Variation in Non-finite Constructions in English

Analyzing the Gerundial Patterns of prevent: New Corpus Evidence from Recent English

“…Confirming the trend favoring the availability of object control with the bare NP - ing pattern, Kaunisto and Rudanko (2019: 124) also provided further examples from the British English component of the NOW Corpus. Their latest example is from 2017.…”

“…Kaunisto and Rudanko (2019: 122–4) provide some evidence of recent usage based on the Hansard Corpus (2014) that is relevant here. The sentence in (17) is one of their examples: Matthew Kelly, county councillor of county Clare, was prevented addressing his constituents, […] (Hansard, House of Commons, May 10, 1901) Sentence (17) attests that the pattern has existed in fairly recent English, and Kaunisto and Rudanko (2019: 123) show how it was relatively frequent in the nineteenth century, with as many as 66 tokens in the 1880s. However, they also show that in the twentieth century its frequency has been very low, to the point that no tokens at all were found in the Hansard Corpus in the period from the 1960s to the 1990s.…”

“…However, Kaunisto and Rudanko (2019: 123–4) also note that the 2000s, the most recent decade available of the Hansard Corpus (2014), brought a resurgence of the pattern in the corpus, with as many as 31 tokens. An example is given in (18), from Kaunisto and Rudanko (2019: 122).…”

“…However, Kaunisto and Rudanko (2019: 123–4) also note that the 2000s, the most recent decade available of the Hansard Corpus (2014), brought a resurgence of the pattern in the corpus, with as many as 31 tokens. An example is given in (18), from Kaunisto and Rudanko (2019: 122). We would not want to be prevented obtaining information about a property that someone had failed to declare when making a claim for benefit […] (Hansard, House of Lords, Feb. 1, 2001) Such dramatic fluctuations in the use of the pattern in very recent decades suggest that the bare NP - ing pattern may be undergoing change, with the object control pattern again becoming increasingly available to the bare NP - ing complement of prevent in very recent British English.…”