A Corpus Analysis of Support Verb Constructions in British English with a Specific Focus on Sociolinguistic Variables

English contains a considerable number of lexical combinations with various forms and labels, making it an interesting field of inquiry for researchers. The significance and popularity of support verb constructions (SVC) is that they are used largely by native speakers and include some of the most common words in English but seem to be problematic even for advanced learners. In this study, the British National Corpus (BNC) was used to investigate SVC patterns through sociolinguistic variables. The rationale in doing so is that using sociolinguistics variables through substantive corpus data may give us a better sense and understanding of the nature of the combinations. Whether there are any predictable tendencies between the SVCs and sociolinguistic dimensions was investigated to bring empirical evidence to the areas that merely defy simple generalizations. In total, 39 SVCs were examined, and they displayed similar frequencies for register categories in written and spoken parts. Male speakers and writers use a wider variety of SVCs and more frequently than the females, and SVCs were used more by people 60 years old and older and less frequently by people between the ages of 6 to 14. SVCs were used predominantly by male writers who were writing for mixed audiences, and there was a positive correlation between the age and SVC usage. A sharp increase was observed for SVCs as the age of the target audience increased. Finally, "years of experience," "exposure and previous education" and "familiarity" were found to be other contributing factors for the SVC usage.