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Chapter 10. Around/Round, by, past
3.1 Around for literal surrounding Examples (15)–(17) show that the Subject can contact the Landmark, as in (15), or not, as in (16), and that the Subject can be inside of the Landmark as well (17): (15) …a ring around your finger.W (16) A halo around the sun…W (17) …a ring [of scum] around the inside of the [bath]tub.W
Note, though, that speakers are likely to be no more specific in their spatial descriptions than is necessary for them to be understood with the aid of context. With respect to prepositions, if a speaker uses a specific preposition when a more generic one might do, it may be for the sake of emphasis. Indeed, (15) above, may very well have been intended to be emphatic by whoever wrote it. Ordinarily, Anglophones are far more likely to say, a ring on your [my…] finger, as a bit of Googling will verify (cf., Bowerman, 1996: 401). 3.2 (All) around ~ ‘randomly scattered’ vs all over & all across If we consider (18), we see a sense of around which seems to be related to its sense in look around (§2.6), with the difference that the Subject(s) of interest may not be in view: (18) Heavy snow creates problems around the country.W
Note that the distribution referred to is within the Landmark (= ‘the country’). From a more or less central standpoint, the objects of interest lie in all directions, which is to say that all together they surround the standpoint adopted by the writer (or speaker). The addition of all, as in all around, intensifies this meaning of ‘wide distribution’ into something like ‘widely and rather densely distributed’, as in (19). (19) …senior centers all around the country.W
All around has a meaning similar to but somewhat different in nuance and usage from, all over and all across. Specifically, all around tends to be used for (non-ring-like) dispersal over largish horizontal surfaces such as countries, but not over vertical surfaces or 3-dimensional objects and masses. If all around is used with reference to a 3-dimensional Landmark, the pattern of distribution it describes is then almost certain to be ring-like, as in (20). In this respect all around is quite different from all over. For example, if all around replaced all over in (21), it would refer to ring- or band-like dispersal just like it does in (20). (20) Mark off a boundary all around the mountain.W (21) …snow all over the mountain.W
Unlike all around, all across is used fairly often to indicate scattering on a vertical surface or a surface such as a ceiling that we view from below, although