because N(P) -structure

carey benom busylinguist at gmail.com
Mon Oct 6 01:49:13 UTC 2014


Dear Markus,

I have never seen any "proper" research, as you put it, on this, but I have
seen some mentions of this phenomenon in popular media and blogs that are
worth looking at.

One of the first mentions I could find was Mark Lieberman's entry in the
Language Log from 2012: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4068

The Atlantic also ran a piece about a year ago:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/

Stan Carey's blog has a relevant entry:
http://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/because-has-become-a-preposition-because-grammar/

This blog considers the origin of the construction:
http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/67507311833/where-because-noun-probably-came-from

I would be interested if you could find something more academic written on
this topic.

Best,
Carey


Carey Benom
Kyushu University


On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 3:24 AM, <markus.hamunen at helsinki.fi> wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> many of you might have heard (or see) this relatively
> new because N expression, e.g.
> "A thousand vague fancies oppressed and disconcerted me-fancies the more
> distressing [because vague]."
> (see http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9477)
>
> Now, I was wondering, if there is any (proper) research done on this
> phenomenon in English or any other
> language (more than what is behind above mentioned link). I am asking
> because a student:
> she has found several parallel examples from conversations in Finnish
> social media, e.g.
> A: oispa tosi kiva päästä jo nukkumaan, muttei pääse [koska taapero].
>    'It would be really nice to go bed already, but I won't because baby'
> B:  Ei pääse, [koska naapurissa ryyppybileet].
>     'I won't go (neither) because party in the neighbours'
>
> She will do her MA-thesis on this topic, and all potential references
> would be
> helpful.
>
> With best,
> Markus Hamunen
> University Instructor
> University of Tampere (Finland)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



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