2. Among or Between?

Authors : Faye Reinhard and John Swales Date : July 21, 2003 Dow nload this paper as a PDF file now : Among or Between (PDF) Kibbitzer 2

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Teachers Learners

Researchers MICASE Kibbitzers Home 1. Criteria/data: Uncountable or Countable?

Do MICASE speakers pref er to say the data is or the data are?

Among or Between? b y Faye Reinhard and John Swales

The Sim ple Rule
Among and between are both prepositions that take plural objects (Harbrace, 214). According to the Harbrace College Handbook, among and between are used in the following complimentary distribution: use among with objects denoting three or more (a group), and use between with those denoting only two (or twos) (214). The Concise English Handbook confirms this simple rule: among refers to a relationship involving three or more, whereas between refers to a relationship of two* (374-375).

2. Among or Betw een?

The traditional rule recommends between f or two things and among f or more than two. Do MICASE speakers f ollow this rule?

3. Hyperbole in Academic and Research Speech

In ordinary speech, hy perbole (or exaggeration) is common. Do we still f ind these exaggerations in academic speech?

4. Less and Few er?

More Com plex Rules

Some grammars and manuals also offer more complex, semantically based rules governing the use of between or among, which are designed to cover exceptions to the simple rule. For example, according to A Practical English Grammar, the simple rule is generally observed, but between can be used to relate more than two objects if the speaker has a specific number of objects in mind (79). The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage also confirms the simple rule but adds that between can be used with more than two objects if they are related individually as well as severally (20). Finally, Write For College, a popular student handbook, states: _among_ is usually used when emphasizing distribution throughout a body or group; between is used when emphasizing distribution to individuals (680). Note in all the above cases, the exceptions are based on semantic distinctions; further, these grammars and manuals are primarily based on written English. One exception to this is the Grammar Book, which advocates a multi-level strategy (415) involving semantics, collocational evidence and the discourse context.

Do MICASE speakers use less with uncountables (e.g. less money ) and f ewer with countables (e.g. fewer dollars )? Or are there other f actors at play ?

5. Making Suggestions in MICASE

Do people use the v erb suggest to make suggestions, or other kinds of language?

The Data
Now let us consider how between is used in the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). There are 1240 instances of between in MICASE, but in some cases, it is not possible to tell whether the speaker was referring to two or more entities Of the 1025 classifiable instances of between, 106 compared more than two objects (10.3%) and 919 compared two objects (89.7%).

6. Modal Contractions in MICASE: The case of w ill/ll

When do we say will and when do we shorten it to the contracted f orm ll?

7. No Way

The Wrong Ones

As the above figures suggest, a large majority of tokens of between confirm the simple rule of between with two objects and among with more than two. Even so, there is a ten percent occurrence of anomalous cases, where speakers use between where the simple rule predicts they will use among. For example: 1. lets look at the difference betw een model one model two model three and model four. 2. the interface betw een universities and external research groups and the sponsoring industry. 3. choose betw een several alternative methods for teaching reading to, elementary school children. While these examples from the MICASE do not obey the simple rule between with two objects and among with more than two objects, the first two utterances could be explained by some of the more complex rules. It seems likely, for example, that the speakers of utterances one and two are following the more complex usage rule stating that between can be used with more than two objects if they are related individually as well as severally (New York, ). In the first, the speaker clearly intends to make a series of individual comparisons. In the second, the speaker refers to an interface between the university and external research groups and between external research groups and the sponsoring industry, but under at least one interpretation the speaker could be seen to imply an interface between universities and the sponsoring industry. The third example isnt governed by any of the rules examined thus far, yet it is not an atypical native speaker utterance. Are there features in the context that might throw light on such cases?

The expression no way is of ten used among f riends to express strong denial (can you lend me fifty dollars? No way!). In academic speech, is it used f or some other purposes?

8. Announcements of Self-Repair
When we speak, we sometimes recognize that we hav e misspoken in some way, and so we try again. What are the common way s of announcing that we are going to rephrase?

9. Anyone and Anybody in MICASE

These v ery similar pronouns

Patterns in the Data

As it turns out, not all of the anomalous or incorrect uses of between are random and inexplicable. In fact, an examination of these uses uncovers several interesting trends: 1) there seem to be some words (such as relationship and differences) that tend to collocate with between , even when reference is made to more than two entities (a point also made by Celcia-Murcia and LarsenFreeman); 2) there are a couple of idiomatic phrases with between that involve more than two objects, and these would seem to have transfer effects; 3) some verbs may trigger the use of between regardless of how many objects are involved. 1) Collocation Among the examples of incorrect uses of between , there were several word stems that frequently occurred to the immediate left or very near to the immediate left of the word between . The word-stems most frequently collocating with between were diff- words (differ, difference, differences, differential, differentiating ), relation- words (relations, relationship, relationships), and distin- words (distinct, distinction, distinguish ). Collocation with diff- words accounted for 18 of the 106 incorrect entries (17.0%); collocation with relationwords accounted for 11 of 106 (10.4%); and distin- words accounted for 8 of 106 (7.5%). Collocation with diff-, relation-, and distin- words was fairly frequent among the entries of between at large (diffwords = 169/1240 = 13.6%, relation- words = 47/1240 = 3.8%, distin- words = 52/1240 = 4.2%), but relatively low within the entries for among/st (diff- words = 5/165 = 3.0%, relation- words = 5/165 = 3.0%, distin-words = 2/165 = 1.2%) perhaps suggesting that use of these words immediately prompts a speaker to use between rather than among regardless of the number of objects about to be compared. 2) Idiomatic Phrases There are some idiomatic expressions in English that use between with more than two objects: 1. Betw een you, me, and the fence post 2. Betw een this, that, and the other thing At least one example of incorrect usage from MICASE seems to follow the pattern of example one above: betw een you and me and the T-As you can use these equations all you want One example seems to follow pattern two exactly: betw een the lecture, the lab, and your discussions for Chem one-twenty-five, that should be, be sufficient for you to do well and two other examples seem to be variations on pattern two: but betw een all those things you should be (directing) (xx) (this course) yourself, to, uh, to do well on those examinations.

play an important role in instructor-student interaction. When are they used in the f ull question f orm (does anyone wanna guess?), or when in a shortened structure (anyone wanna guess?").

10. The Distribution of Anaphoric 'So' in MICASE

The use of so in such phrases as I guess so is not that common in MICASE. With which v erbs does it occur? In which speech-ev ents? Do other languages use a similar structure?

11. Pre- and post-dislocations in MICASE

In written English, the standard structure of a sentence is subject-v erb-complement. Howev er, in speech, we actually mov e the subject into dif f erent positions. How common are the non-standard f orms? Where do they occur, and why ?

12. Vocativ es in MICASE

Vocativ es, such as *okay, John*, lets move on, are known to be hard to explain to English learners. This study inv estigates the f ollowing: What ty pes of v ocativ es are there in MICASE? Do v ocativ es hav e dif f erent f unctions when they occur at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of utterances?

13. 'End up' in MICASE

This phrasal v erb is one of the f iv e most common in MICASE. Why is this? What are its f unctions?

so betw een all of this, the Masai are having a difficult time Note that all in these last two examples seems to imply a list of things, that must be larger than two; otherwise both would have been used. This may suggest that the idiomatic pattern between this, that, and the other thing is being condensed or merged into between all that. 3) Trigger Verbs In at least two examples from the MICASE, the verb used in the utterance seemed to influence the choice of preposition: so youre trapped betw een a text that has authority over a particular community or had authority over particular communities, that you wanna read and you wanna understand, a society that denies the value of that text at certain levels on other levels it doesnt, and then your own values whatever they are

14. Interactional Query Formulae in MICASE: you know w hat I mean?"

This Kibbitzer inv estigates the phrases that English speakers use to check f or audience or listener comprehension, like do you see what I m saying? or does that make sense?. Which phrases are most common?

15. Vague Language in Academia

This Kibbitzer examines the phrases that speakers use to end a list of examples that they do not wish to say in f ull: and so on and so forth, etcetera etcetera. What are the most common phrases, and who uses them more f requently, instructors or students?

are you, sort of mediating betw een all these different things Even though the speakers are comparing more than two items, most speakers of English, according to our informal tests, find it odd or difficult to use among in these linguistic contexts. Other verbs that show something of this effect are caught (between), stuck (between), and transitioning (between).

Conclusion
These patterns and observations from the data are interesting, but even so they will not predict when between or among will occur with complete accuracy. What they do show, however, is that a corpus-based approach searching for linguistic patterns in the data can produce insights not available to armchair grammarians.

16. Just so stories from MICASE

This Kibbitzer f ocuses on clarif actory phrases beginning just so. Why are these phrases usef ul f or presenters and instructors?

References

Celce-Murcia, Marianne & Diane Larsen-Freeman. The Grammar Book (Second Ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1999. Hodges, John C., et al. Harbrace College Handbook. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Kirkland, James W., & Collett B. Dilworth, Jr. Concise English Handbook. Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1985. Marius, Richard, & Harvey S. Wiener. The McGraw-Hill College Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company Sebranek, Patrick, Verne Meyer, & Dave Kemper. Write for College . Massachusetts: Great Source Education Company, 1997. Siegal, Allan M., & William G. Connolly. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage . New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999. Thomson, A. J., & A. V. Martinet. A Practical English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

17. 'We' across academic disciplines and registers in MICASE

Does the f requency of we v ary across dif f erent academic disciplines and registers? In this kibbitzer, we examine MICASE samples f rom the phy sical sciences and compare our results with earlier studies.

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