[Corpora-List] adverbial 'behind'

[Angus Grieve-Smith]

On 5/29/2010 12:57 PM, Jim Fidelholtz wrote:
> Hi, Marc,
>
> My initial reaction to your question was 'what adverb?', ie, that it 
> is a preposition. With a bit more reflection, I'm a bit more convinced 
> that it's more of a preposition than an adverb. Cf.
>           They lost their daddy behind the barn. (or even: after the 
> event, where I would interpret 'after' here as a preposition). 
> Actually, such examples seem to me to point out the fuzziness of 
> grammatical categories (*especially* where adverbs are concerned, and 
> cf. also 'discourse markers', which in their historical development 
> seem to progress syntactically in many cases towards adverb-like 
> behavior).

     Clearly, the prepositional phrase with "behind" is functioning as 
an adverb in the sentence, much like "behind the barn."  But I don't 
think that's what Marc's really interested in.

     Most of the times I've heard it, "behind" has its original sense 
denoting a place relationship, or extended to Ken's sense of 
responsibility ("so that's who's behind all those robberies").  In this 
case, however, it seems to have a general sense of "related to," similar 
to the way I would use "over."

     I'm guessing it's an innovation in the Baltimore dialect of Black 
English.  From a corpus perspective, it turns out that the script to 
this episode of "The Wire" and many others are available online and 
searchable.  You can find a bunch of other examples.  It's hard to find 
with a keyword search unless you're looking at something that's specific 
to that dialect, because there are so many other uses of "behind."

 From the same episode:
"I'm gonna need a tetanus to get behind this bullshit."
"Everything else in this country gets sold... without people shooting 
each other behind it."
http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/268875

 From other episodes,
"You just took a real detective off a real case behind your bullshit."
http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/138236#line531

"You're going to jail behind this shit. - Yes, you are."
http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/237503#line31

"It's my recollection that a city police got shot behind Mr. Barksdale's 
business."
http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/205769#line431

"You still fucked up behind that stickup, man?"
http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/172760#line51
"I nearly got killed behind this caper, you know?"
http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/172760#line251
"And I will put a bullet in all you all behind, what happen right now, 
you heard?"
http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/172760#line351

     Outside of scripts for "The Wire," I was able to find one instance 
on an Oprah message board:

"was I better of useing herion than drinking at that time behind what 
happen with the other family"
http://www.oprah.com/community/message/976102

-- 
				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
				grvsmth at panix.com


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