This book sheds new light on the nature of gerunds in English, utilizing data from very large electronic corpora in order to compare pairs of patterns viewed as constructions. It serves as a contribution to the study of complementation, an under-researched area of investigation which bridges observations at the intersection of lexico-grammar, syntax and semantics. As a result, the reader develops their understanding of the meaning and use of each pattern within the system of English predicate complementation as it has evolved in recent times. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of English linguistics, especially English grammar.

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary is the ideal dictionary for advanced EFL/ESL learners. Easy to use and with a great CD-ROM - the perfect learner's dictionary for exam success. First published as the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, this new edition has been completely updated and redesigned. - References to over 170,000 words, phrases and examples explained in clear and natural English - All the important new words that have come into the language (e.g. dirty bomb, lairy, 9/11, clickable) - Over 200 'Common Learner Error' notes, based on the Cambridge Learner Corpus from Cambridge ESOL exams Plus, on the CD-ROM: - SMART thesaurus - lets you find all the words with the same meaning - QUICKfind - automatically looks up words while you are working on-screen - SUPERwrite - tools for advanced writing, giving help with grammar and collocation - Hear and practise all the words.

The practice of comparing languages has a long tradition characterized by a cyclic pattern of interest. Its meeting with corpus linguistics in the 1990s has led to a new sub-discipline of corpus-based contrastive studies. The present volume tackles two main challenges that had not yet been fully addressed in the literature, namely an empirical assessment of the nature of the data commonly used in cross-linguistic studies (e.g. translation data versus comparable data), and the development of advanced methods and statistical techniques suitably adapted to contrastive research settings. The papers collected in this volume endeavour to find out what (new) types of data are most useful for what kind of contrastive questions, and which advanced statistical techniques are most suited to deal with the multidimensionality of contrastive research questions. Answers to these questions are provided through the contrastive analysis of various language pairs or groups, and a wide variety of phenomena situated at almost all linguistic levels. In sum, this book provides an update on new methodological and theoretical insights in empirical contrastive linguistics and will stimulate further research within this field.

The focus of this volume is on the relation between synchrony and diachrony. It is examined in the light of the most recent theories of language change and linguistic variation. What has traditionally been treated as a dichotomy is now seen rather in terms of a dynamic interface. The contributions to this volume aim at exploring the most adequate tools to describe and understand the manifestations of this dynamic interface. Thorough analyses are offered on hot topics of the current linguistic debate, which are all involved in the analysis of the synchrony-diachrony interface: gradualness of change, synchronic variation and gradience, constructional approaches to grammaticalization, the role of contact-induced transfer in language change, analogy. Case studies are discussed from a variety of languages and dialects including English, Welsh, Latin, Italian and Italian dialects, Dutch, Swedish, German and German dialects, Hungarian. This volume is of great interest to a broad audience within linguistics, including historical linguistics, typology, pragmatics, and areal linguistics.

Highlights the complexity of contact-induced language change throughout the history of English by bringing together cutting-edge research from historical linguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, pidgin/creole linguistics and language acquisition. With contributions from leading experts, the book offers fresh and exciting perspectives as well as an up-to-date overview of the respective fields.

This book seeks to answer the questions: why do grammars change, and why is the rate of such change so variable? A principal focus is on changes in English between the Anglo-Saxon and early modern periods. The author frames his analysis in a comparative framework with extended discussions of language change in a wide range of other Indo-European languages. He deploys Chomsky's minimalist framework in a fruitful marriage of comparative and theoretical linguistics within an argument that will be accessible to practitioners in both fields.

A pioneering collection of new research that explores categories, constructions, and change in the syntax of the English language. The volume, with contributions by world-renowned scholars as well as some emerging scholars in the field, covers a wide variety of approaches to grammatical categories and categorial change, constructions and constructional change, and comparative and typological research. Each of the fourteen chapters, based on the analysis of authentic data, highlights the wealth and breadth of the study of English syntax (including morphosyntax), both theoretically and empirically, from Old English through to the present day. The result is a body of research which will add substantially to the current study of the syntax of the English language, by stimulating further research in the field.

This is the first extensive study of Old English to utilise the insights and methodologies of sociolinguistics. Building on previous philological and historical work, it takes into account the sociology and social dialectology of Old English and offers a description of its speech communities informed by the theory of social networks and communities of practice. Specifically, this book uses data from historical narratives and legal documents and examines the interplay of linguistic innovation, variation, and change with such sociolinguistic parameters as region, scribal office, gender, and social status. Special attention is given to the processes of supralocalisation and their correlation with periods of political centralisation in the history of Anglo-Saxon England.

Based on the systematic analysis of large amounts of computer-readable text, this book shows how the English language has been changing in the recent past, often in unexpected and previously undocumented ways. The study is based on a group of matching corpora, known as the 'Brown family' of corpora, supplemented by a range of other corpus materials, both written and spoken, drawn mainly from the later twentieth century. Among the matters receiving particular attention are the influence of American English on British English, the role of the press, the 'colloquialization' of written English, and a wide range of grammatical topics, including the modal auxiliaries, progressive, subjunctive, passive, genitive and relative clauses. These subjects build an overall picture of how English grammar is changing, and the linguistic and social factors that are contributing to this process.

An accessible, up-to-date account of the major changes in English syntax since its beginnings up to the present day.