Walk for

Yeah it's true many non-Americans also use the com domain. But I believe the Americans are the majority of the com users. When I search about the use of sentences rather formal, I use the edu domain for AmE corpus. But this time I used the com domain because I thought a phrase like "waited (for) two hours" would belong to spoken English. If you use the edu domain, you would hit 110 for "waited two hours" and 78 for "waited for two hours". The values are considerably different from com's values of 6760 vs 984. I guess this difference could be a proof that the use of 'waited two hours' rather belongs to informal language.

paco

Hello Casi

Hurmmm... that's interesting! I've waited (for) 15 minutes for the bus. Yes the second 'for' makes the use of the first 'for' awkward, as you pointed out. I think we may paraphrase it as I've awaited the bus (for) 15 minutes, but probably the use of 'await' sounds weird (too formal).

I think English is a bit messy for us concerning the use of the verb 'wait'. In my language (Japanese), we use only one word "wait" for intransitive sense as well as for transitive sense. English 'I waited (for) two hours' is 'I waited ' in Japanese. Here the is an isolated noun phrase with no case marker and with no prepositional particle. In Japanese use of noun phrases in isolated state indicates the noun phrase is an adverbial phrase. For example, for English 'I awaited the letter (for) two days' , we say 'I waited the letter '. Don't you think our language is much simpler than English in this regard?

I feel you English speakers also are using isolated noun phrases, a lot especially in everyday speech. However, what is curious to me is that the grammar books (those I've read so far) don't tell much about that kind of usage. Let me show the examples of 'isolated noun phrases' in English.

1) What time did you get up this morning? Seven thirty.
2) Yesterday evening the football lasted three hours.
3) He came here three times last night
4) My family stayed in Hawaii two weeks that year.
5) We drove US 101 fifty miles to south.
6) Monday morning we have to drive a long way.
6) She looked this way and that.
7) He will fight the idea tooth and nail.
8) They live three doors from our house.
9) They cooked it French style.
10) The stars shone diamond bright in the pitch dark sky.
11) Her skin is snow white.
12) He was a bit surprised at the news.
13) She's three inches taller than me.
14) He looks a great deal better.
15) We had to travel second class.
16) OK, I'll send it airmail.
17) We are the same age.
18) He drew the picture twice the size of life.

In the current prescriptive grammar, most of them are treated not as noun phrases but as idiomatic adverbial or adjectival phrases, rather out of grammar rules. They may be phrases so familiar to native English speakers and so you would not feel any difficulty in leaning them. But we, ESL students, have to learn them one by one, using dictionaries, without being given any good explanation about how they came into English. My dream is someday someone would describe the English grammar in a way it can corporate them into the system.

paco

I think English is a bit messy for us concerning the use of the verb 'wait'. In my language (Japanese), we use only one word "wait" for intransitive sense as well as for transitive sense.

The verb istelf has a great deal to do with it. In English, "wait" implies time, whereas "walk" implies distance:

He waited three hours. (duration)
He walked three hours. (the distance walked in three hours)

In English, as is the case in Japanese, duration is part of the verb's semantic make-up. In Japanese there isn't a post-position that expresses duration--or is there? What about "ni"? In English the preposition "for" expresses duration (among other meanings), and if it co-occurs with a durative verb, like "wait", its semantic contribution is redundant (i.e., optional), and doesn't require overt realization.

There's more similarity between the two language than first meets the eye.

No, we use a post-position neither for 'duration' (e.g. Kare wa san jikan aruki mashita= He walked three hours) nor 'distance'(e.g. Kare wa go kiro aruki mashita = He walked five kms).

I thought so. Wow.

By the way, try: That's right, we don't use a post-position for . . . .