The English Phrasal Verb, 1650–Present
The English Phrasal Verb, 1650–Present
Providing a detailed and comprehensive account of the development of phrasal verbs from early modern to present-day English, this study covers almost 400 years in the history of English, and provides both a diachronic and synchronic account based on over 12,000 examples extracted from stratified electronic corpora. The corpus analysis provides evidence of how registers can inform us about the history of English, as it traces and compares the usage and stylistic drifts of phrasal verbs across ten different genres - drama, fiction, journals, diaries, letters, medicine, news, science, sermons, and trial proceedings. The study also sheds new light on the morpho-syntactic and semantic features of phrasal verbs, proposing a new approach to the category, considering not only on their grammatical features, but also their historical development, by discussing the category in terms of a number of central mechanisms of language change.
- Provides readers with new evidence concerning the status of phrasal verbs based on empirical evidence over a long time span
- Uses corpus evidence to provide new insights into the nature of the particles and phrasal-combinations
- Provides readers with a better understanding of the morpho-syntactic and semantic features of phrasal verbs under three great processes of linguistic change (grammaticalisation, lexicalisation, and idiomatisation)
Reviews & endorsements
'This book is a major contribution to the research on phrasal verbs, presenting the most comprehensive empirical investigation to date by tracing more than 12,000 phrasal verbs across 350 years and ten genres. Thus, it provides most valuable insights into their behaviour in spoken versus written, formal versus informal contexts, and their positioning along the clines of lexicalisation and idiomatisation.' Claudia Claridge, Universität Augsburg
Product details
October 2021Paperback
9781107499249
341 pages
228 × 153 × 19 mm
0.502kg
41 b/w illus. 44 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Corpus and methodology
- 3. Delimiting the scope of the study: what are phrasal verbs?
- 4. The relationship between phrasal verbs and the processes of grammaticalisation, lexicalisation, and idiomatisation
- 5. Phrasal verbs 1650–1990: Linguistic aspects
- 6. Phrasal verbs 1650–1990: cross-genre distribution
- 7. Conclusion.
