Light verb constructions in the history
of English
This study investigates light verb constructions in sample corpora from Old- Middle- and Early Modern English. The use of one coherent definition of light verb constructions throughout these periods allows direct comparison of the overall structures and of the light verbs used. The comparison shows that frequencies are highest in the Middle English texts and decrease in the Early Modern data. While the Old English counts are significantly lower than Middle English ones, their frequencies are far from negligible. It is argued that where previous assessments consider Old English light verb constructions to be rare or non-existent, this is partly due to having used the perspective of the most frequent Modern English light verbs rather than working from the perspective of which light verbs were frequent at the period in question.
References
Algeo, J
1995 Having a look at the expanded predicate. In
The Verb in Contemporary English. Theory and Description,
B. Aarts &
C.F. Meyer (eds), 203–217. Cambridge: CUP.
Allerton, D
2002 Stretched Verb Constructions in English. London: Routledge.
Brinton, L
1996 Attitudes to increasing segmentalization. Complex and phrasal verbs in English.
Journal of English Linguistics 24: 186–205.
Claridge, C
2000 Multi-word Verbs in Early Modern English. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Danchev, A
1992 The evidence for analytic and synthetic developments in English. In
History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics,
M. Rissanen,
O. Ihalainen,
T. Nevalainen &
I. Taavitsainen (eds), 25–41. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Denison, D
1981 Aspects of the History of English Group-Verbs: With particular Attention to the Syntax of the Ormulum. PhD dissertation, University of Oxford.
diPaulo Healy, A., D. Haines, J. Holland, D. McDougall, I. McDougall & X. Xiang
(eds) 2004 The Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form. TEI-P3 conformant and TEI-P4 conformant version. Toronto: DOE Project.
eChaucer: NeCastro, G.
2007 eChaucer.
[URL] (29 May 2012)
Goldberg, A. & Jackendoff, R
2004 The English resultative as a family of constructions.
Language 80: 532–568.
Hiltunen, R
1983 The Decline of the Prefixes and the Beginnings of the English Phrasal Verb [
Annales Universitatis Turkuensis Series B, Vol. 160]. Turku: University of Turku Press.
Hock, H.H. & Joseph, B
1996 Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hoffmann, A
1972 Die verbo-nominal Konstruktion – eine spezifische Form der nominalen Ausdrucksweise im modernen Englisch.
Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 20: 158–183.
Kytö, M
(ed.) [
1991]1996
Manual to the Diachronic Part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. Coding Conventions and Lists of Source Texts, 3rd edn. Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki.
Matsumoto, M
2008 From Simple Verbs to Periphrastic Expressions. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Nickel, G
1968 Complex verbal structures in English.
IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 6: 1–21.
Nurmi, A
1999 A Social History of Periphrastic DO. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Orchard, A
2003 A Critical Companion to Bēowulf. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Rissanen, M
1991 Spoken language and the history of do-periphrasis. In
Historical English Syntax,
D. Kastovsky (ed.), 321–342. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ronan, P
2012a Make peace and take victory.
Support Verb Constructions in Old English in Comparison with Old Irish.
NOWELE Supplement Series 24. Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press.
Ronan, P
2012b Mobilizing linguistic concepts: support verb structures in Early English. In
English on the move: Mobilities in literature and language [SPELL 27],
D. Britain &
A. Kern-Staehler (eds), 183–99. Tübingen: Narr.
Tieken Boon van Ostade, I
Wierzbicka, A
1982 Why can you have a drink when you can’t *have an eat? Language 58: 753–99.
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Ronan, Patricia
2019.
Simple versus Light Verb Constructions in Late Modern Irish English Correspondence: A Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis.
Studia Neophilologica 91:1
► pp. 31 ff.
Ronan, Patricia & Gerold Schneider
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.