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11 - Looking Forward to Meet You

An Embryonic Pattern in Asian Englishes?

from Section 3 - Corpus-Based Research on Variable Usage in Place and Medium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2026

By
Edgar W. Schneider
Edited by
Adam Smith  and
Peter Collins
Adam Smith
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
Peter Collins
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
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Summary

This chapter starts out from the serendipitous observation of patterns where look forward to is complemented not by a verbal -ing form (as would be expected by standard grammars) but by a plain infinitive, as in I’m looking forward to meet you. It investigates the spread and frequency of this construction in a wide range of corpora, some of which also allow a diachronic comparison, and considers several potentially conditioning factors. Grammatically, this pattern can be explained as a case of reanalysis in the process of structural transmission, showcasing structural simplification that may characterise second-language acquisition. The form to, the final element in the phrasal-prepositional verb under discussion, is reinterpreted as a homonymic but functionally different form, the to infinitive marker. The results clearly support the hypothesis that the ’look forward to + plain infinitive’ pattern constitutes more than mere performance errors and appears to represent an ’embryonic’ manifestation of an incipient change, with a strong focus in Asian Englishes, and possibly with Indian English as an epicentre, although the trend may have been reversed recently in formal registers.

Keywords

Asian Englishescorpus linguisticsembryonic formsIndian Englishlook forward tophrasal-prepositional verbsregisterstructural innovationverb complementationWorld Englishes

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Type
Chapter
Information
Worldwide Perspectives on English Usage
Into the Third Millennium
 , pp. 268 - 295
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2026

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