“Run To The Hills, Run For Your Lives” – For Versus To With Verbs Of Motion (A Corpus-Based Study)
“Run To The Hills, Run For Your Lives” – For Versus To With Verbs Of Motion (A Corpus-Based Study)

Summary/Abstract: This paper is a corpus-based study on the semantics of the English prepositions for and to when combined with verbs of motion. The verbs chosen for analysis – run, go, hurry – are all motion verbs which can combine with both prepositions. The aim of the study is to bring some evidence in order to confirm Tyler and Evans’s hypothesis (2003: 153) that the semantics of to is related to reaching a particular target or goal, direction and contact, while with the semantics of for the majority of senses are primarily associated with purposes, intentions and motives, which reflects the more intentional character of its functional element. The study uses the largest corpus of American English available at present – the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). It provides an exhaustive number of excerpts suitable for a comprehensive analysis. The data bring forth some problems in the interpretation of contexts where to and for are apparently used interchangeably. This leads to the inference that to and for also seem to share a high degree of semantic overlap.

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