Grammatical collocations and verb-particle constructions in Brussels French: a corpus-linguistic approach to transfer

Abstract

This article shows how a corpus-linguistic approach to transfer based on Jarvis (2000), Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) and Mougeon, Nadasdi, and Rehner (2005) can help to disentangle internal and external explanations in language variation and change. The focus of the study is on grammatical collocations (Granger & Paquot, 2008) such as chercher après ‘to search for’ and verb-particle constructions (VPCs) such as recevoir dehors ‘to get out’ in Brussels French. The occurrence of such patterns in Romance varieties is often linked to contact with Germanic varieties, in which VPCs are common. This article discusses the syntactic and semantic properties of both types of constructions and argue they are to be considered as replications of grammatical use patterns (Heine & Kuteva, 2005) from the contact language, the regional variety of Dutch. Proof for covert transfer from Dutch is found through a detailed comparison of the frequency of the patterns in a range of spoken and written corpora.