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Also by Juhani Rudanko COMPLEMENTATION AND CASE GRAMMAR (1989) PRAGMATIC APPROACHES TO SHAKESPEARE (1993) PREPOSITIONS AND COMPLEMENT CLAUSES (1996) DIACHRONIC STUDIES OF ENGLISH COMPLEMENTATION PATTERNS (1999) CORPORA AND COMPLEMENTATION (2000) COMPLEMENTS AND CONSTRUCTIONS (2002) THE FORGING OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH (2003)
Changes in Complementation in British and American English Corpus-Based Studies on Non-Finite Complements in Recent English Juhani Rudanko Professor of English, University of Tampere, Finland
Martti Juhani Rudanko 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-53733-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-35909-7 ISBN 978-0-230-30519-9 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230305199 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Contents List of Tables Acknowledgments vi ix 1 Introduction 1 2 On a Class of Resultatives in Recent English 10 3 Innovative Resultatives in British and American English 41 4 Emergent Alternation in Complement Selection: The Spread of the Transitive into - ing Construction to Verbs of Unflavored Causation 67 5 Tracking and Explaining the Transitive out of - ing Pattern in Recent and Current English 85 6 Watching English Grammar Change: Variation and Change in the Grammar of Accustomed 100 7 On Sentential Complements of Object, with Evidence from the Old Bailey Corpus 155 8 Complements of Commit: Variation in the Grammar of an Innovative Verb 172 9 Concluding Observations 190 Notes 198 References 203 Index 207 v
Tables 2.1 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive into - ing pattern in the British English part of the CEN 18 2.2 Semantic classes of matrix verbs selecting the transitive into -ing pattern in the British English part of the CEN 25 2.3 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive into - ing pattern in the American English part of the CEN 28 2.4 Semantic classes of matrix verbs in the American English part of the CEN 30 2.5 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive into - ing pattern in the British Books Corpus 32 2.6 Semantic classes of matrix verbs in the British Books Corpus 34 2.7 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive into - ing pattern in the United States Books Corpus 36 2.8 Semantic classes of matrix verbs in the United States Books Corpus 38 3.1 The transitive into - ing pattern in the LOB, Brown, FLOB, and Frown Corpora 41 3.2 The sizes of the corpora examined 43 3.3 Frequencies of innovative matrix verbs selecting the transitive into -ing pattern in the SUNNOW Corpus 46 3.4 Frequencies of innovative matrix verbs selecting the transitive into -ing pattern in the British Books Corpus 48 3.5 Frequencies of innovative matrix verbs selecting the transitive into -ing pattern in the United States News Corpus 49 3.6 Frequencies of innovative matrix verbs selecting the transitive into -ing pattern in the United States Books Corpus 50 3.7 Frequencies of innovative matrix verbs selecting the transitive into -ing pattern in the British Magazines Corpus 52 3.8 Frequencies of innovative tokens in the five corpora 53 3.9 Semantic classes of innovative matrix verbs 60 4.1 The list of corpora used and their sizes 68 4.2 To infinitive complements of the seven verbs 70 vi
List of Tables vii 4.3 The seven verbs with the transitive into - ing pattern in the six corpora 72 4.4 Chi square values for influence, lead, prompt, and stimulate 74 4.5 The matrix verbs with the transitive into - ing pattern in three additional corpora 77 4.6 The incidence of into - ing constructions following verbs in the six corpora, with frequencies normed to one million words 79 5.1 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive out of - ing pattern in the TIME Corpus in the 1920s and 1930s 88 5.2 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive out of - ing construction in the TIME Corpus in the 1950s and 1960s 91 5.3 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive out of - ing construction in the TIME Corpus in the 1980s and 1990s 93 5.4 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive out of - ing construction in COCA, spoken part 94 5.5 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive out of - ing construction in COCA 95 5.6 Frequencies of matrix verbs selecting the transitive out of -ing construction in the BNC 97 6.1 Sentential complements of accustomed involving subject control in the CEN 109 6.2 Allerton s view of features pertinent to the infinitive- gerund distinction 111 6.3 Sentential complements of accustomed in novels by Henry Seton Merriman 118 6.4 Sentential complements of accustomed involving subject control in the American English part of the CEN 122 6.5 The incidence of to infinitive and to - ing complements of accustomed in samples of Edith Wharton s works in the CEN 127 6.6 Frequencies of to infinitive and to - ing complements of accustomed in the 1930s 131 6.7 Frequencies of to infinitive and to -ing complements of accustomed in canonical and extraction contexts in the 1930s 132
viii List of Tables 6.8 Frequencies of to infinitive and to -ing complements of accustomed with [+Choice] and [ Choice] lower predicates in the 1930s, excluding extraction contexts 136 6.9 Frequencies of to infinitive and to -ing complements of accustomed in the 1940s 137 6.10 Frequencies of to infinitive and to -ing complements of accustomed with [+Choice] and [ Choice] lower predicates in the 1940s, excluding extraction contexts 139 6.11 Frequencies of to infinitive and to -ing complements of accustomed in the 1950s 140 6.12 The form of sentential complements of accustomed in the Times Corpus 143 6.13 The form of sentential complements of accustomed, spoken British English 145 6.14 The form of sentential complements of accustomed, United States News Corpus 146 6.15 The form of sentential complements of accustomed, spoken American English 148 7.1 To infinitive and to - ing complements of object involving subject control in the 1820s and 1830s 160 7.2 To infinitive and to - ing complements of object involving subject control, 1880 1913 161 7.3 To Acc - ing and to Poss - ing complements of object in the 1820s and 1880s 163 7.4 To infinitive and to - ing complements of object with [+Choice] and [ Choice] lower subjects in the 1820s and 1830s 168 7.5 To infinitive and to - ing complements of object with [+Choice] and [ Choice] lower subjects, 1880s 1910s 169 8.1 The reflexive commit oneself in the CEN 174 8.2 The search strings used 176 8.3 The corpora examined, with their sizes 177 8.4 Sentential complements involving subject control in the corpora 178 8.5 Sentential complements of commit involving subject control in two British English corpora 179 8.6 To infinitive and to - ing complements of commit in three American English corpora 183 8.7 Sentential complements of commit in obligational and non- obligational contexts in current American English 185 8.8 Horror Aequi effects in the American English corpora 186
Acknowledgments It is my pleasure to thank Palgrave Macmillan for including the present book in their series. This book includes some material, slightly adapted, that was originally published in article form. Chapter 4 originally appeared in the Journal of English Linguistics volume 34, number 4, pages 312 331, published by SAGE, and Section 4 of Chapter 6 originally appeared in the Journal of English Linguistics volume 38, number 1, pages 4 24. Further, Section 5 and part of Section 6 of Chapter 6 originally appeared in English Language and Linguistics volume 10, number 1, pages 31 48, published by Cambridge University Press. I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to both journals and publishers for their policy of permitting the inclusion of these materials in a book consisting solely of the author s own work. I also want to express my thanks to Professor Magnus Huber of the University of Giessen for permitting me to include a chapter based on the Old Bailey Corpus in the present book. Finally, I am happy to acknowledge that material from the Bank of English/Collins WordbanksOnline Corpus has been reproduced with the kind permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. This book has been under way for some years, and I have been able to benefit from conversations on complementation with colleagues and friends at various conferences in recent years. I want to especially mention Günter Rohdenburg, Thomas Egan, Hubert Cuyckens, and Uwe Vosberg in this respect. At the University of Tampere I have been fortunate in being able to turn to Ian Gurney for his sagacious counsel in matters of English grammar and usage. In addition, Veera Peteri, my part-time assistant at the University of Tampere, saved me from many an inaccuracy while writing this book. To them all I want to express my thanks. At the same time, I want to note that none of the people mentioned above is in any way responsible for the shortcomings that remain in this book. Those are entirely my responsibility. Tampere, September 2010 ix