The English Phrasal Verb, 1650–Present: History, Stylistic Drifts, and Lexicalisation (Studies in English Language)
Cambridge University Press, 10/28/2021
EAN 9781107499249, ISBN10: 1107499240
Paperback, 342 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
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.
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.