Than Meets the Eye:
A Corpus Study of English Comparison Particles
Nøgleord:
korpuslingvistik, BNC, sammenligningspartikler, engelske præpositionerResumé
This paper analyses data from the BNC to examine the distribution of the comparison particles than and as in their use as either prepositions or as complementisers, signalled through the case on the following pronoun. The comparison particles are used as prepositions in 85.0% of the occurrences, but considerable variation is found across the individual pronouns. Notably, the 1st person singular is barely used in the nominative case, i.e. as a complementiser, and the 3rd person singular feminine and masculine pronouns exhibit the highest rate of nominative uses. It is suggested that the limited use of 1st person singular nominative may be attributable to genre effects of the data available in the BNC whereas the preference for 3rd person singular nominative remains unclear. Additionally, the data suggests that both formality levels and genre affect the distributions of prepositional and complementiser use as more formal texts have a higher percentage of nominative pronouns and less formal text and spoken language a lower percentage.
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