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This study brings together many of the resources needed for the exploration of English historical syntax and deals with many of the important changes in English sentence structure from Old English to present. It also features a survey of published research from both classical and modern linguistic traditions, as well as new research by the author. Provides guidance on methodology, important reference materials, and the general history of the English language.
When you read Shakespeare or watch a performance of one of his plays, do you find yourself wondering what it was he actually meant? Do you consult modern editions of Shakespeare's plays only to find that your questions still remain unanswered? A Grammar of Shakespeare's Language, the first comprehensive grammar of Shakespeare's language for over one hundred years, will help you find out exactly what Shakespeare meant. Steering clear of linguistic jargon, Professor Blake provides a detailed analysis of Shakespeare's language. He includes accounts of the morphology and syntax of different parts of speech, as well as highlighting features such as concord, negation, repetition and ellipsis. He treats not only traditional features such as the make-up of clauses, but also how language is used in various forms of conversational exchange, such as forms of address, discourse markers, greetings and farewells. This book will help you to understand much that may have previously seemed difficult or incomprehensible, thus enhancing your enjoyment of his plays.
A student's introduction to the first centuries in the history of the English language. The first edition of "e;An Introduction to Old English"e; was written by Richard Hogg. The second edition has been revised by Rhona Alcorn. Combining a wide variety of short texts with a coherent and up-to-date assessment of the forms of language which remain as the foundation of English today, this introduction offers a unique study of Old English in context. It is designed for students unfamiliar with the earliest stages of the English language and provides a basis for further study of the history of the language to the present day. All the basic elements of Old English are covered, including nouns, adjectives, verbs, syntax, word order, vocabulary and sound values. Wherever possible comparisons are drawn between Old English and the present-day language, but also with other related languages such as Dutch, German and French. There are also chapters introducing Old English poetry and dialect variation, as well as a chapter looking at what happened to the language after the Norman Conquest.
A detailed account of the many uses and functions of these verbs. The nature of modality, and some controversial issues, are also discussed.
Auxiliaries are one of the most complex areas of English syntax. Disagreement over both the principles and details of their grammar has been substantial. Anthony Warner here offers a detailed account of both their synchronic and diachronic properties. He first argues that lexical properties are central to their grammar, which is relatively non-abstract. He then traces in detail the history of processes of grammaticalisation in their development and claims most notably that we can identify a group of auxiliaries in English from an early period on formal, not just semantic, grounds. This book meets the dual challenge of accounting for both the grammar and the history of the English auxiliary. It will be essential reading for all those interested in English syntax and its history.
This volume brings together a collection of 18 papers that look into the expression of modality in the grammars of natural languages, with an emphasis on its manifestations in naturally occurring discourse. Though the individual contributions reflect a diversity of languages, of synchronic and diachronic foci, and of theoretical orientations — all within the broad domain of functional linguistics — they nonetheless converge around a number of key issues: the relationship between 'mood' and 'modality'; the delineation of modal categories and their nomenclature; the grounding of modality in interactive discourse; the elusive category 'irrealis'; and the relationship of modal notions and categories to other categories of grammar.
This volume focuses on the interplay between grammatical and pragmatic factors in the comprehension of lexically communicated meaning. It uses a case-study, modality, in order to illustrate how the plasticity of lexically conveyed information can be accounted for without assuming semantic polysemy. The author's approach to the semantics and pragmatics of the English modal verbs is developed within the relevance-theoretic framework of communication.
This book is a report of an investigation into the meanings of the modal auxiliaries in modern British English. The investigation took the form of a large-scale corpus-based project, looking at modal auxiliaries in both written and spoken language, and taking into account stylistic variation. The analysis of a corpus of a ¿real¿ language brings the analyst face-to-face with a problem which has frequently been avoided or ignored in theoretical semantics: language is not an orderly phenomenon, and, as far as meaning is concerned, indeterminacy seems to be a feature of all languages. But it is one thing to recognise the existence of indeterminacy, and another to deal with it adequately. Semantic analysis conventionally consists in distinguishing one meaning from another, in recognising discrete categories, but the acknowledgement of indeterminacy explicitly denies the existence of such discrete categories. This book examines in detail this problem and its relationship to a study of modals.
This study offers one of the first systematic accounts of syntactic change and will be of interest to a wide range of linguists.