iawe 2007 regensburg josef schmied / daniel nkemleke english language & linguistics chemnitz...

IAWE 2007 Regensburg

Josef Schmied / Daniel NkemlekeEnglish Language & Linguistics

Chemnitz University of Technologywww.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/linguistics

Prepositions in Kenyan and Cameroonian English

1. Comparing corpora: quantitatively and qualitatively

Prepositions Schmied/Nkemleke 2

comparability discussed in ICE project around 1990 (cf. Schmied 1996)• International Corpus of English - East Africa (ICE-EA)• Corpus of Cameroon English (CCE) = more LOB style

ICE-EA CCEtime of compilation 1990-96 1990-94medium spoken + written writtenseize 290.000+ 402.000 820.000

overlap only in written parts of unequal seize normalize to 1M words

1. Context: academic writingPrepositions Schmied/Nkemleke 3

1.1. Corpus design: ICE-K-written word count


NON-PRINTED 101,003

Non-professional writing: Student essays 40,139Correspondence: Letters 40,837Legal presentations: Judgements 20,027

PRINTED 300,860

Informational: Learned 80,277Informational: Popular 80,202Informational: Reportage 40,104Instructional: Administrative/regulatory 20,019Persuasive: Institutional + personal 40,122Creative 40,136

Total Written Kenya 401,863


A Official Press 126,539

B Private Press 49,098

C Novels and Short Stories 77,096

D Religion 96,380

E Tourism 26,881

F Official Letters 12,285

G Private Letters 79,386

H Students’ Essays 137,399

I Government Memoranda 71,368

J Advertisement 4,875

K Miscellaneous 139,247

Total 820,554

1.2. Corpus design: ICE-K-written word count

2. Quantitative comparisons

even if the text basis is comparable,frequency differences because of • contents (student essays with the same topic?) or • functions (e.g. functional load of in)?

categorising prepositions• form (in)• syntactic functions: phrasal verbs (take in),

independent prepositions (adverbial: in the garden) vs. dependent prepositions (idiomatic, fixed: succeed in)?

• semantic functions (but frequent prepositions have many meanings)


2. 1. Simple prepositionsPrepositions Schmied/Nkemleke 7

corpus CCE ICE-K LOB Cameroon' Kenya' UK

proportion 0.82 0.402 normalised normalised

of 28842 13708 35658 35173 32638 35658

to 24328 12739 26778 29668 30331 26778

in 17273 8778 20950 21065 20900 20950

for 8323 4240 9224 10150 10095 9224

on 4877 2798 6995 5948 6662 6995

at 3370 1929 5951 4110 4593 5951

up 1195 624 1971 1457 1486 1971

off 246 157 585 300 374 585

total 88454 44973 108112 107871 107079 108112

2.2. Compound prepositionsPrepositions Schmied/Nkemleke 8



preposition

into 1177 565 1652 1435 1345 1652

upon 147 75 407 179 179 407

within 376 198 343 459 471 343

throughout 44 33 119 54 79 119

onto 24 17 15 29 40 15

total 1768 888 2536 2156 2114 2536

2.3. Complex (2-word) prepositions Prepositions Schmied/Nkemleke 9



preposition

because of 284 94 136 346 224 136

according to 215 129 118 262 307 118

due to 144 125 139 176 298 139

instead of 125 52 106 152 124 106

apart from 63 46 85 77 110 85

contrary to 18 26 14 22 62 14

regardless of 23 10 13 28 24 13

irrespective of 13 9 8 16 21 8

total 885 491 619 1079 1169 619

3. Qualitative comparison3.1. Simplification: From compound to simple?

in for into? (cf. Mwangi 2003, all in spoken!)… but let us take the length and the width of Zanzibar island and the people who are there What do you think if there are so many people just coming in the country. (S1A018T)

on for onto? figures too small


3.2. Simplification through incorporation

esp. if preposition is unambiguous/transparent

arrive

When I arrive __ the campus on the 15th I found things a little abnormal until the first week was over, then I came back to a new stand. (Cam pl038)

I arrived home at 9.30 night having being rained on like nobody's business. (Ken ##) = BrE (parallel: reach)

reply (+letter idiomatic?)Tell her to reply __ my letter if she still knows me as a friend. (Cam pl114)

Everybody has been complaining that you no longer reply letters. (Ken ##)


3.3. Explicitness: From simple to complex

ontoArita lifted the burning charcoal stove and hit Kuya on the chest, pouring all the burning charcoal onto him. (Ken ##)

in withinEven though within Cameroon there exist some seasonal hunger zones, … (Cam mi022)but gradient!Most of the product is locally used within the country with some surplus for exportation within UDEAC and to Europe. (Cam op001)

in throughoutand they have the power, influence and resources to promote environmentally desirable activities throughout the country. (Cam mi014)

pen offPermit me to pen off while waiting for your reply. Best regards. (Cam pl244) Let me pen off and say one day we will meet for <O/> enjoyment ceremony.(Ken ##)


3.4. Why explicitness?

from formal styles (“Biblical”)?

onto

The lesson learnt here is that man should do onto others just what he wants others to do onto him. (Cam se019) (directive!)

I spoke to them in the evening of "GROWING UP ONTO JESUS‘ LIKENESS. (Ken ##)

in expressive styles?

off

For once, all four clubs in the Littoral province smiled off with two points each. In Nkongsamba, Eagle walloped “Maiscam” 3-0. (Cam op113)

in prototypes/chunk learning: take into consideration (C 39 – K 13 – UK 1!)

In arriving at the estimated retirement benefits in column 9 and 10 the following assumptions have been taken into account (Ken ##)

3-word propositions





on behalf of 37 16 16 45 40 16

in addition to 41 28 38 50 70 38

irrespective of 13 9 8 16 22 8

with regard to 19 14 21 23 35 21

in charge of 39 5 14 48 12 14

with a view to 16 14 12 20 35 12

in case of 14 12 5 17 30 5

for the sake of 16 8 15 20 20 15

21 total 293 189 342 238 264 342

2.4. Complex (3-word) prepositions

4. Conclusion

problems: multiple reasons for features of New Englishes

diverging trends in simplification – expressiveness

underlying properties: L2 learner- or culture-specific?

prospects = more research:• larger corpus (WWW)• semantically + POS-tagged corpus• collocation finder:

http://ell.phil.tu-chemnitz.de/collCollect/


Background reading

Jibril, M. (1991) “The Sociolinguistics of prepositional usage in Nigerian English”. In Chesire, J. (ed.) English around the world: Sociolinguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 519-537.

Lindstromberg, Seth (1998) English Prepositions Explained. Amsterdam. John Benjamins

Mwangi, Serah (2003) “Prepositions in Kenyan English: A Corpus-based Study in Lexical-Grammatical Variation”. PhD thesis, Chemnitz University of Technology.

Mwangi, Serah (2004) “Prepositions Vanishing in Kenyan English”. English Today 77, Vol. 20 No. 1, 27-32.

Renouf, Antoinette and Sinclair John (1991) ‘Collocational framework in English’. In K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (eds.) London: Longman, 128-143.

Schmied, Josef (1991) English in Africa: An Introduction. London: Longman.Schmied, Josef (2002). "Prototypes, transfer and idiomaticity: an empirical

analysis of local prepositions in English and German". In: Rabade, Luis Iglesias/Susana M.a Doval Suarez (eds.). Studies in Contrastive Linguistics. Universidade de Santiage de Compostela, 947-959.


4.2. Schemantic comparisonPrepositions Schmied/Nkemleke 17

Table: Locative and metaphorical meanings of through in the CCE and ICE-K

iawe 2007 regensburg josef schmied / daniel nkemleke english language & linguistics chemnitz...

Documents

frequent prepositions

cam pl038i

cam op001

cam pl114everybody

cam pl244

cam mi014 pen offpermit

cam mi022but gradient

ice project