2009 Nominal complements. In One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English, Günter Rohdenburg & Julia Schlüter (eds), 194–211. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter & Schlüter, Julia
2009 Introduction. In One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English, Günter Rohdenburg & Julia Schlüter (eds), 1–12. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Xiao, Richard
2008 Well-known and influential corpora. In Corpus Linguistics: An International Handbook, Vol. 1, Anke Lüdeling & Merja Kytö (eds), 383–457. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Condamines, Anne
2021. How can one explain “deviant” linguistic functioning in terminology?. Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 27:2 ► pp. 322 ff. Crossref logo
Hundt, Marianne, Laetitia Van Driessche & Dirk Pijpops
2022. Epicentral influence via agent‐based modelling. World Englishes 41:3 ► pp. 377 ff. Crossref logo
Vartiainen, Turo & Mikko Höglund
2020.  In Corpora and the Changing Society [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 96], ► pp. 277 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 05 december 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.