English mediopassive constructions : a cognitive, corpus-based study of their origin, spread, and current status

Bibliographic Information

English mediopassive constructions : a cognitive, corpus-based study of their origin, spread, and current status

Marianne Hundt

(Language and computers : studies in practical linguistics, no. 58)

Rodopi, 2007

Available at  / 23 libraries

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Note

Bibliography: p. [181]-193

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This book provides the first empirical study of the history and spread of mediopassive constructions. It investigates the productivity of the pattern, the spread of the construction in Modern English, and looks into text type-specific preferences for the construction. On a more abstract level, it combines the corpus-based description of mediopassive constructions with cognitive linguistic models, drawing largely on notions such as 'prototype', 'family resemblances', 'patch' and 'construction'. The theoretical modelling is largely based on data from real texts. These come from publicly available machine-readable corpora, text-databases and a single-register 'corpus' (American mail-order catalogues). The study combines the corpus-based approach with cognitive theories and is therefore of interest to both empirical and theoretical linguists.

Table of Contents

List of tables and figures Preface Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Defining the object of study Chapter 3: Previous studies Chapter 4: Theoretical background Chapter 5: The mediopassive in Present Day English Chapter 6: The history of mediopassives Chapter 7: Conclusion References Appendix 1: Primary material Appendix 2: Sample pages of Sears & Roebucks catalogues Appendix 3: Additional tables and figures Index

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