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Spreading Patterns examines how new constructions emerge and spread through the grammar of a language, in a process called "diffusion." This is done by tracking the development of three types of complements from the Middle English period to the present day. These are subject-controlled gerund complements, forELto-infinitives, and subject-controlled participial complements. In the first half of the book, De Smet focuses on how and why patterns diffuse. In the second half, which is largely corpus-based, De Smet tests his theoretical model of diffusion on the three complement types. His...

An accessible, up-to-date account of the major changes in English syntax since its beginnings up to the present day.

In much writing on language change, there is a tacit assumption that change operates on a single source construction to produce an innovative target construction. This volume challenges this assumption, by showing that many changes involve interactions between multiple source constructions. In fact, the involvement of multiple source constructions is unexceptional. The phenomenon is observed in phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. It is seen in language-internal change as well as in contact-induced change. Interactions may obtain between independent but historically related...

The papers in this volume cover a wide range of interrelated syntactic phenomena, from the history of core arguments, to complements and non-finite clauses, elements in the clause periphery, as well as elements with potential scope over complete sentences and even larger discourse chunks. In one way or another, however, they all testify to an increasing awareness that even some of the most central phenomena of syntax - and the way they develop over time - are best understood by taking into account their communicative functions and the way they are processed and represented by speakers'...