Download or read book The Syntactic Evolution of Modal Verbs in the History of English written by Céline Romero and published by LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2012-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, we question the status of modal verbs in the history of English mainly from a minimalist and Distributed Morphology point of views. We propose the existence of a specific syntactic position for preterite-present verbs (which are the ancestors of the present-day modal verbs) in Old English and show that they are raising verbs. We then underline the grammaticalisation of modal verbs as early as the late Old English period. We base our hypotheses on the analysis of infinitive structures (among which causative structures), negation (negative concord, Neg criterion and negative polarity items), the hierarchy of adverbs and (modal) adverb phrases, elliptic structures and the particle TO.
Download or read book Developments in English Historical Morpho Syntax written by Claudia Claridge and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning the time from Old English to modern American English, this volume provides fresh perspectives on core issues and theories in the morphosyntactic history of English nominal, verbal and adverbial constructions. The contributions discuss the loss, rise and restructuring of morphonological marking, periphrastic verbal constructions, auxiliary variation and evolution, as well as changing word order options. Favouring corpus-linguistic, frequency-based and statistical approaches, the studies are firmly empirically grounded. The book is aimed at scholars interested in the history of the English language and in language variation and change.
Download or read book Modality and the English Modals written by F.R. Palmer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed account of the many uses and functions of these verbs. The nature of modality, and some controversial issues, are also discussed.
Download or read book Emerging English Modals written by Manfred G. Krug and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2000 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph provides a detailed account of the fundamental changes which have recently affected - and which are still affecting - the system of English auxiliaries.
Download or read book The Development of the English Modals written by Katharina Reese and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2010-12-10 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,7, Free University of Berlin (Institut für Englische Philologie), course: History and Variation of English II, language: English, abstract: The question about the grammaticalization process of the modal auxiliary verbs from Old English to Modern English is a highly discussed topic among linguistics and scholars today. It is undisputed that, in the English that is spoken today, words like 'should', 'could' etc. form a separate category, or rather a subcategory, 'modal' that does not only syntactically differ from the usual English verbs, but also morphologically. That is, of course with the exception of a few regional variations such as for example Scots, but since the main focus of this paper is on the standard British and American English dialects, those regional non-standard dialects will not be taken into consideration here. For every native and average non-native speaker, it is natural that modals like 'will' for example don't take the obligatory inflectional ending -s in third person singular present. Or that 'should', 'would' or 'could' do not have past tense meaning, although the forms itself are actually a past form. And it is also natural that just those verbs, which we subcategorize as modals, will neither appear as infinitives with 'to' (*'I have to will'), nor do they require 'to' in combination with regular verbs (*'I should to go'). Today we instinctively know that those usual grammatical rules that regular verbs require to be followed in order to correctly be embedded in a sentence, don't apply to the modals. How did we get to this point, though? In the following paper I want to take a closer look at how the modals developed from regularly inflectional verbs, that they still were in Old English, to this new category 'modal' which is no longer a full verb that can stand alone in a sentence, but more of a grammatical function that signals either epistemic or deontic meaning.
Download or read book Syntactic Change and the History of English Modals written by Anna Maria Cornelia Kemenade and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Syntactic Change and the History of English Modals written by Ans van Kemenade and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Modality and the English Modals written by Frank Robert Palmer and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1979 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The modal verbs can and may in English and Spanish written by Andra Stefanescu and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-05-28 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diploma Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1, University of Bucharest (Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures), language: English, abstract: Modality is a semantic concept that covers notions such as possibility, probability, permission, ability, volition, necessity and obligation. The class of modals is in many languages both syntactically and semantically highly irregular and unpredictable: modals frequently have idiosyncratic conjugational patterns and are subject to highly specialized syntactic rules. One of the main characteristic of modal verbs is their relatively imprecise and indeterminate meaning, their ambiguity: the same modal can be deontic (i.e. based on rules and regulations), but it may also involve processes, sets of knowledge or belief systems, and thus get an epistemic interpretation. In order to define the class of modals or to provide a set of environments in which a modal may be correctly or appropriately used, one must refer to many levels of language: the purely syntactic environment, as well as the logical structure, the context of the utterance, the assumptions that are shared by the speaker and the addressee, the social situation assumed by the participants in the discourse, the impression the speaker wants to make on the addressee, and so on. There is also the question of the appropriate context environments, that is, the semantic-pragmatic issue. Therefore, a complete analysis of a particular modal can only be achieved by looking both at its syntactic features and at its semantic structure; in other words, the syntax of a modal verb is based on its semantics, and these two dimensions are inseparable.
Download or read book Adverbs and Modality in English written by Leo Hoye and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new study on modality in English represents a departure from more traditional approaches to the subject, where the modal auxiliaries have been the usual focus of attention, by examining in detail the nature of their association with different categories of modal adverb. Modality is notoriously complex but the present work offers an accessible introduction to the topic, a comprehensive account of modal-adverb co-occurrence, and a reappraisal of the English modal system. The descriptive framework draws fresh insights from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches to the study of language and communication, and from recent work in corpus linguistics. The book includes contrastive reference to the expression of modality in Spanish and a discussion of modality in such applied contexts as language teaching. A major feature is its reliance on authentic spoken and written language data. The study is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics, English language, communications studies and related disciplines.
Download or read book Verb and Object Order in the History of English written by Chiara De Bastiani and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-18 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study takes up the challenge posed by the reanalysis of Verb-Object order as the basic one in the history of English; the question, which has been debated for over thirty years, is tackled here by combining a qualitative and quantitative investigation with current linguistic theories, shedding new light on the phenomenon. It introduces new evidence in favour of a universal base order, by exploring the syntax of both Old English and Early Middle English and the information structural and prosodic properties of objects. It also considers the philological history of the texts examined, highlighting how this aspect should not be neglected in a diachronic linguistic study. As such, this book provides new data for scholars working in the field of English linguistics, as well as students and linguists interested in language change at the interface between syntax, information structure and prosody.
Download or read book Modal Auxiliaries from Late Old to Early Middle English written by Kousuke Kaita and published by Herbert Utz Verlag. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do Modern English modal auxiliaries ought to, should, and must, meaning OBLIGATION, occur in the present tense, yet their forms are in the preterite? Why does to accompany ought? One of the solutions to these questions is to look at the history of the English language. This monograph deals with the history of ought to, should, and must, which are of different syntactic and semantic origins: ought to stems from a main verb of Old English āgan ‘to have’ (POSSESSION) along with to; should derives from sculan ‘must’ with its ‘deviation’ to shall, and mōtan originates in ‘to be allowed to’ (PERMISSION). The work concentrates on the transition from Old English (700-1100) to Middle English (1100-1500), which is a crucial period in the history of the English language. Topics addressed include the linguistic review of modality, the philological reading of primary texts, and the occasional reference to the other Germanic languages.
Download or read book Modality Subjectivity and Semantic Change written by Heiko Narrog and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a cross-linguistic exploration of semantic and functional change in modal markers. With a focus on Japanese and to a lesser extent Chinese the book is a countercheck to hypotheses built on the Indo-European languages. It also contains numerous illustrations from other languages.
Download or read book The Development of Old English written by Don Ringe and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-31 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the second volume in A Linguistic History of English, describes the development of Old English from Proto-Germanic. Like Volume I, it is an internal history of the structure of English that combines traditional historical linguistics, modern syntactic theory, the study of languages in contact, and the variationist approach to language change. The first part of the book considers the development of Northwest and West Germanic, and the northern dialects of the latter, with particular reference to phonological and morphological phenomena. Later chapters present a detailed account of changes in the Old English sound system, inflectional system, and syntax. The book aims to make the findings of traditional historical linguistics accessible to scholars and students in other subdisciplines, and also to adopt approaches from contemporary theoretical linguistics in such a way that they are accessible to a wide range of historical linguists.
Download or read book The Development of Old English written by Donald A. Ringe and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the second volume in A Linguistic History of English, describes the development of Old English from Proto-Germanic. Like Volume I, it is an internal history of the structure of English that combines traditional historical linguistics, modern syntactic theory, the study of languages in contact, and the variationist approach to language change. The first part of the book considers the development of Northwest and West Germanic, and the northern dialects of the latter, with particular reference to phonological and morphological phenomena. Later chapters present a detailed account of changes in the Old English sound system, inflectional system, and syntax. The book aims to make the findings of traditional historical linguistics accessible to scholars and students in other subdisciplines, and also to adopt approaches from contemporary theoretical linguistics in such a way that they are accessible to a wide range of historical linguists.
Download or read book Early English Modals written by Sune Gregersen and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Semantic Predecessors of Need in the History of English c750 1710 written by Lucía Loureiro-Porto and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2009-09-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the history of English at least five verbs have been found to mean ‘need’: þurfan, beþurfan, need, behove and mister. By adopting a corpus-based approach, this book studies all of them diachronically, from the origins of the language (c.750) to the end of the early Modern English period (1710). Offers a detailed analysis of the meaning of these five verbs which have been found to mean ‘need’, filling a gap in the literature on modality and shedding new light on grammaticalization theory Spans the period c.750 to 1710, adopting a corpus-based approach to study the verbs diachronically Explores the evolution of necessity meanings in English, identifying regular semantic changes and challenging some well-established statements Provides a detailed grammaticalization analysis, paying attention to the different Present-Day-English modal classes, including marginal and emerging modals
