From Simple Verbs to Periphrastic Expressions
From Simple Verbs to Periphrastic Expressions

Author: Meiko Matsumoto

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9783039116751

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English offers verbal expressions in two basic forms: simple verbs such as walk and look, and periphrastic expressions such as have/take a walk and have/take a look. Which do we use, why, and how do particular usages arise or disappear? This volume explores the historical development of two important periphrastic verbal constructions, composite predicates and phrasal verbs, as well as related expressions, from the viewpoint of English historical linguistics. The approach is descriptive and interpretive, encompassing rich and varied data from Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Late Modern English, and Present Day English, from sources such as the Chadwyck-Healey electronic corpus databases. The history of English is characterized by the development from synthetic to analytic. The role of this tendency in the development of verbal expressions is of particular interest.

Particle Verbs in English
Particle Verbs in English

Author: Han Luo

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-03-01

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 9811368546

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This book explains why cognitive linguistics offers a plausible theoretical framework for a systematic and unified analysis of the syntax and semantics of particle verbs. It explores the meaning of the verb + particle syntax, the particle placement of transitive particle verbs, how particle placement is related to idiomaticity, and the relationship between idiomaticity and semantic extension. It also offers valuable linguistic implications for future studies on complex linguistic constructions using a cognitive linguistic approach, as well as insightful practical implications for the learning and teaching of English particle verbs.

The Development from Case-forms to Prepositional Constructions in Old English Prose
The Development from Case-forms to Prepositional Constructions in Old English Prose

Author: Kiriko Sato

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9783039117635

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The development from a synthetic to an analytic language is one of the most important topics in English historical syntax. This development is reflected in the gradual decrease of case-forms and the replacement of their functions with equivalent prepositional constructions. Focussing on the Old English period, when case-forms and prepositional constructions overlapped in various functions, this book aims to answer an unresolved question: was there a significant change in the use of case-forms and, alternatively, in the use of prepositions plus case-forms in contexts where both types were possible? The author makes a statistical comparison between prose texts written in the early Old English period and texts of the later Old English period; she also takes into account stylistic features of individual texts. Thus, this book addresses this Old English syntactic issue both from a historical and a stylistic perspective and shows the stages of development during the Old English period.

The English Phrasal Verb, 1650–Present
The English Phrasal Verb, 1650–Present

Author: Paula Rodríguez-Puente

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-10-28

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1108688233

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Providing a detailed and comprehensive account of the development of phrasal verbs from early modern to present-day English, this study covers almost 400 years in the history of English, and provides both a diachronic and synchronic account based on over 12,000 examples extracted from stratified electronic corpora. The corpus analysis provides evidence of how registers can inform us about the history of English, as it traces and compares the usage and stylistic drifts of phrasal verbs across ten different genres - drama, fiction, journals, diaries, letters, medicine, news, science, sermons, and trial proceedings. The study also sheds new light on the morpho-syntactic and semantic features of phrasal verbs, proposing a new approach to the category, considering not only on their grammatical features, but also their historical development, by discussing the category in terms of a number of central mechanisms of language change.

Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns
Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns

Author: Kristin Davidse

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-11-15

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 9027269742

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The studies in this volume approach English grammatical patterns in novel ways by interrogating corpora, focusing on patterns in the verb phrase (tense, aspect and modality), the noun phrase (intensification and focus marking), complementation structures and clause combining. Some studies interrogate historical corpora to reconstruct the diachronic development of patterns such as light verb constructions, verb-particle combinations, the be a-verbing progressive and absolute constructions. Other studies analyse synchronic datasets to typify the functions in discourse of, amongst others, tag questions and it-clefts, or to elucidate some long-standing problems in the syntactic analysis of verbal or adjectival complementation patterns, thanks to the empirical detail only corpora can provide. The volume documents the practices that have been developed to guarantee optimal representativeness of corpus data, to formulate definitions of patterns that can be operationalized in extractions, and to build dimensions of variation such as text type and register into rich grammatical descriptions.

The Tamil Auxiliary Verb System
The Tamil Auxiliary Verb System

Author: Sanford B. Steever

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-02

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 100008275X

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This book introduces the syntactic process of auxiliary formation and applies it to the grammatical analysis of the indicative, or non-modal, auxiliary verbs of Modern Tamil. Using data from spoken and written registers gathered over several years, the book demonstrates for the first time the systematic nature of auxiliary verb phenomena, and how they are integrated into the grammar of the language. Including fresh information on new verb constructions, verbal categories and tenses, this book will be a welcome addition to the current general linguistics literature, in particular the study of verbal categories and the morphosyntactic processes that instantiate them.

Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew
Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew

Author: Ruth A. Berman

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-03-18

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 9027262063

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The goal of the volume is to shed fresh light on Modern Hebrew from perspectives aimed at readers interested in the domains of general linguistics, typology, and Semitic studies. Starting with chapters that provide background information on the evolution and sociolinguistic setting of the language, the bulk of the book is devoted to usage-based studies of the morphology, lexicon, and syntax of current Hebrew. Based primarily on original analyses of authentic spoken and online materials, these studies reflect varied theoretical frames-of-reference that are largely model-neutral in approach. To this end, the book presents a functionally motivated, dynamic approach to actual usage, rather than providing strictly structuralist or formal characterizations of particular linguistic systems. Such a perspective is particularly important in the case of a language undergoing accelerated processes of change, in which the gap between prescriptive dictates of the Hebrew Language Establishment and the actual usage of educated, literate but non-expert speaker-writers of current Hebrew is constantly on the rise.

Tense and Aspect in Informal Welsh
Tense and Aspect in Informal Welsh

Author: Bob Morris Jones

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2010-08-31

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 3110227975

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The book provides a descriptive account of the semantics of three grammatical areas in informal Welsh: inflections of finite verbs, perfect aspect, and progressive aspect. The analyses distinguish context-independent primary meanings from other meanings which are due to implications and contextual effects. The inflections convey factuality, tense, (morphological) aspect, and habituality, but the inflections and their meanings are differently distributed over different sorts of verbs. The analysis of factuality outlines different sorts of counterfactual situations, and discusses whether counterfactual meaning can best be accounted for in terms of true statements in imagined possible worlds or in terms of false statements in the actual world. The analysis of tense argues that it conveys evaluation time and not situation time, which can be different to evaluation time, and that tense is not a collection of simple labels like 'past' or 'present' but is a combination of two times, a deictic reference time and a relative evaluation time, which organize the tenses as a system. Morphological aspect is discussed in terms of perfective and imperfective meanings. Habituality is a property of situations which can be described by all inflections but the study shows that bod 'be' alone has specialized forms to convey habituality. The discussion of the perfect aspect considers the appropriateness of anterior time, retrospective view, and current relevance to account for its meaning. The author argues that the progressive aspect conveys a durative view and the non-progressive a non-durative view, and shows that the progressive can describe situations which are described by the non-progressive in other languages. The study also considers whether other expressions can be aspect markers. The book shows that the primary meanings of the three grammatical areas are subject to various constraints.

Relative Tense and Aspectual Values in Tibetan Languages
Relative Tense and Aspectual Values in Tibetan Languages

Author: Bettina Zeisler

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-06-24

Total Pages: 1012

ISBN-13: 3110908182

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This study presents a comparative approach to a universal theory of TENSE, ASPECT and MOOD, combining the methods of comparative and historical linguistics, fieldwork, text linguistics, and philology. The parts of the book discuss and describe (i) the concepts of TENSE, ASPECT and MOOD; (ii) the Tibetan system of RELATIVE TENSE and aspectual values, with main sections on Old and Classical Tibetan, “Lhasa” Tibetan, and East Tibetan (Amdo and Kham); and (iii) West Tibetan (Ladakhi, Purik, Balti); Part (iv) presents the comparative view. Discussing the similarities and differences of temporal and aspectual concepts, the study rejects the general claim that ASPECT is a linguistic universal. A new linguistic concept, FRAMING, is introduced in order to account for the aspect-like conceptualisations found in, e.g., English. The concept of RELATIVE TENSE or taxis, may likewise not be universal. Among the Tibetan varieties, West Tibetan is unique in having fully grammaticalized the concept of ABSOLUTE TENSE. West Tibetan is compared diachronically with Old and Classical Tibetan (documented since the mid 8th century) and synchronically with several contemporary Tibetan varieties. The grammaticalized forms of each variety are described on the basis of their employment in discourse. The underlying general function of the Tibetan verbal system is thus shown to be that of RELATIVE TENSE. Secondary aspectual functions are described for restricted contexts. A special focus on the pragmatic or metaphorical use of present tense constructions in Tibetan leads to a typology of narrative conventions. The last part also offers some suggestions for the reconstruction of the Proto-Tibetan verb system.

The Early Latin Verb System
The Early Latin Verb System

Author: Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2007-09-27

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0199209022

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This is the first comprehensive treatment of Latin extra-paradigmatic verb forms, that is, verb forms which cannot easily be assigned to any particular tense in the Latin verbal system. In order to see what functions such forms fulfil, one has to compare their usage to that of the regular verb forms. In Part 1, Wolfgang de Melo outlines the usage of regular verb forms, which, surprisingly, has not always been described adequately in the standard grammars. In Part 2, the central partof the book, he compares the usage of the extra-paradigmatic verb forms to that of the regular ones, restricting himself to Archaic Latin (roughly before 100 BC); here he makes many new and unexpected discoveries. In Part 3, de Melo shows how synchronic usage can help us to reconstruct earlierstages of the language which are not attested; he also points out that, while most of the extra-paradigmatic forms die out after 100 BC, some survive - and that such survival is by no means a matter of chance.