Argument Structure in Flux; The Development of Impersonal Constructions in Middle and Early Modern English, with Special Reference to Verbs of Desire

Castro-Chao, Noelia

ISBN 10: 303434189X / ISBN 13: 9783034341899

Editore: Peter Lang AG 2021-01, 2021

Riguardo questo articolo

Codice articolo 6666-IUK-9783034341899

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Argument Structure in Flux; The Development of Impersonal Constructions in Middle and Early Modern English, with Special Reference to Verbs of Desire
• Editore: Peter Lang AG 2021-01
• Data di pubblicazione: 2021
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 303434189X
• ISBN 13: 9783034341899
• Rilegatura: PF
• Condizione: New

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

The class of verbs of Desire comprises verbs whose syntax and semantics have undergone important changes in the course of their histories. Their argument structure involves a Desirer and a Desired, and in earlier English they could be used impersonally in constructions lacking a subject marked for the nominative case. The book presents three case studies based on a comprehensive survey of the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary and on corpus data retrieved from EEBOCorp 1.0 (1470s–1690s). The results obtained unveil the loss of impersonal uses and their gradual replacement by personal patterns, in particular a pattern where the verb governs a prepositional complement representing the Desired as a metaphorical goal.

Informazioni sull?autore

Noelia Castro-Chao holds a PhD in English linguistics from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Her research interests include historical syntax and semantics, corpus linguistics, and construction grammar.