Change in Contemporary English

A Grammatical Study

By: Geoffrey Leech, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair

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Hardcover | 22 October 2009

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370 Pages

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Based on the systematic analysis of large amounts of computer-readable text, this book shows how the English language has been changing in the recent past, often in unexpected and previously undocumented ways. The study is based on a group of matching corpora, known as the 'Brown family' of corpora, supplemented by a range of other corpus materials, both written and spoken, drawn mainly from the later twentieth century. Among the matters receiving particular attention are the influence of American English on British English, the role of the press, the 'colloquialization' of written English, and a wide range of grammatical topics, including the modal auxiliaries, progressive, subjunctive, passive, genitive and relative clauses. These subjects build an overall picture of how English grammar is changing, and the linguistic and social factors that are contributing to this process.

Industry Reviews

Review of the hardback: 'CCE suggests a number of issues that will no doubt inspire much research in the future, not only in English, but in any language for which electronic corpora are available over a fifty- to hundred-year period. ... Regardless of any limitations of the corpora, the authors have developed a rigorous methodology for tagging, quantifying and analyzing electronic corpus materials, and revealing the multifactorial nature of change in use.' Elizabeth Closs Traugott, English Language and Linguistics
'... the studies collected in this volume are very valuable for the analysis of ongoing language change. The observations of these very detailed descriptions of language use and variation in the second half of the twentieth century across the two major written varieties of English will - together with, for example, the quantitative data and qualitative analyses of the Longman Grammar ... certainly be a highly welcome basis for further investigations into ongoing grammar change in English.' Ursula Lenker, Anglia
'... this is a masterly book, no doubt the standard treatment of its subject for years to come. In an exemplary fashion it combines a meticulous attention to detail and empirically sound documentation with a fundamental interest in the nature and causes of syntactic change, and it provides far-reaching insights on both levels.' Edgar W. Schneider, English World-Wide

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Non-Fiction Language & Linguistics Linguistics Grammar, Syntax & Morphology Sociolinguistics Language Learning & Teaching Language Teaching & Learning Material & Coursework Grammar, Vocabulary & Pronunciation

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Published: 10th April 2012

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List of figures	p. x
List of tables xiv
Preface	p. xix
Abbreviations and symbolic conventions	p. xxv
Introduction: 'grammar blindness' in the recent history of English?	p. 1
Grammar is more than an arbitrary list of shibboleths	p. 1
Grammatical changes: proceeding slowly and invisible at close range?	p. 7
A frame of orientation: previous research on recent and ongoing grammatical changes in English	p. 16
Conclusion	p. 22
Comparative corpus linguistics: the methodological basis of this book	p. 24
(Computer) corpus linguistics: the Brown Corpus and after	p. 24
Comparable corpora and comparative corpus linguistics	p. 27
The methodological basis of comparable corpus linguistics	p. 31
Stages of investigation	p. 33
Rationalize the mark-up of the corpora	p. 33
Undertake annotation of the corpora	p. 33
Use search and retrieval software to identify and extract recurrent formal features in the corpus	p. 34
Refine the comparative analysis	p. 34
Derive difference-of-frequency tables	p. 35
Derive difference-of-frequency tables from inter-corpus comparisons	p. 36
Undertake further categorization of instances of features found in the corpora	p. 36
Further qualitative analysis, examining individual instances, or clusters of instances, in both corpora	p. 37
Functional interpretation of findings	p. 37
Further details and explanations of the stages of investigation	p. 37
(B) Annotation	p. 37
(C) Search expressions in CQP	p. 38
(D₁) Frequency across genres and subcorpora	p. 40
(D₂) External comparisons	p. 43
(D₃) Further categorization of instances found in the corpora	p. 45
(E) Further qualitative analysis	p. 47
(F) Functional interpretation of findings on all levels	p. 49
Conclusion	p. 50
The subjunctive mood	p. 51
Introduction	p. 51
The revival of the mandative subjunctive	p. 52
Overall developments of the mandative subjunctive	p. 53
Is the mandative subjunctive losing its formal connotations?	p. 57
The were-subjunctive	p. 61
The were-subjunctive: diachronic development	p. 64
The were-subjunctive: a recessive formal option?	p. 66
Revival and demise of the subjunctive? An attempt at reconciling apparently contradictory developments	p. 67
Summary and conclusion	p. 69
The modal auxiliaries	p. 71
The declining use of the modal auxiliaries in written standard English 1961-1991/2	p. 71
The changing use of the modals in different genres and subcorpora	p. 73
The changing use of the modals in spoken vs written corpora	p. 76
The core modals and competing expressions of modality	p. 78
Shrinking usage of particular modals: a more detailed examination	p. 79
The modals at the bottom of the frequency list: shall, ought to and need(n't)	p. 80
The semantics of modal decline: may, must and should	p. 83
Conclusion	p. 89
The so-called semi-modals	p. 91
Auxiliary-lexical verb gradience	p. 92
Overall changes in frequency of semi-modals	p. 98
Further evidence for grammaticalization? Phonetics and semantics	p. 105
Phonetic reduction and coalescence: gonna, gotta and wanna	p. 105
Signs of abstraction and generalization (semantic weakening)	p. 107
The ecology of obligation/necessity	p. 114
Conclusion	p. 116
The progressive	p. 118
Introduction	p. 118
Basic and special uses of the progressive	p. 119
Historical background	p. 120
Overview of recent distribution patterns	p. 122
Distribution in written BrE and AmE	p. 122
Distribution in contemporaneous BrE speech and other registers	p. 124
Present progressive active	p. 127
Quotations and contracted forms	p. 128
Stative verbs	p. 129
Subject type and reference	p. 130
Special uses	p. 131
The progressive passive	p. 136
The progressive in combination with modal auxiliaries	p. 139
Modal auxiliary + be -ing	p. 139
Will + be -ing	p. 139
Summary and conclusion	p. 141
The passive voice	p. 144
Introduction	p. 144
The be-passive	p. 148
The get-passive	p. 154
The mediopassive	p. 158
Summary and conclusion	p. 164
Take or have a look at a corpus? Expanded predicates in British and American English	p. 166
The state of the art	p. 167
Hypotheses	p. 170
Defining the variable	p. 173
Results	p. 174
Stylistic variation	p. 174
Diachronic variation	p. 175
Regional variation	p. 175
Summary	p. 179
Non-finite clauses	p. 181
Introduction: long-term trends in the evolution of English non-finite clauses	p. 181
Changes in non-finite clauses I: case studies of individual matrix verbs	p. 186
Help + infinitive	p. 187
Prevent/stop + NP + (from) + gerund	p. 193
Start and stop in catenative uses	p. 195
Want to	p. 199
Assessing the speed of changes	p. 201
Changes in non-finite clauses II: statistical trends in the tagged corpora	p. 201
Conclusion	p. 204
The noun phrase	p. 206
Parts of speech: an overall survey	p. 207
Nouns and noun sequences	p. 211
Common nouns	p. 212
Proper nouns, including proper nouns as acronyms	p. 212
Noun sequences and other juxtapositions	p. 214
Noun + common noun sequences	p. 216
Noun sequences with plural attributive nouns	p. 219
Sequences of proper nouns	p. 221
The s-genitive and the of-genitive	p. 222
The s-genitive	p. 223
The of-gentive	p. 224
Relative clauses	p. 226
Wh- relative clauses	p. 228
That relative clauses	p. 229
Zero relative clauses	p. 231
Pied-piping vs preposition stranding	p. 231
Summary and conclusion	p. 233
Linguistic and other determinants of change	p. 236
The functional and social processes of change	p. 236
Grammaticalization	p. 237
Colloquialization	p. 239
Contracted negatives and verb forms	p. 240
Not-negation vs no-negation	p. 241
Questions	p. 242
Other plausible grammatical signs of colloquialization	p. 243
Punctuation	p. 244
Problems and issues concerning colloquialization	p. 245
Densification of content	p. 249
Americanization?	p. 252
'Americanization' in relation to other trends	p. 256
'Americanization' and sociolinguistic globalization	p. 258
Other trends	p. 259
Democratization: ironing out differences	p. 259
Language prescriptions	p. 263
Analyticization?	p. 264
Conclusion	p. 267
The composition of the Brown Corpus	p. 273
The C8 tagset used for part-of-speech tagging of the four corpora	p. 276
Additional statistical tables and charts 281
References	p. 314
Index	p. 335
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Change in Contemporary English

A Grammatical Study

At a Glance

Hardcover

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