The Verb Phrase in English
Investigating Recent Language Change with Corpora

This volume features new and groundbreaking research on recent changes in the English verb phrase.

Bas Aarts (Edited by), Joanne Close (Edited by), Geoffrey Leech (Edited by), Sean Wallis (Edited by)

9781107016354, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 February 2013

474 pages, 113 b/w illus. 92 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.8 kg

'I highly recommend The Verb Phrase in English, both as a resource for students and scholars who want an overview of currently ongoing changes in the verbal domain, but also, and no less importantly, as an inspiration for further research … The editors and the authors are to be complimented on a volume that showcases the merits of the currently ongoing enterprise of investigating recent change in English on the basis of diachronic corpora. The book offers the reader an authoritative and well-organised overview of changes that pertain to verbal structures.' Martin Hilpert, Cercles

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 (1920s–2000s) 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 and Ole Schützler
8. The progressive verb in modern American English Magnus Levin
9. I was just reading this article - on the expression of recentness and the English past progressive Meike Pfaff, Alexander Bergs and Thomas Hoffmann
10. Bare infinitival complements in present-day English Marcus Callies
11. Operator and negative contraction in spoken British English: a change in progress José Ramón Varela Pérez
12. The development of comment clauses Gunther Kaltenböck
13. The perfect in spoken British English Jill Bowie, Sean Wallis and Bas Aarts
14. Changes in the verb phrase in legislative language in English Christopher Williams
15. Modals and semi-modals of obligation in American English: some aspects of developments from 1990 until the present day Stig Johansson.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF]