A brief history of English syntax

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

A brief history of English syntax

Olga Fischer, Hendrik De Smet, Wim van der Wurff

Cambridge University Press, 2017 , [Amazon]

  • : pbk

Available at  / 1 libraries

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Note

[Reprint]. Originally published: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2017

"First published 2017"--T.p.verso

"Printed in Japan. ... Amazon.co.jp ..."--Flyleaf

Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-230) and indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In its 1500-year history, the English language has seen dramatic grammatical changes. This book offers a comprehensive and reader-friendly account of the major developments, including changes in word order, the noun phrase and verb phrase, changing relations between clausal constituents and the development of new subordinate constructions. The book puts forward possible explanations for change, drawing on the existing and most recent literature, and with reference to the major theoretical models. The authors use corpus evidence to investigate language-internal and language-external motivations for change, including the impact of language contact. The book is intended for students who have been introduced to the history of English and want to deepen their understanding of major grammatical changes, and for linguists in general with a historical interest. It will also be of value to literary scholars professionally engaged with older texts.

Table of Contents

  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Data and data handling
  • 3. Theoretical models and morpho-syntactic change
  • 4. The role of contact in syntactic change in English
  • 5. The noun phrase
  • 6. The verb phrase
  • 7. Clausal constituents
  • 8. Subordinate clauses
  • 9. Word order
  • 10. References
  • Index.

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