PLACE Place adverbials

Biber B4 Xiao E72 MFTE PLACE Bohmann 131

Definition

Adverbs and adverbial expressions of place: here, there, elsewhere, above, below, nearby, etc.

Detection Rules

Default place adverbs rule. Refines RB.

cql[word={words} & pos="RB"]
Word list (61 items)
aboard above abroad across ahead alongside anywhere around ashore astern away backward behind below beneath beside downhill downstairs downstream downwards downwind east eastward elsewhere everywhere far farther here hereabouts indoors inland inshore inside locally near nearby north northward nowhere offline offshore online outdoors outside overboard overland overseas somewhere south southward there thereabout underfoot underground underneath uphill upstairs upstream upward west westward

Requires: word, pos

Refines: RB

mfte

MFTE place adverbs. Ambiguous words (also prepositions or particles) restricted to RB tag. Unambiguous spatial adverbs match any POS except NNP (proper nouns like “North”). EMPH consumes “far” before PLACE in MFTE processing order.

p1 
cql[word={words_ambiguous} & pos="RB"]
p2 
cql[word={words_unambiguous} & pos!="NNP"]
combine: (p1 | p2) & !EMPH
Words: ambiguous (11 items)
above across around away behind below beside far inside outside there
Words: unambiguous (39 items)
aboard abroad ahead alongside anywhere ashore astern beneath downhill downstairs downstream downwards east farther here hereabouts indoors inland inshore locally near nearby north nowhere offline online outdoors overboard overland overseas somewhere south underfoot underground underneath uphill upstairs upstream west

Requires: word, pos, head

Refines: RB

pybiber

pybiber’s blob regex _r\S* matches any tag starting with R (RB, RBR, RBS, RP) plus _i\S* for IN. The R-family includes particles (RP) like “behind” in “left behind”.

cql[word={words} & pos="R.*|IN"]
Word list (42 items)
aboard above abroad across ahead alongside around ashore astern away behind below beneath beside downhill downstairs downstream east far hereabouts indoors inland inshore inside locally near nearby north nowhere outdoors outside overboard overland overseas south underfoot underground underneath uphill upstairs upstream west

Requires: word, pos

Normalization

Per finite_verbs

Examples

It’s not far to go.

Source: le_foll_2024

I’ll get it from upstairs.

Source: le_foll_2024

It’s downhill all the way.

Source: le_foll_2024

It’s there not here.

Source: le_foll_2024

Sources

  • biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
  • mfte — Le Foll, Elen & Shakir, Muhammad (2023/2025) : Multi-Feature Tagger of English (MFTE) — Python version
  • pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
  • xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
  • grieve_2023 — Grieve, Jack (2023) : Register variation explains stylometric authorship analysis
  • bohmann_2019 — Bohmann, Axel (2019) : Variation in English Worldwide: Varieties and Genres in a Quantitative Perspective

View YAML source