A corpus-based and collostructional approach to the [V the N taboo-term out of NP]-construction

This paper, adopting the collostructional approach as well as descriptive statistics, provides a comprehensive study of the authentic uses and grammatical properties of the [V the Ntaboo-term out of NP]-construction in the inner-circle varieties of English from synchronic, diachronic, and dialectal perspectives, based on the data from Movie Corpus. The findings show that the construction displays several intriguing patterns in terms of main verb usage, semantic preferences of main verbs, favoured taboo terms, strong collexeme pairs of main verbs and taboo terms, and syntactic structure variations. While general tendencies of these properties hold across different time periods and regional varieties, some distinctive patterns emerge within particular time periods and specific regional varieties, shedding light on details that previous studies have overlooked. This integrated perspective thus contributes to a deeper understanding of the [V the Ntaboo-term out of NP]-construction.