The Complexity Principle at work with rival prepositions

Abstract

The present corpus-based study deals with eight sets of rivalling prepositions in verb-dependent prepositional phrases. The two or three members of these sets, though equivalent in specific uses, differ in terms of functional explicitness. For instance, in directional uses, into can be regarded as more explicit than in. The main objective is to demonstrate for each of these sets that, in line with the Complexity Principle, the more explicit items are favoured in more complex grammatical environments. The contexts under scrutiny include those produced by passivisation, Heavy NP Shift, object relativisation, the use of full object NPs rather than personal pronouns, and preposition stranding. Thus, we observe that – compared with basic active clauses – preposition stranding in the active induces increased shares of the more explicit prepositions in question. Predictably, even higher degrees of prepositional explicitness are found with the combination of preposition stranding and passivisation. Also, it is shown that Heavy NP Shift tends to trigger greater proportions of the more explicit prepositions than object relativisation. The observed tendencies hold for Present-day English and earlier stages of English as well as for morphologically related and unrelated rival prepositions.

O infinitivo flexionado en galego: unha análise variacionista baseada na lingua oral

“…Este principio de complexidade explica a distribución dunha grande variedade de fenómenos gramaticais en competición (vid. Rohdenburg 2020). No que respecta á subordinación adverbial obxecto de estudo deste traballo, entendemos grao de complexidade sintáctica na liña que establece Rohdenburg (1995: 368) para a complementación clausal, é dicir, canto máis complexa é unha construción sintáctica, maior será a probabilidade de que presente unha estrutura oracional.…”

“…a) Polaridade: afirmativa (para ter) vs. negativa (para non ter) b) Clítico reflexivo: presente (para aproveitarse) vs. ausente (para aproveitar) c) Perífrase verbal: presente (antes de ir traballar) vs. ausente (antes de traballar) d) Aktionsart: verbos estativos (ser/estar) vs. outros A presenza na cláusula adverbial de polaridade negativa, un clítico reflexivo, unha perífrase verbal e/ou un proceso verbal eventivo aumenta a verbalidade da cláusula (Vanderschueren & De Cuypere 2014: 159-161). Dado que estes factores contribúen a facer máis explícito o carácter oracional da construción, a sua presenza tamén aumenta a complexidade sintáctica tal e como é concebida por Rohdenburg (1995Rohdenburg ( , 1996Rohdenburg ( , 2020 11 .…”