Overview
Impersonal constructions in the history of English form a puzzling category, in that there has been uncertainty as to why some verbs are attested in such constructions while others are not, even though they look almost synonymous. In this book, Ayumi Miura tackles this under-discussed question with special reference to verbs of emotion in Middle English. Through a careful study of the behaviour of impersonal and near-synonymous non-impersonal verbs, she identifies the factors that determined the presence, absence, and spread of impersonal usage with the verbs concerned. Miura utilizes modern linguistic approaches, including theories and methodologies adopted in the study of psych-verbs in modern languages, which bear close relevance to impersonal verbs of emotion but have traditionally been researched separately. She also draws on categorizations in the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary and harnesses the online Middle English Dictionary in a novel way, demonstrating that dictionary materials are in fact a valuable tool in the study of early English syntax and semantics. Miura concludes that a range of factors - such as causation, transitivity, animacy of the target of emotion, and duration of the emotion - influenced the choice of impersonal constructions with Middle English verbs of emotion. We can therefore make reasonable generalizations about when impersonal usage was licensed in these verbs. This careful analysis of the correlation between Middle English verbs of emotion and use or non-use in impersonal constructions represents a new empirical and theoretical contribution to the busy research area of impersonal constructions in the history of English.
Full Product Details
Author: Ayumi Miura (Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 23.60cm
, Height: 2.80cm
, Length: 15.70cm
Weight: 0.544kg
ISBN: 9780199947157
ISBN 10: 0199947155
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 15 January 2015
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
This book, which undeniably opens up future research perspectives, is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the study of early English verbs advanced students, philologists, and linguists (historical or otherwise) alike. Fabienne Toupin, Cercles
Author Information
Ayumi Miura is an Assistant Professor at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. She maintains the website 'HEL on the Web' for students, teachers, and researchers of the history of the English language, her primary field of research.
