Composite Predicates in Late Modern English

Ljubica Leone is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milan, Italy. She received her PhD in Literary and Linguistic Studies from the University of Salerno, Italy.

List of figures

List of tables

Acknowledgments

List of abbreviations and conventions

Chapter 1. Composite predicates in 1750–1850

1.1. Background

1.2. Linguistic overview of composite predicates

1.3. Previous studies and research aims

1.4. The corpus: the Late Modern English-Old Bailey Corpus

1.4.1. Corpus compilation: source data, sampling, text types

1.4.2. Corpus architecture and size

1.5. Method: selectional criteria, corpus-based techniques, and statistical tests

1.6. The structure of the book

Chapter 2. History

2.1. Old English and Middle English: the establishment of composite predicates

2.2. Early Modern English: the spread of composite predicates

2.3. Late Modern English: stability and change

2.4. Present Day English: current forms and uses

Chapter 3. Linguistic Features

3.1. Distribution of composite predicates

3.2. The base verbs

3.3. Phrasal profile and productivity of composite predicates

3.3.1. Phraseological variation across the years 1750–1850

3.3.2. The use of deverbal nouns with more than one verb

3.3.3. Productivity

Chapter 4. Composite Predicates Between Stability and Change

4.1. Stable composite predicates

4.2. Morpho-syntactic features of composite predicate

4.2.1. Syntactic patterns

4.2.2. Articles and determiners

4.2.3. Internal modification

4.2.4. The use of plural forms

4.2.5. Passivization

4.3. Semantic features

Chapter 5. Processes of change

5.1. Grammaticalization and lexicalization

5.2. Phraseological variation and layering between alternative prepositions

5.3. The coinage of new composite predicates

5.4. Semantic change

Chapter 6. Conclusion

Appendix: list of composite predicates

References

Index