Chapter 3. “Hugh’s across all that”

This paper identifies some newly-increasing patterns of spatial prepositions, especially across, (all) over, on, around, and ahead of. It draws partly on data from the large general corpora of the 1990s and 2000s and partly on an informal collection of the language used ‘now’ (i.e. in the year 2013) in conversations, the media and other ephemera. Collocations and phraseology are explored, as well as the wider semantic sequences in which the prepositions are crucial elements. It is suggested that these and other spatial prepositions are annexing a growing range of meanings, and that an association with particular text types is clearly discernible.