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Diachronic trends in the complementation of the verb prevent

A study across the turn of the 21st century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2025

Yoko Iyeiri Open the ORCID record for Yoko Iyeiri [Opens in a new window]
Yoko Iyeiri*
Affiliation:
Department of English/American Language and Literature, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
*
Email: yiyeiri@bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp
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Abstract

This paper explores the complementation of the verb prevent in contemporary English. While the verb is typically followed by from -ing, British English also exhibits a variant without from (e.g. They must carry out a forensic examination of these failings to prevent them happening again [The Daily Mail, 22 December 2020]). In British English, this construction has in fact been reported to be on the increase in recent years. Since previous studies on this topic have tended to rely on a limited number of examples, the present research investigates a larger dataset drawn from the 2010 issues of The Daily Mail (British) and USA Today (American). This study also examines the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus as a supplementary resource. The BAWE corpus is a collection of academic assignments and provides insight into unedited uses of the verb prevent. The findings are as follows: the use of from-less -ing is indeed expanding in contemporary British English; the rate of this expansion differs between newspaper texts and unedited academic writing; and the complementation patterns of prevent are more varied in contemporary English than previously assumed. The discussion concludes by situating these present-day uses within the historical development of this verb.

Keywords

preventcomplementation-ingvariationlanguage change

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Type
Research Article
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English Today , First View , pp. 1 - 9
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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