Linking Form and Meaning

This book documents changes and trends in English predicate complementation. In-depth case studies of grammatical patterns presented here uncover new links between form and meaning in these constructions, offering fresh insights into explanatory principles to account for variation and change in the system of English predicate complementation.

Autorentext

Juhani Rudanko is Professor of English at the University of Tampere, Finland. His recent work has focused on the system of English predicate complementation in recent centuries and on the pragmatic analysis of political discourse in the early American Republic.

Inhalt

1. Introduction 2. Tracking a Change over Five Decades: to Infinitive and to -ing Complements of Accustomed in American Fiction from the 1910s to the 1950s 3. A New Angle on Infinitival and of -ing Complements of Afraid, with Evidence from the TIME Corpus 4. Additional Data on Non-Finite Complements of Afraid 5. On the Semantics of Object Control in English, with Evidence from the Corpus of Contemporary American English 6. The Transitive into -ing Pattern as a Caused Motion Construction: the Case of Force 7. Exploring the Creative Potential of the Transitive into -ing Pattern 8. On a Class of Exceptions to Bach's Generalization 9. Concluding Observations