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Broadening the Spectrum of Corpus Linguistics: New approaches to variability and change
Edited by Susanne Flach and Martin Hilpert
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 105] 2022
► pp. 132–171

Determinants of exaptation in Verb-Object predicates in the transition from Late Middle English to Early Modern English

| Universidade de Vigo
While Verb-Object (VO) is the basic unmarked constituent order of predicates in Present-Day English, in older stages Object-Verb (OV) was the preferred option at least in certain syntactic contexts. This corpus-based study investigates OV linearisation after the loss of verb-second and focuses on morphosyntactic, processing, semantic and textual determinants of the VO/OV variation in the transition from Late Middle to Early Modern English. The findings reveal a shift from OV word order, ruled by systematic predictors in Late Middle English, to an essentially stylistic alternative in Early Modern English, when VO succeeded as the syntacticised organisation in English predicates. Also, in the later period, the postverbal slot was adapted to host constituents functioning as objects, which constitutes an illustration of exaptation.
Keywords: word order, exaptation, object, Late Middle English, Early Modern English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.OV and VO word order in diachrony
    • Old English
    • Middle English
    • Early Modern English
  • 3.Data and variables
    • 3.1Data and retrieval
    • 3.2Variables
      • VO patterns
      • OV patterns
  • 4.Analysis of the data
  • 5.Summary and conclusions
  • Notes
  • Corpora
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 10 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.105.05per
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