Constructions and Environments
Peter Petré · 2014
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About the book
This monograph presents the first comprehensive diachronic account of copular and passive verb constructions in Old and Middle English. Loss of the high-frequency verb weorðan 'become' is explained as a result of changing word order in narrative during Middle English. The merger of is 'is' and bið 'shall be, is generally' into a single suppletive verb is related to the development of a general analytic future shall benally, the co-occurrence of multiple changes led to become and wax crossing a threshold of similarity with existing copulas, from which they analogically adopted full productivity.
Book details
- Year
- 2014
- Language
- English
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Editions
- 1
- Pages
- 320
- ISBN
- 9780199373390
Data source: Wikidata