Diachronic trends in the complementation of the verb <i>prevent</i>

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.