Language Matters : Beside / Besides

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1.  
Explain
the form and meaning/use of the words beside and besides in
the following examples, which all come from the Collins Cobuild Concordancer (no longer available on the web).

a) .... It is now in the Science
Centre, beside the world famous 76m Lovell Radio Telescope.

b) .... barbiturates present
additional risks. Beside the usual risks of injecting (abscesses and so on) ..

c) .... (it's quite nice, actually,
but that's beside the point).

d) .... I was beside myself with
rage when I heard this.

e) .... Staley's heroin odyssey and
a whole lot more besides.

f) .... political or social
injustice. Besides, Africa was rich in ...

g) .... Besides producing a large
quantity of concert music, ....

 

2.  Comment
on the potential features of connected speech in (e) above

 

Now compare
your own analysis with the suggested answer below.

 

Suggested Answers

 

1. Form, Meaning and Use

 

a) Form - preposition.
  Meaning - next to 
 Use - used
as head of a prepositional phrase to indicate location

b) Form - preposition.    Meaning - as well as    Use - used
as head of a prepositional phrase to indicate the relationship of addition

c) Form – preposition.    Meaning - irrelevant to    Use -  used as
head of a prepositional phrase forming a idiomatic expression / fixed lexical chunk .

d) Form – preposition. 
   Use/Meaning
– when used as head of prepositional phrase together with
a reflexive pronoun (as here) has the meaning of "with no self control"

e) Form - adverb. 
  Meaning/use
- in
addition    Use - equivalent to
prepositional phrase "besides Staley's heroin odyssey"

f) Form - adverb.   Meaning- Furthermore 
   Use
- indicates a relationship of addition between the two
propositions.

g)
Form – preposition.     Meaning : as well as 
  Use - indicates a
relationship of addition between the two propositions

 

2. Features
of Connected Speech

 

Citation form : /stænlɪz
herəʊɪn ɔ:desi: ænd ə hɔ:l lɒt mɔ: bɪsaɪdz/

 

a)
Liaison: use of intrusive
consonants between adjacent vowels:

i)
heroin:  /herəʊwɪn/        
ii) odyssey and: /ɔ:desi:jænd/

 

b)
Use of weak form for the
unstressed grammatical word and.
Could potentially become any of the following: i) /ənd/ - with vowel weakening of /æ/ to schwa;   ii) /ən/
vowel weakening plus elision of /d/; or iii)
[n̩] with elision both of the
initial vowel and final consonant, leaving only a syllabic consonant.

 

c) Catenation
between syllable final consonants and syllable initial vowels : i) heroin
odyssey: /herəʊɪnɒdesi:/   ii)
and a: /əndə/ /ənə/ or [n̩ə]

 

d) Gemination of the two adjacent /l/ phonemes in whole lot:: /hɔ:lɒt/

 

e)
Regressive assimilation of place
in lot more: the alveolar /t/
becomes a bilabial /p/ in front of the bilabial /m/: /lɒp mɔ:/

Potentially
resulting in: /stænlɪz herəʊɪnɒdesi:jənə hɔ:lɒp mɔ:
bɪsaɪdz/