STRUCTURAL NATIVIZATION IN PAKISTANI ENGLISH: EXPLORING PREPOSITIONAL VERB IDIOSYNCRASIES

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to find out how innovative prepositional verbs (PrVs) such as discuss about, discuss on, comprise of and demand for have become so deeply rooted within the linguistic system of written Pakistani English (PE). Using a corpus-based approach, this study compares how these PrVs and their corresponding single-word verbs (SWVs) comprise, demand and discuss are used in Pakistani English newspapers. It is hypothesized that there are systematic structural differences between the PrVs and their corresponding SWVs which reveal certain aspects of structural nativization in PE.