Chapter 8
Prepositions in Early Modern English argument structure and beyond
This paper is the first to use a bottom-up, corpus-based, exploratory approach to the full range of prepositions in Early Modern English argument structure. Contrary to what previous research leads us to expect, the overall token frequency of prepositions during this period decreases, and they are not always successful against the older NP-variants. Similarly, our case study challenges earlier suggestions that PP-complements are particularly frequent in second-language varieties of English. With respect to the functions taken on by PPs in the clause, however, we provide preliminary evidence that more complement-like uses increase at the expense of more adjunct-like arguments, i.e., that PPs become more important as core elements of the clause.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Prepositions: Previous research on variation and change
- 3.Prepositional patterns in EModE
- 3.1Methodology
- 3.2Hypotheses
- 3.3Results
- 4.Competition between NP- and PP-complementation in EModE and WEs
- 4.1Methodology
- 4.2Hypotheses
- 4.3Results
- 5.Conclusion
- Author queries
-
Notes
-
Sources
-
References
References (61)
Sources
Bosworth–Toller = Bosworth, Joseph. 2010. An Anglo–Saxon dictionary online. (edited by T. Northcote Toller & others; compiled by Sean Christ & Ondrej Tichý). [URL] (6 January, 2021)
COCA = Davies, Mark. 2008–. The corpus of contemporary American English (COCA): 560 million words, 1990-present. [URL] (6 January, 2021)
COHA = Davies, Mark. 2010–. The corpus of historical American English (COHA): 400 million words, 1810–2009. [URL] (6 January, 2021)
ICE = International corpus of English. [URL] (6 January, 2021)
OED = Oxford English Dictionary Online. 2017. Oxford: OUP. [URL] (6 January, 2021)
PPCEME = Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Lauren Delfs. 2004. The Penn-Helsinki parsed corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME), 1st edn., release 3. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. [URL] (6 January, 2021)
PPCME2 = Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 2000. The Penn-Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English (PPCME2), 2nd edn., release 4. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. [URL] (6 January, 2021)
Randall, Beth. 2009. CorpusSearch 2: A tool for linguistic research. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. [URL] (6 January, 2021)
References
Allen, Cynthia. 1995. Case marking and reanalysis: Grammatical relations from Old to Early Modern English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bergh, Gunnar. 1998. Double prepositions in English. In Jacek Fisiak & Marcin Krygier (eds.), English historical linguistics 1996, 1–13. Berlin: Mouton. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bergh, Gunnar & Aimo Seppänen. 2000. Preposition stranding with wh-relatives: A historical survey. English Language and Linguistics 4(2). 295–316. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Biber, Douglas, Gray, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Pearson.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ciszek-Kiliszewska, Ewa. 2014. Middle English preposition twēn(e). Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 49(3). 91–111. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ciszek-Kiliszewska, Ewa. 2015. The Middle English preposition and adverb atwēn. In Brian Lowrey & Fabienne Toupin (eds.), Studies in linguistic variation and change: From Old to Middle English, 41–63. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Claridge, Claudia. 2000. Multi-word verbs in Early Modern English. A corpus-based study. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
De Cuypere, Ludovic. 2013. Debiasing semantic analysis: The case of the English preposition to. Language Sciences 37. 122–135. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
De Cuypere, Ludovic. 2015a. A multivariate analysis of the Old English ACC+DAT double object alternation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 11(2). 225–254. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
De Cuypere, Ludovic. 2015b. The Old English to-dative construction. English Language and Linguistics 19(1). 1–26. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Denison, David. 1981. Aspects of the history of English group-verbs. With particular attention to the syntax of the Ormulum. Oxford: Oxford University PhD thesis.
Denison, David. 1993. English historical syntax. London: Longman.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Dreschler, Gea. 2015. Passives and the loss of verb second: A study of syntactic and information-structural factors. Utrecht: LOT.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Goldberg, Adele. 2013. Constructionist approaches. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar, 15–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Greenbaum, Sidney (ed.). 1996. Comparing English worldwide: The International Corpus of English. Oxford: Clarendon.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gries, Stefan & Martin Hilpert. 2008. The identification of stages in diachronic data: Variability-based neighbor clustering. Corpora 3(1). 59–81. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hoffmann, Thomas. 2005. Variable vs. categorical effects: Preposition pied piping and stranding in British English relative clauses. Journal of English Linguistics 33(3). 257–297. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hoffmann, Thomas. 2011. Preposition placement in English: A usage-based approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hothorn, Torsten, Kurt Hornik & Achim Zeileis. 2006. Unbiased recursive partitioning: A conditional inference framework. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 15. 651–674. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hundt, Marianne. 2009. Colonial lag, colonial innovation, or simply language change? In Günter Rohdenburg & Julia Schlüter (eds.), One language, two grammars: Morphosyntactic differences between British and American English, 13–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hundt, Markus. 2001. Grammatikalisierungsphänomene bei Präpositionalobjekten in der deutschen Sprache. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 29(2). 167–191. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Iglesias-Rábade, Luis. 2011. Semantic erosion of Middle English prepositions. Frankfurt: Lang.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
McFadden, Thomas. 2002. The rise of the to-dative in Middle English. In David Lightfoot (ed.), Syntactic effects of morphological change, 107–123. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax, Volume 1. Oxford: Clarendon. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Molencki, Rafał. 2005. On the syntactic and semantic development of after in medieval English. In Marcin Krygier & Liliana Sikorska (eds.), Naked wordes in Englissh, 47–67. Frankfurt: Lang.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Molencki, Rafał. 2007. On the rise of the temporal preposition/conjunction before. In Marcin Krygier & Liliana Sikorska (eds.), To make his Englissh sweete upon his tonge, 37–54. Frankfurt: Lang.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Molencki, Rafał. 2011. New prepositions and subordinating conjunctions of Romance origin in Middle English. In Jacek Fisiak & Magdalena Bator (eds.), Foreign influences on Medieval English, 9–24. Frankfurt: Lang.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mukherjee, Joybrato & Marco Schilk. 2012. Exploring variation and change in New Englishes: Looking into the International Corpus of English (ICE) and beyond. In Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth C. Traugott (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of English, 189–199. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English syntax, Volume 1. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nykiel, Joanna. 2014. Semantic dependencies and the history of ellipsis alternation. In Michael Adams, Laurel Brinton & Richard D. Fulk (eds.), Studies in the history of the English language VI: Evidence and method in histories of English, 51–70. Berlin: de Gruyter.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nykiel, Joanna. 2015. Constraints on ellipsis alternation: A view from the history of English. Language Variation and Change 27(2). 227–254. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rostila, Jouni. 2007. Konstruktionsansaetze zur Argumentmarkierung im Deutschen. Tampere: Juvenes.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Sato, Kiriko. 2009. The development from case-forms to prepositional constructions in Old English prose. Bern: Lang.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Schneider, Gerold. 2008. Hybrid long-distance functional dependency parsing. Zurich: University of Zurich PhD dissertation. [URL] (8 October, 2018)
Schneider, Gerold & Lena Zipp. 2013. Discovering new verb-preposition combinations in New Englishes. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 13. [Online journal]![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Schneider, Gerold, Marianne Hundt & Daniel Schreier. 2020. Pluralized non-counts nouns across Englishes: A corpus-linguistic approach to variety types. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 16(3). 515–546. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Siew, Tan. 2016. Charting the endonormative stabilization of Singapore English. In Gerhard Leitner, Azirah Hashim & Hans-Georg Wolf (eds.), Communicating with Asia: The future of English as a global language, 69–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
de Swart, Henriëtte & Joost Zwarts. 2009. Less form – more meaning: Why bare singular nouns are special. Lingua 119(2). 280–295. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2012. Analyticity and syntheticity in the history of English. In Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth C. Traugott (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of English, 654–665. New York: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1972. A history of English syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1992. Syntax. In Richard Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, Volume 1, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Traugott, Elizabeth C. & Trousdale, Graeme. 2013. Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Tyler, Andrea & Vyvyan Evans. 2003. The semantics of English prepositions: Spatial scenes, embodied meaning, and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria. 2015. Grammar, rhetoric and usage in English: Preposition placement 1500–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Zehentner, Eva. 2019. Competition in language change: The rise of the English dative alternation. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Zehentner, Eva, Marianne Hundt, Gerold Schneider & Melanie Röthlisberger
Zehentner, Eva
2022.
Revisiting Gradience in Diachronic Construction Grammar: PPs and the Complement-Adjunct Distinction in the History of English.
Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 70:3
► pp. 301 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 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.