One of the principal challenges of historical linguistics is to explain the "causes" of language change. Any such explanation, however, must also address the actuation problem: why is it that changes occurring in a given language at a certain time cannot be reliably predicted to recur in other languages, under apparently similar conditions? The sixteen contributions to the present volume each aim to elucidate various aspects of this problem, including: What processes can be identified as the drivers of change? How central are syntax-external (phonological, lexical or contact-based) factors in triggering syntactic change? And how can all of these factors be reconciled with the actuation problem? Exploring data from a wide range of languages from both a formal and a functional perspective, this book promises to be of interest to advanced students and researchers in historical linguistics, syntax and their intersection."

While earlier treatments of English verb syntax from a diachronic perspective exist, this book breaks entirely fresh ground with its focus on the detailed study of English predicate complementation over the past three centuries. It draws data from an unprecedented combination of authoritative sources, including computer corpora and H. Poutsma's unpublished dictionary, and offers novel systematizations of predicates and discussions of alternation. By giving ample evidence of both change and continuity in the language over the past three hundred years, the book opens up a new research field in the study of the English language.

"This is the first volume to provide a comprehensive description of the Aboriginal English dialect with attention to its regional and social variation, the circumstances of its development, its relationships to other varieties and its foundations in the history, conceptual predispositions and speech use conventions of its speakers. The volume includes a review of recent research as well as a bibliography and a number of sample texts"--

Història de la Llengua Anglesa I is an introductory course, divided into two main blocks..The first part introduces students to the concepts and techniques of diachronic linguistics, and the second part offers a brief survey of the development of the English language. The aim of this guide is, on the one hand, to acquaint undergraduate students with historical linguistics in general, so that they understand the different kinds of change that occur in languages and, on the other, to set English in a historical perspective and view earlier periods as precursors of the modern language.

The book shows how the system of English predicate complementation has been undergoing an amazing amount of variation and change in recent centuries, and identifies explanatory principles to account for this change and variation, with evidence from large electronic corpora of both British and American English.