A Comparative Analysis of Dream of and Dream about in Two Corpora

The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of dream of and dream about in the COCA and BNC. A major point to note is that in the COCA, dream of and dream about show the same pattern in three genres, whereas they do not show the same pattern in five genres. A further point to note is that in the COCA, dream of is the furthest type from dream about in the TV/movie genre, whereas dream of is the nearest type to dream about in the spoken genre. It is significant to note that in the BNC, dream of and dream about show the same pattern in three genres, whereas they show a different pattern in four genres. It is noteworthy that dream of is the furthest type from dream about in the fiction genre of the BNC, whereas dream of is the nearest type to dream about in the non-academic genre. The COCA clearly shows that dream of freedom is the most preferred by Americans, followed by dream of love, dream of home, and dream of life, in descending order. The COCA also shows that dream about competition is the most preferred by Americans, followed by dream about girls, and dream about flying, in that order. Additionally, it is interesting to note that only 14.28% of the total nouns belong to the collocations of both dream of and dream about. It is also interesting to point out that dream of being and dream about being are the most preferable ones for Americans. Finally, this paper argues that only 48.14% of the total gerunds belong to the collocations of both dream of and dream about.