Composite Predicates in English
Processes of Specialization

Based on large-scale corpus analyses, this book explores why some composite predicates in English specialize over time while others don't.

Eva Berlage (Author)

9781107155640, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 May 2025

235 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.49 kg

Composite Predicates (CPs) are of particular interest to linguists in that only some of them are semantically restricted in present-day English, while others are not. This book explores the semantic-syntactic evolution of twenty-four different CPs in English from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, showing why some specialize over time while others do not. It highlights that the semantic scope and evolution of the morphologically and semantically related simple verb acts as a powerful predictor of whether or not a CP becomes semantically restricted in the course of time. In all those cases where CPs undergo specialization, semantic changes take place earlier than syntactic ones. Finally, large-scale corpus-analyses reveal that the CPs, which, in comparison to their morphologically simple verbs, can be considered analytic constructions, decrease from the nineteenth to twentieth century or show consistently low frequencies. This finding runs counter to the trend of English to become increasingly analytic.

Abbreviations and symbols
1. Introduction
2. The evolution of CPs: theories, concepts and their relevance
3. The CPs under investigation, the simple verbs and the hypotheses
4. Methodology
5. The evolution of the simple verbs
6. The semantic evolution of type-I-CPs
7. The semantic evolution of type-II-CPs
8. Syntactic changes and a comparison of semantic and syntactic changes
9. Theoretical discussion
10. Conclusion and outlook.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK]