말뭉치(Corpus)에 기반한 복합전치사의 통사적 위상 연구

The aim of this paper is to reveal the syntactic status of complex prepositions as single units of grammar on the basis of large amounts of authentic language. I first give an overview of what nineteenth- and twentieth-century grammars have had to say on these constructions. This is followed by a presentation of the critical view taken by Seppanen et al. (1994), who claim that the unit-like status of complex prepositions cannot be upheld when the constructions under consideration are submitted to standard constituency tests. They argue that complex prepositions constitute a semantically motivated category which is not helpful as part of a structural description of English grammar. In the remaining part of this paper, this strong assertion is tested against actual language use found in the BNC. I have shown that a usage-based and quantitative perspective on the system of language offers important insights into the nature of PNP constructions which clearly suggest that the class of complex prepositions constitutes a meaningful element of the grammatical system.