Introduction

Abstract

This book looks at the usage patterns found for the highly frequent items of and to in different sets of corpora. The book disputes claims that these two items can merely be referred to as prepositions and carry little meaning in themselves. Instead, looking at historical roots (cf. Brorström, 1965; Hook, 1975) and earlier corpus linguistic research (Sinclair, [1970] 2004), the aim is to demonstrate that both of and to have clear semantic and pragmatic functions. In order to achieve this, corpora from three types of text will be explored here: spoken (BNC Spoken Conversation and more recent material); semi-prepared spoken (public speeches as found in the BBC Reith and LSE public lectures but also Q&As and plenary-led speeches); and written fiction (BNC; 19th-century British and early 20th-century US full text).¹

Linguists are accustomed to seeing the language as divisible into coherent units such as phrase, group or clause. The simple frameworks proposed here are intended to raise consciousness of the many different and eminently sensible ways we might develop to present and explain language patterning. We have sought to demonstrate that two very common grammatical words, one on either side, offer a firm basis for studying collocations.

(Renouf and Sinclair, 1991: 142)