Collocational and Idiomatic Aspects of Composite Predicates in the History of English

Download or read book Collocational and Idiomatic Aspects of Composite Predicates in the History of English written by Laurel J. Brinton and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of this carefully selected volume concerns the existence, frequency, and form of composite/complex predicates (the “take a look” construction) in earlier periods of the English language, an area of scholarship which has been virtually neglected. The various contributions seek to understand the collocational and idiomatic aspects of these structures, as well as of related structures such as complex prepositions (e.g., “on account of”) and phrasal verbs (e.g., “look up”), in their earliest manifestations. Moreover, study of these constructions at the individual stages of English leads to diachronic questions concerning their development, raising issues pertaining to grammaticalization, lexicalization, and idiomaticization-processes which are not always clearly differentiated nor fully understood.