The Verb Phrase in English Investigating Recent Language Change with Corpora [Hardcover]

This volume features new and groundbreaking research on recent changes in the English verb phrase.The chapters in this volume feature new and groundbreaking research carried out by leading scholars and promising young researchers from around the world on recent changes in the English verb phrase. This cutting-edge collection is essential reading for historians of the English language, syntacticians and corpus linguists.The chapters in this volume feature new and groundbreaking research carried out by leading scholars and promising young researchers from around the world on recent changes in the English verb phrase. This cutting-edge collection is essential reading for historians of the English language, syntacticians and corpus linguists.The chapters in this volume feature new and groundbreaking research carried out by leading scholars and promising young researchers from around the world on recent changes in the English verb phrase. Drawing on authentic corpus data, the papers consider both spoken and written English in several genres. Each contribution pays particular attention to the methodologies used for investigating short-term patterns of change in English, with detailed discussions of controversies in this area. This cutting-edge collection is essential reading for historians of the English language, syntacticians and corpus linguists.1. Introduction Bas Aarts, Joanne Close, Geoffrey Leech and Sean Wallis; 2. Choices over time: methodological issues in investigating current change Bas Aarts, Joanne Close and Sean Wallis; 3. Recent shifts with three nonfinite verbal complements in English: data from the 100 million word TIME Corpus (1920s2000s) Mark Davies; 4. Verb structures in twentieth-century British English Nicholas Smith and Geoffrey Leech; 5. Nominalizing the verb phrase in academic science writing Douglas Biber and Bethany Gray; 6. The verb phrase in contemporary Canadian English Sali Tagliamonte; 7. Recent change and grammaticalization Manfred Krug ls7