A Comparative Analysis of Except and Except for in the COCA

Abstract

The ultimate goal of this paper is to show how similar except and except for are in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). A point to note is that except and except for exhibit the same pattern in six genres, whereas they show a different pattern in two genres. What this suggests is that except is 75% the same as except for in the genre analysis of the COCA. A further point to note is that except and except for exhibit the lowest similarity in the fiction genre, whereas they reveal the highest similarity in the spoken genre. The COCA clearly shows that except people is the most preferable one among Americans, followed by except death, except Mr, and except water, in that order. The COCA further shows that except for people (45 tokens) is the most preferable one for Americans, followed by except for Mr, except for cases, and except for things, in that order. Finally, this paper argues that 21.95% of 41 nouns are the collocations of both except and except for. This amounts to saying that except is 21.95% the same as except for in the analysis of 41 collocations.