"soon before"?

[Wilson Gray]

On May 18, 2005, at 5:07 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "soon before"?
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> On May 18, 2005, at 1:20 PM, Alison Murie wrote:
>
>> Seymour Hersh in  /Chain of Command/ on pp. 355-6 writes:
>> "....security official said in an interview _soon before_ the
>> transfer of
>> sovereignty that..."  [my emphasis].
>> This looks & sounds very odd to me;  I would expect _shortly
>> before_here.
>
> "shortly" is fine, but "soon" sounds perfectly good to me here.  in
> wh questions of extent, with "how", "soon" is very common: "How soon
> before the game did you arrive?"
>

On the other hand, "How shortly before the game did you arrive?" is
D.O.A.

-Wilson

> outside of contexts with "how", "soon before"  is common, though not
> nearly as connon as "shortly before" or "soon after".  in raw google
> web hits:
>
>    --> "soon before" -how: ca. 31,900
>    "soon after" -how: ca. 2,670,000
>
>    "shortly before": ca. 2,960,000
>    "shortly after": ca. 11,400,000
>
> here, "after" has the edge over "before".  modified by "just" or
> "long", however, "before" has the edge, though not as big an edge:
>
>    "just before": ca. 9,770,000
>    "just after": ca. 4,440,000
>
>    "long before": ca. 8,510,000
>    "long after": ca. 5,260,000
>
> (overall, "before" and "after" are roughly the same in frequency,
> 894m and 882m.)
>
> admittedly, "soon before" (marked with an accusatory arrow above) is
> very low compared to the other combinations.  so there does seem to
> be some dispreference.  or even the possibility that some speakers
> have an odd gap in the pattern of modifying "before"/"after" by
> "soon"/"shortly"/"just"/"long".
>
> in general, i have no idea where these asymmetries come from.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>