Siaw-Fong Chung National Chengchi University
中文摘要
英語介系詞的多義及多重使用方式已經引起許多認知語言學家的注意。本篇 論文將以介系詞 after 為例，探討其不同搭配詞組之用法，目的在呈現如何 運用語料庫分析英文之常見介系詞。本論文將包括以字典詞義之初步探究、
於各詞性之分佈模式，以及其相鄰動詞之分析。其研究內容亦會從單詞的分 析延伸至句型結構的分析，包括如 [*ly after] 結構及其衍伸的 [*ly after + noun]結構之探討。
關鍵詞：After、介系詞、搭配詞組、語料庫
English Abstract
The polysemous meanings and multifunctional use of English prepositions have interested many cognitive linguists. Using after as an example, this paper explores the different collocations of this preposition, involving an initial inspection of its dictionary senses, followed by an analysis of distributional patterns of parts-of-speech and its co-appearing verbs. The ultimate goal is to display how corpus can be utilized to analyze a general preposition which occurs frequently in English.
The next step to follow from the analysis of a single node word is pattern analyses – extending to an analysis of the [*ly after] patterns, followed by the [*ly
after + noun] patterns.
Keywords: After, Preposition, Collocations, Corpus
Introduction
The preposition after is usually defined with a single function, i.e., to explain the order of time and events. This single and less complex meaning causes its lack of discussion in literature. In contrary to after, other prepositions have been extensively covered by many studies. Examples are the most frequently cited study of over by Brugman (1981) and Linder’s (1983) classic analysis of out and
up, both of which are among the first few studies of prepositions, as well as
Fernando and Tricker’s (2000) pedagogical study of at, in, and on. Lindstromberg (1998), in the book English Prepositions Explained, contrasted after with before in time (pg. 108) and in spatial location (pg. 102). Tyler and Evans (2003:173) stated the following about after and before:
1 This researh is supported by NSC Project Grant Number 99-2410-H-004-206-.
meant ‘farther off’ or ‘farther away’. Unlike its contrast partner before, which has a Location Sense as part of its polysemy network, after appears not to have a Location Sense along the lines of ‘located at the back of the LM [Landmark]’ [as in “*He knelt after the King”] […] Nevertheless,
after does have a spatial sense associated with it, which parallels some of
the in tandem uses of the proto-scene for behind.This confirms that after, which possesses some similar meanings with behind, has a less complex polysemy network and is usually contrasted as the direct opposite of before.
The aim of this work is to inspect the collocations of after using corpora data.
Among many things, this paper will first examine the senses of after from dictionaries to see how this preposition is defined. We will then inspect the parts-of-speech distributions and collocation analyses of after. Part of the collocation analyses involves an examination of the co-appearing verbs with after. However, during the analysis, it was found that phrasal verbs like look after (to take care),
ask after (to be concerned), and go after (to pursue), albeit given a non-literal
meaning and are widely accepted entries in phrasal verb dictionaries (OxfordPhrasal Verbs and Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus), are often used as
counter-examples for defining verb-particle construction. One reason for this is becauselook after fails some particle tests. For instance, the insertion of an object is
disallowed for look after but is usually found with a phrasal verb such as call up (e.g., I called my father up versus *look a cat after), etc. 2 Lindstomberg (1998:22) is of the opinion that such diagnostic test might not be as helpful as a classification scheme with gradation of features such as perfectiveness. Dixon (1982), too, has provided a five-class classification scheme which defines verb-particle constructions from completely literal (John walked on the grass) to fully idiomatic (turn over a new leaf). Similar to Dixon, Patrick and Fletcher (2004) also argue that verb-particle constructions can be measured using different levels of literalness and of figurativeness. In that case, look after seems to be more figurative than go after, which strongly indicates sequence or order. Thus, using the term ‘verb-particle construction’ to refer to both the literal and idiomatic uses of the phrasal verbs is perhaps a way to avoid the discrepancies between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs, as are defined by Quirk et al. (1985). Therefore, in attempting to discover the verbs that co-appear with after, this paper does not target to define what a preposition is or what a particle is.
2 More about these dianogstic tests can be seen in Jackendoff (2002).
by starting from a single word, and extended to pattern analyses(cf. Hunston &
Francis, 1999).
Methodology and Results
We first searched in dictionaries for the meanings of after. As a preposition, after has three senses in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com), shown in (1) below.
(1) Sense 1: a: behind in place <people lined up one after another> b(1):
subsequent to in time or order <20 minutes after 6> (2): subsequent to and in view of <after all our advice>
Sense 2: —used as a function word to indicate the object of a stated or implied
action <go after gold> <was asking after you>Sense 3: so as to resemble: as a: in accordance with b: with the name of or a
name derived from that of <named after his father> c: in the characteristic manner of : in imitation of <writing after the manner of Hemingway>This dictionary summaries the ‘behind’ meaning in sense 1a and the ‘time or order’ meaning in sense 1b(1), as well as an extension of the ‘order’ sense in 1b(2). Sense 2 is vague because after is termed as a ‘function word’ following the verb. Sense 3 provides the semantics of some constructional combinations such as
named after and write after. In a learner’s version of the same dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary, the meanings of after are more
extensively covered, listed in Table 1 to follow. In this learner’s dictionary, after is defined as ‘time order’ in sense 1, as ‘order of things or person’ in sense 3, and as ‘an order of some events’ in sense 2. Senses 4 to 8 refer particularly to certain combinations of words with after such as go after/BE after (sense 4), callafter/clean after (sense 5), name after/pattern after (sense 6), put something after
something (sense 7) and ask after/inquire after (sense 8).3Like most dictionaries which aim to provide the most frequently seen language patterns to their users, these two dictionaries list a selective, usually frequent combinations of words with after as separate senses. In what follows, we will show that the use of after with certain strings of words is also prominent and they can be discovered through corpus data. In addition, we will also display the kind of events usually collocated with after in a corpus.
3 Most dictionaries list look after under look, depending on the degree of idiomaticity, an issue already mentioned in the introduction of this work.
In order to first see the parts-of-speech (POS) distributions of after in a corpus, the British National Corpus was consulted through the BNCWeb platform (Hoffman et al., 2008). The results are shown in Table 2 below.
Table 2: After and its Parts-of-Speech in the British National Corpus (BNC)
POS Instances Percentages
Prepositions 73,014 64.20%
Either Prepositions or Conjunctions 16,986 14.94%
Conjunctions 16,303 14.33%
Either Conjunctions or Prepositions 6,351 5.58%
Adverbs 936 0.82%
Adjectives 126 0.11%
Truncated speeches 13 0.01%
Total 113,729 100.00%
Note: PRP-CJS (either a preposition or a conjunction) is different from CJS-PRP because the one with the stronger possibility will be listed first.
From Table 2, we can see that after as a general preposition constitutes a majority of the instances (64.20%). After as a conjunction constitutes 14.33% of the total 113,729 instances. There are about 20% of the instances being either a preposition or conjunction (or vice versa). (The examples can be seen in (2) to follow.) After as an adverb or adjective each constitutes less than 1% of the total instances. The final category is truncated speeches in the spoken part of the BNC.
(2) (a) Preposition
Isidro Caballero, a 33-year-old teacher, ‘disappeared’ after being detained on 7 February 1989 by an army patrol. (A03 394)
(b) Preposition-Conjunction