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Title:
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A Usage-Type Analysis of Three Prepositions: At, in and on in a corpus of written Malaysian English
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Author:
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Imran Ho-Abdullah
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Homepage:
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http://pkukmweb.ukm.my/~iha/imrancv.htm
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Otago
, Linguistics Section
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Degree Date:
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1999
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Semantics
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Subject Language(s):
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English
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Director(s):
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John Taylor
Claudia Brugman
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Abstract:
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This study is an investigation of the use of the three basic English prepositions – at, in and on – in Malaysian English. The investigation takes the form of a corpus-based description of Malaysian English whose properties are systematically compared with those derived from comparable corpora of New Zealand and British English. The corpus based approach has enabled frequencies at the inter-lexemic (wordform) level, and at the intra-lexemic (usage-type) level, to be examined across the three varieties. The usage-type analysis utilises Dirven’s (1993) cognitive lexical-semantic radial network analysis to resolve and categorise the prepositional usage data. The radial networks of the domains of usage for these items allow us to make observation regarding the “central” uses of these items in the different varieties of English as well as the relationship between uses in the different domains. The systematic use of a cognitive linguistic lexical-semantic analysis as a basis for examining the intervarietal differences in prepositional usage has proved to be a promising approach to lexical variation. The study found that there are differences in the distribution of various usage-types of these prepositions in Malaysian English as well as different usage nuances of these basic prepositions in Malaysian English. In particular, some usage-types such as at-Temporal, on-Temporal, at-Area, on-Area and at-Cause serve to distinguish ME from NZE or BrE.
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