English Language and Literature Commons^™

Phrasal verbs, such as "run up" in "They always run up our electric bill," have long been of interest to researchers of English linguistics. Scholars have been particularly focused on the definition and categorization of these multi-word items, as well as their grammatical, pragmatic, and semantic functions. Additionally, phrasal verbs have been examined historically, and recently corpus methods have been used to begin investigating phrasal verb frequency and patterns of variation across registers. But few studies have combined diachronic and register-based approaches to analyze the development of the phrasal verb in American English. This study uses large, monitor corpora--The Corpus …

Phrasal verbs, such as "run up" in "They always run up our electric bill," have long been of interest to researchers of English linguistics. Scholars have been particularly focused on the definition and categorization of these multi-word items, as well as their grammatical, pragmatic, and semantic functions. Additionally, phrasal verbs have been examined historically, and recently corpus methods have been used to begin investigating phrasal verb frequency and patterns of variation across registers. But few studies have combined diachronic and register-based approaches to analyze the development of the phrasal verb in American English. This study uses large, monitor corpora--The Corpus …

This study compares the use of native nominal affixes (-ness, -ship, -hood) with borrowed, potential affixes (-cion, -ance, -ity, -age, -ment) throughout the English portions of the multilingual (French, Latin, English) records of the London Goldsmiths and Grocers of the early fifteenth century. Attempting to locate evidence of the naturalization of these forms--the process by which these endings become derivational morphemes in the general English lexicon--the paper develops the notion of local productivity. This measure combines both quantitative and qualitative data to show that, even in smaller corpora, historical linguists can find evidence of the morphological status of different potential …