Chapter published in:
English Historical Linguistics: Change in structure and meaning. Papers from the XXth ICEHL
Edited by Bettelou Los, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone and Graeme Trousdale
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 358] 2022
► pp. 201–224

Chapter 8
Prepositions in Early Modern English argument structure and beyond

| University of Zurich
| University of Zurich
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.
Keywords: prepositions, verbal argument structure, bottom-up approach, Early Modern English, World Englishes
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
Published online: 02 February 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.358.08zeh
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