The development of "long" in Early Modern Englishimpersonal verbs of Desire in focus

  1. Noelia Castro-Chao 1
  1. 1 Universidade de Vigo
    info

    Universidade de Vigo

    Vigo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/05rdf8595

Journal:
Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

ISSN: 0210-6124

Year of publication: 2021

Volume: 43

Issue: 1

Pages: 110-132

Type: Article

DOI: 10.28914/ATLANTIS-2021-43.1.07 SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-85109436714 WoS: WOS:000669661700008 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

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Abstract

The class of English verbs of Desire in Present-Day English comprises verbs such as "long" or "thirst", several of which are attested in earlier English in impersonal constructions characterised by the lack of a grammatical subject. In English, the impersonal construction decreased in frequency between 1400 and 1500, and effectively went out of use during the sixteenth century. Previous research has suggested that there is a need for a corpus-based study of not just Middle English, but also Early Modern English, in order to explore the different path(s) of development followed by individual impersonal verbs. The present article, therefore, investigates the development of the impersonal verb "long" (< OE "langian") with the following objectives: a) to determine when "long" ceases to occur in impersonal constructions; b) to provide a diachronic overview of the personal syntactic patterns that came to replace impersonal constructions in Early Modern English; and c) to identify, within the framework of Construction Grammar, factors that may account for the development of "long" as a prepositional verb.

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