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In:Constructions in Contact 3: Constructional schemas and patterns in language contact
Edited by Hans C. Boas and Steffen Höder
[Constructional Approaches to Language 40] 2025
► pp. 79–110

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Prepositions in English Argument Structure Constructions

Gauging the importance of language contact for diachronic and regional constructional variation

 | University of Zürich
 | University of Zürich
Published online: 13 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.40.03hun
Abstract
Diachronic and regional variation in English Argument Structure Constructions with one and two non-subject arguments involves competition between prepositional and bare noun phrase arguments apparently influenced, among other things, by language contact. Crucially, the answer to the question whether an Argument Structure Construction in a Post-Colonial variety of English constitutes an instance of structural nativisation or not hinges on diachronic evidence. This is the first case study into a sizeable number of Romance loan verbs that investigates competition in complementation patterns across time and space using evidence from corpora of Early and Late Modern English, contemporary British English, and three Post-Colonial Englishes with typologically different substrate languages. The data show that Romance verbs with one and two non-subject complements behave very differently, both diachronically and regionally. On a macro-level, the patterns of variation in PCEs defy a simple answer in terms of language contact or substrate influence. On the micro-level of individual verbs and their complementation patterns, our findings can be integrated in the common ground for Diachronic and Diasystematic Construction Grammar, namely analogical thinking.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language contact and construction grammar:
    Historical and post-colonial varieties of English
    • 2.1Language contact in the history of English: Prepositions and argument structure
    • 2.2Language contact in PCEs: ASCs and structural nativisation
    • 2.3Diachronic and Diasystematic Construction Grammar: The common ground
    • 2.4Predicting variation and change in ACS under contact conditions
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1ASCs in early and Late Modern English
    • 4.2Prepositional and nominal complements in post-colonial Englishes
  • 5.Conclusion: ASCs as the result of language contact or simply the yin and yang of change?
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (66)
References
Corpora and databases
AND online — Anglo-Norman Dictionary online ([URL])
COHA — Corpus of Historical American English ([URL])
DMF online — Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500) ([URL])
ICE — International Corpus of English ([URL])
ICE-IND — ICE-India ([URL])
ICE-PHI — ICE-Philippines ([URL])
ICE-SIN — ICE-Singapore ([URL])
NOW — News On the Web corpus ([URL])
OED online — Oxford English Dictionary online ([URL])
PPCEME — Penn-Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English ([URL])
PPCMBE — Penn-Parsed Corpus of Modern British English ([URL])
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