Information structure and syntactic change in the history of English /

Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English is the first book to apply information structure as it relates to language change to a corpus-based analysis of a wide range of features in the evolution of English syntax and grammars of prose in long diachrony. Its unifying topic...

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Bibliographic Details
Other Authors: Meurman-Solin, Anneli, López-Couso, María José, Los, Bettelou
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, ©2012.
Series:Oxford studies in the history of English.
Subjects:
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Table of Contents:
  • Cover; Contents; Preface; Notes on Contributors; 1. On the Interplay of Syntax and Information Structure: Synchronic and Diachronic Considerations; PART ONE: Syntax and Information Structure: From Verb-Second/Object-Verb to Subject-Verb-Object; 2. The Loss of Verb-Second and the Switch from Bounded to Unbounded Systems; 3. The Effect of Information Structure on Object Position in Old English: A Pilot Study; 4. Word Order, Information Structure, and Discourse Relations: A Study of Old and Middle English Verb-Final Clauses
  • 5. Syntax and Information Structure: Verb-Second Variation in Middle EnglishPART TWO: Developing a Grammar of Prose: Syntax and Information Structure after 1500; 6. Discourse Status and Syntax in the History of English: Some Explorations in Topicalization, Left-Dislocation, and There-Constructions; 7. Givenness and Word Order: A Study of Long Passives from Early Modern English to Present-Day English; 8. The Connectives And, For, But, and Only as Clause and Discourse Type Indicators in 16th- and 17th-Century Epistolary Prose; PART THREE: Information Structure and Nonfinite Clauses
  • 9. The Role of the Accessibility of the Subject in the Development of Adjectival Complementation from Old English to Present-Day English10. Latin Absolute Constructions and Their Old English Equivalents: Interfaces between Form and Information Structure; PART FOUR: Information Structure and the Internal Structure of the Noun Phrase; 11. Why a Determiner? The Possessive + Determiner + Adjective Construction in Old English; 12. Functional Shifts and the Development of English Determiners
  • 13. The Proximal and Distal Perspectives in Relation to the Position of Directional Modifiers in the English Noun PhraseIndex; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; U; V; W