This book describes the historical emergence and spread of the to-infinitive in English. The exposition is clear and does not assume an up-to-date knowledge of generative theory. The book will appeal to the wide spectrum of scholars interested in the transformation of Old to Middle English as well as to those studying the processes and causes of syntactic change more generally.

This book describes the historical emergence and spread of the to-infinitive in English. The exposition is clear and does not assume an up-to-date knowledge of generative theory. The book will appeal to the wide spectrum of scholars interested in the transformation of Old to Middle English as well as to those studying the processes and causes of syntactic change more generally.

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 is the role of information structure, broadly conceived, as it interacts with the other levels of linguistic description, syntax, morphology, prosody, semantics and pragmatics. The volume comprises twelve chapters by leading scholars who take a variety of theoretical and methodological...

Aimed at advanced students, this book discusses a number of approaches to charting the major developments in the syntax of English. It does not assume any knowledge of Old or Middle English or of formal syntax, although students should be familiar with traditional syntactic concepts such as verbs and nouns, subjects and objects, and linguistic concepts such as morphology and case. Bettelou Los draws on explanations from both formal and functional approaches to explore how syntactic changes are the product of the interaction of many internal and external factors.

Aimed at advanced students, this book discusses a number of approaches to charting the major developments in the syntax of English. It does not assume any knowledge of Old or Middle English or of formal syntax, although students should be familiar with traditional syntactic concepts such as verbs and nouns, subjects and objects, and linguistic concepts such as morphology and case. Bettelou Los draws on explanations from both formal and functional approaches to explore how syntactic changes are the product of the interaction of many internal and external factors.

This book explains how particle verbs fit into the grammatical systems of English and Dutch.