"soon before"?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On May 18, 2005, at 2:07 PM, i wrote:

> ... raw google web hits:
>
>   --> "soon before" -how: ca. 31,900
>   "soon after" -how: ca. 2,670,000

to which i now add:

   "how soon before": ca. 20,300
   "how soon after": ca. 86,400

which has a "after"/"before" ratio of 4.25, not very far from the
3.85 ratio for:

>   "shortly before": ca. 2,960,000
>   "shortly after": ca. 11,400,000

but a hugely smaller ratio than the 83.70 for "soon after" -how/"soon
before" -how.

so, the numbers show a dramatic bias against "soon before" when
"soon" is not modified by "how".

so far we've had three people (alison murie, wilson gray, and jon
lighter) judge examples like the following to be ungrammatical for them:

(1)  an interview soon before the transfer of sovereignty
        an interview soon before sovereignty was transferred
        They met soon before midnight.

i'm guessing that they find "soon after" in this context to be
grammatical:

(2)  an interview soon after the transfer of sovereignty
        an interview soon after sovereignty was transferred
        They met soon after midnight.

(of course, there might be people for whom "soon" is simply
unavailable as a modifier of temporal subordinators.  but to get the
numbers above, there have to be a fair number who treat "soon after"
differently from "soon before".)

i'm also guessing that they find "how soon before" to be grammatical:

(3)  How soon before the transfer of sovereignty was he interviewed?
        How soon before sovereignty was transferred did he grant an
interview?
        How soon before midnight did they meet?

(of course, there might be people for whom "soon before" is
unavailable across the board.  but, again, to get the numbers above,
there have to be a fair number who treat "how soon before"
differently from "soon before" not modified by "how".)

i can see four possible varieties here:

1.  No constraint.  "soon" is available (like "shortly", "just", and
"long") as a modifier of the temporal subordinators "before" and
"after".  (1), (2), and (3) are all grammatical.  this is my variety.

2.  *Unmodified "soon before".  "soon" is available as a modifier of
"after", across the board, and also as a modifier of "before", but
only when "soon" is itself modified by "how".  (1) is ungrammatical,
but (2) and (3) are ok.  my guess is that this is alison's, wilson's,
and jon's variety, but they might have one of the still more
constrained varieties below.

3.  *"soon before".  "soon" is available as a modifier of "after" but
not of "before" (in any circumstances). (1) and (3) are
ungrammatical, but (2) is ok.

4.  *Temporal modifier "soon".  "soon" is not available as a modifier
of the temporal subordinators "before" and "after".  (1), (2) and (3)
are all ungrammatical.

the numbers above would result if there was a mix of all four
varieties in the population.

so, readers, where do you fit in this taxonomy?

oh, spit!  there's at least a fifth possible variety, which comes in
between 2 and 4, but is not orderable with respect to 3:

3'.  *Unmodified "soon".  "soon" is available as a modifier of
"before" and "after", but only when "soon" is itself modified by
"how".  (1) and (2) are ungrammatical, but (3) and (4) -- below --
are ok.

(4)  How soon after the transfer of sovereignty was he interviewed?
        How soon after sovereignty was transferred did he grant an
interview?
        How soon after midnight did they meet?

(example (4) is grammatical in varieties 1, 2, and 3, but not 4.)

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)