Object-Verb in Early Modern English: Modelling Markedness

Thank you and thanks in Early Modern English

Linguistic DNA: Investigating Conceptual Change in Early Modern English Discourse

This article describes the background and premises of the AHRCfunded project, ‘The Linguistic DNA of Modern Western Thought’. We offer an empirical, encyclopaedic approach to historical semantics regarding ‘conceptual history’, i.e. the history of concepts that shape thought, culture and society in a particular period. We relate the project to traditional work in conceptual and semantic history...

Real Stress change and phonological variation in early Modern English

In this paper, I propose a dynamic approach to the origin and development of the English Stress Rule (ESR), with special attention to late Middle English and early Modern English. My main aim consists in determining (i) the historical relations of this rule with two of its predecessors through the analysis of competing phonological rules and (ii) the patterns of phonological variation thereby c...

Verb Acquisition in English and Japanese

Three decades ago, Carol Chomsky (1969) reported finding surprising differences between child and adult uses of the verbs ask, tell, look and see. A later study by Deidre Gentner (1978) showed that children often confuse the verbs mix and stir. Melissa Bowerman (1978) reported that her daughters overextended words in unusual ways, including the verbs kick and open. Despite these early observati...

Serial Verb Constructions in English and Chinese

Traditionally, the term serial verb construction refers to a sequence of verbs or verb phrases in a sentence in which there is no intervening conjunction. The English expression go eat, for example, might be considered as a kind of serial verb construction since there is no infinitive or other morphosyntactic marker present to indicate a coordinating or subordinating relationship between the tw...