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First, second language --> in/on the door

I asked my wife today where the lock was. I pointed to a door with handle and keyhole. She said "in the door." So that is technically correct, but it is not how we say it, I said.

Before I suggest keys to the words to use and their contexts, here is what I have concluded.
  • Sometimes native speakers just know something but can't tell you why (context here is language usage like in/on the door).
  • There are sources for help. Grammar Girl, dictionaries, style manuals (e.g., Chicago), usage guides, etc. And native speakers, of course.
But how can one defend, if that is the right word, this usage versus that if dictionaries and other sources don't precisely cover that point? Enter the corpus. (Example, http://corpus.byu.edu.) From this site you can search "lock in the door" and "lock on the door" and see the contexts in which these two expressions are used. There are 57 instances of "lock on the door," one for "in the door." This is out of a corpus of 450 million words. You can take this even further by looking at other corpora, for whatever your reason is for finding out about how language is used.

It appears usage rules in this case, even though two second language speakers, a former student and my wife, say it their way, "in the door." This usage-based rule, then, is from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). A matter of descriptive versus prescriptive, practice versus formal grammar.

And  there is something else. It has to do with the image created in your mind when reading. I strongly suspect that "in the door" has a picture of something contained within, as in inside. But "on" has the image of something you see on the surface of the door. This, by the way, is--loosely--the difference between science and phenomenology, or as you might prefer, explanation and appearances.

[A reader of this post pointed out that the location of locks on doors was just that, they were on the door. Internal incorporation of lock within the body of the door itself is a relatively recent phenomenon. This view merits, in my opinion, "the cause" more than the appearances case as is presented here.]

A writer writes, I contend, so that the reader sees the same image. But as possibly in this case, a second language speaker gets interference from his or her own native language, or philosophical outlook. Or, also quite possibly, the second language speaker is using logic whereas nameless others don't in language and other matters.

A screen shot of results for "on the door" is below. And what do you say, a "lock on the door," or "in the door"?

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