Cover not available
Part of
Earlier North American Englishes
Edited by Merja Kytö and Lucia Siebers
[Varieties of English Around the World G66] 2022
► pp. 123–146

Grammar, text type, and diachrony as factors influencing complement choice in historical American English

 | Linnæus University
 | Tampere University
A key task in the study of the system of English predicate complementation is to account for the variation between to infinitive and gerundial complements of verbs and adjectives in recent English. This chapter examines to infinitive and to ‑ing complements of the adjective accustomed, with data from the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), in order to assess the impact of factors of different types on the variation in question. The grammatical factors are the Extraction and Choice Principles, and attention is also paid to the possible role of insertions. Following a discussion of the key theoretical concepts and a description of the primary data, a logistic regression model is used to analyse the role of independent variables on complement selection of the adjective accustomed.
Keywords: complementation, text type, diachrony, extraction, choice
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and its historical context
  • 3.Theoretical background
    • 3.1The Extraction Principle and the Choice Principle
  • 4.Statistical analysis and discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g66.06tyr
References (29)
References
Berman, A. 1970. Agent, experiencer, and controllability. In Mathematical Linguistics and Automatic Translation, Report NSF-24, S. Kuno (ed.), 203–237. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
COHA, see Davies 2010–Google Scholar
Cuyckens, H. & d’Hoedt, F. 2015. Variability in clausal verb complementation: The case of admit. In Perspectives of Complementation. Structure, Variation and Boundaries, M. Höglund, P. Rickman, J. Rudanko & J. Havu (eds), 77–100. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davies, M. 2010–. The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 million words, 1810–2009. [URL].
2012. Expanding horizons in historical linguistics with the 400 million word Corpus of Historical American English. Corpora 7: 121–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dowty, D. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67: 547–619. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, C. 1968. The case for case. In Universals in Linguistic Theory, E. Bach & R. Harms (eds), 1–88. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Gruber, J. 1967. Look and see. Language 43: 937–947. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hundt, M. 2004. Animacy, agentivity, and the spread of the progressive in Modern English. English Language and Linguistics 8: 47–69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, R. 1990. Semantic Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jespersen, O. 1940. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part V: Syntax, Volume IV. Reprinted 1961. London and Copenhagen: George Allen and Unwin/Ejnar Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Kjellmer, G. 1980. Accustomed to swim: Accustomed to swimming. On verbal forms after TO. In ALVAR: A Linguistically Varied Assortment of Readings. Studies Presented to Alvard Ellegård on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday [Stockholm Papers in English Language and Literature 1], J. Allwood & M. Ljung (eds), 75–99. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Leech, G., Hundt, M., Mair, C. & Smith, N. 2009. Change in Contemporary English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Noonan, M. 2007. Complementation. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description (Second edition). Volume II: Complex Constructions, T. Shopen (ed.), 52–150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Postal, P. 1994. Contrasting extraction types. Journal of Linguistics 30: 156–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Radford, A. 1997. Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, G. 1996. Cognitive complexity and increased grammatical explicitness in English. Cognitive Linguistics 7 (2): 149–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006. The role of functional constraints in the evolution of the English complementation system. In Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms: English from 1500–2000, C. Dalton-Puffer, D. Kastovsky, N. Ritt & H. Schendl (eds), 143–166. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Ross, J. R. 2002. Nouniness. In Fuzzy Grammar, B. Aarts, D. Denison, E. Keizer & G. Popova (eds), 351–422. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rudanko, J. 2006. Watching English grammar change. English Language and Linguistics 10: 31–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011. Changes in Complementation in British and American English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015. Linking Form and Meaning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017. Infinitives and Gerunds in Recent English. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J. 2003. Meaning and context. In Motivation in Language: Studies in Honour of Günter Radden, H. Cuyckens, T. Berg, R. Dirven & K. Panther (eds), 27–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vosberg, U. 2003a. The role of extractions and horror æqui in the evolution of -ing complements in Modern English. In Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English, G. Rohdenburg & B. Mondorf (eds), 305–327. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003b. Cognitive complexity and the establishment of -ing constructions with retrospective verbs in Modern English. In Insights into Late Modern English, M. Dossena & C. Jones (eds), 197–220. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2006. Die Große Komplementverschiebung. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar