The rise of colligations

This article examines the lexically parallel English and German constructions can’t stand somebody/something and jemanden/etwas nicht ausstehen können “not tolerate (someone or something)”, from synchronic, diachronic, and quantitative perspectives. Syntactic and semantic restrictions suggest that the usage of stand and ausstehen in the relevant sense is older than other semantically similar verbs (e.g. English tolerate, German leiden), while quantitative evidence from corpora shows that the can’t stand and nicht ausstehen können constructions are both colligationally stronger than lexical competitors. Evidence from the history of stand indicates that the lexeme stand in the Germanic and other Indo-European languages has a long history of being employed in the relevant sense. The restrictions on usage and the colligational strength of the respective English and German constructions are thus argued to result from the antiquity of the construction and functional competition from other lexemes.