Lucía Loureiro-Porto

The Semantic Predecessors of Need in the History of English (c750-1710)

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Necessity is a primary meaning which is expressed diversely in the languages of the world and whose evolution helps describe the human cognitive development. 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). In this work, Loureiro-Porto analyzes the corpus data from the double perspective of modality and grammaticalization. Her approach to modality follows cognitive models, and so necessity is understood in terms of forces; grammaticalization is the framework within which the level of auxiliarihood of each of the verbs meaning 'need' is measured throughout history. The results of this study will appeal to researchers in the areas of grammaticalization and modality from a diachronic point of view, and also to scholars and students interested in PDE modal auxiliaries.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley
• Seitenzahl: 292
• Erscheinungstermin: 28. September 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 226mm x 147mm x 13mm
• Gewicht: 417g
• ISBN-13: 9781405192705
• ISBN-10: 1405192704
• Artikelnr.: 31698488

Autorenporträt

Lucía Loureiro-Porto teaches grammar and linguistic variation within the Department of Spanish, Modern Languages and Latin at the Universitat de les Illes Balears (Balearic Islands, Spain). She has previously held teaching and research positions at Reed College, Portland, and at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Her main research interests are the study of grammaticalization processes in the history of English, English historical syntax and semantics, and sociolinguistic variation from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction.

1.1 Preliminary considerations.

1.2 Present-Day English need and need to.

1.3 A diachronic corpus.

1.4 Organization of chapters.

2. Theoretical Foundations.

2.1 Introduction.

2.2 Modality in English.

2.3 Grammaticalization.

2.4 Impersonal verbs and constructions.

2.5 Summary.

3. Tharf and Betharf.

3.1 Introduction.

3.2 Preterite-presents and pre-modals: morphology, syntax andsemantics.

3.3 Tharf and betharf diachronically.

3.4 Conclusions.

4. Behove and Mister.

4.1 The evolution of behove.

4.2 The ephemeral pass of mister through the Englishlanguage.

5. Need in the History of English.

5.1 Introduction: Need v.1 and need v.2: one ortwo verbs?

5.2 Semantic evolution of need.

5.3 Syntactic evolution of need v.1 and needv.2.

5.4 Conclusions.

6. Conclusions.

Appendices.

References.

List of Tables.

Index.