preposition - zero variation

[Mark Davies]

(Revised)

On like + [zero / for], some corpus data:

http://www.americancorpus.org/charts/likeFor.xls

Using:

-for    [like] * to [v*]        "like him to leave"
+for    [like] for * to [v*]    "like for him to leave"

-- [+for] is the most common in spoken (COCA corpus: http://www.americancorpus.org/ )
-- Slight increase in [+for] since the 1920s (TIME Corpus: http://corpus.byu.edu/time )

Mark D.

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Mark Davies
Professor of (Corpus) Linguistics
Brigham Young University
(phone) 801-422-9168 / (fax) 801-422-0906
Web: davies-linguistics.byu.edu

** Corpus design and use // Linguistic databases **
** Historical linguistics // Language variation **
** English, Spanish, and Portuguese **
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