This study addresses the development of the English third-person singular present tense suffix from an interdental fricative (giveth) to an alveolar fricative (gives). Based on the PCEEC corpus, we analyze more than 20,000 examples from the time between 1417 and 1681 to determine (i) the temporal stages in which this development took place and (ii) the factors that are correlated with this change.

As for (i), we use a bottom-up clustering method which shows that the shift from -(e)th to -(e)s is best characterized as consisting of five stages. As for (ii), we examine multiple language-internal and language-external factors, including several variables proposed in earlier accounts. We fit a generalized linear mixed-effects model, which allows us to predict nearly 95 per cent of all inflectional choices correctly, thus revealing which factors shaped the development over time in a data-driven and highly precise way.

Buchan Scots exhibits a unique phonological process in which mid vowels undergo raising that is triggered by both voiced consonants and stressed high vowels. The fact that the triggers of assimilation do not fall neatly into a single natural class under most feature theories makes it an interesting challenge to straightforward analysis. Given the phonological patterns and a variety of phonetic facts about Buchan, I propose a [Lowered Larynx] feature to explain both vowel height and consonant voicing in this language. I present an autosegmental analysis of the segment inventory and phonological patterns in the framework of the Parallel Structures Model of feature geometry (Morén 2003, 2006, 2007). This analysis provides a unified and minimal account of the assimilation facts and supports the claim that phonological activity is dependent on the structure of the contrast system of a given language (Dresher, Piggot & Rice 1994). Furthermore, the representational analysis fits neatly into a constraint-based model and contributes to the growing body of literature claiming that representations are important even to optimality-theoretic analyses.

In this article we offer a diachronic analysis of simultaneity subordinator as against the background of simultaneity subordinators while, whilst, when from 1650 to the end of the twentieth century. The present survey makes use of data extracted from the British English component of ARCHER (version 3.1), focusing in particular on fiction, the register par excellence for the use of simultaneity subordinators. We analyse our data according to a selection of parameters (ordering, verb type, duration, tense and aspect, subject identity, simultaneity type) and show that, against a background of relative stability, the major change is a dramatic increase in the frequency of simultaneity as-clauses from the first half of the nineteenth century onwards. Adapting the historical work on stylistic change by Biber and Finegan (1989, 1997), as well as theoretical and experimental accounts of the semantics of English simultaneity markers, we highlight an interesting parallelism between the spread of as-clauses in oral narrative from childhood to adulthood and the spread of as-clauses in modern fiction. In either case, the spread of as may be symptomatic of an evolution in narrative techniques, particularly in respect of the means by which complex events are typically represented.

The evolution of verbs expressing necessity in the history of English, such as *þurfan and need, has been studied in detail, especially their semantic competition and their grammaticalization (see Molencki 2002, 2005; Taeymans 2006; Loureiro-Porto 2009). However, analogous verbo-nominal expressions involving the morphologically related nouns þearf and need and the verbs be and have have received little attention, despite their relevance as semantic competitors of the verbs and their subsequent fossilization in high-frequency expressions such as if need be and had need. The current article fills this gap by studying the development of verbo-nominal expressions with þearf and need from Old to early Modern English, and asks: (i) whether the verbs and the verbo-nominal expressions undergo similar processes of grammaticalization, and (ii) whether there is any connection between the evolution of the verbal and the verbo-nominal sets. Analysis of these verbo-nominal constructions in a 4.1 million-word corpus (including the Helsinki Corpus and fragments of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, the Lampeter Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler) shows that, firstly, both idiomaticization and grammaticalization are relevant in the development of verbo-nominal constructions; secondly, their evolution is key to the understanding of the development of the necessity verbs *þurfan and need; and finally, the competition between constructions with þearf and need calls into question the well-known hypothesis that phonological confusion with durran caused the disappearance of *þurfan in the ME period (see Visser 1963–73: 1423, §1343).

This article offers a constructional approach to complement-taking mental predicates (CTMPs), e.g. I think, accommodating a whole class of CTMP types (i think, i suppose, i imagine etc.) and their variant forms (e.g. I would think, I should have imagined) in a constructional taxonomy. CTMPs are generally believed to depend on their prototypical simple present form in order to convey an epistemic/evidential meaning. Corpus evidence shows, however, that there exist several variant forms that equally function as interpersonal modifications. Such variation has long presented a stumbling block to studies approaching CTMPs from the point of view of grammaticalization theory, since this framework has traditionally been rather inimical to the idea that a grammaticalized item may encompass a paradigm of variant forms and instead requires internal fixation into an unalterable form. It will be argued that CTMPs should be regarded as constructions constituting a taxonomy characterized by several levels of schematicity. It will be demonstrated that the most frequently used CTMP, i think, has reached the highest degree of entrenchment and schematicity, and consequently sanctions the widest range of variant forms, which are disseminated throughout the taxonomy by virtue of analogization.

Two main hypotheses have been proposed to account for the word order of negative inversion (NI) in varieties of non-canonical English (e.g. Don't nobody else care). An auxiliary inversion analysis argues that the word order is derived via movement of the auxiliary to the left periphery, whereas an existential analysis argues that the word order is an artifact of deletion of the expletive subject, paralleling there-insertion existential constructions. After reviewing these hypotheses, I provide empirical evidence that neither of these theories adequately explains the peculiarities of NI. I advance a third hypothesis, namely that NI is the result of negative movement to the specifier of NegP, and that this movement is pragmatically motivated by an existential meaning in NI constructions. Syntactically, NI is made possible through the Neg-Criterion (Haegeman & Zanuttini 1991, 1996). This analysis explains problems encountered by prior analyses, and offers a unified analysis for variation in NI across dialects. Finally, I explain cross-dialectal differences in NI by considering the relationship between subject requirements and agreement.

In this article, I relate the loss of weorðan in the past tense to the loss of an Old English grammatical subsystem that encouraged the expression of narrative by bounded sentence constructions. This type of construction represents a situation as reaching its goal or endpoint, and serves to mark progress in a narrative (e.g. then he walked over to the other side). Instead of this system, from Middle English onwards a mixed system emerges with differently structured bounded sentence constructions as well as, increasingly, unbounded sentence constructions – which structure events as open-ended, usually by means of a progressive form (e.g. he was walking). I show how weorðan in Old English was strongly associated with the Old English system of bounded sentence constructions – an association with boundedness is not surprising given its meaning of ‘(sudden) transition into another state’. In the thirteenth century this rigid Old English system started to break down, as primarily evidenced by the disappearance of the time adverbial þa and the loss of verb-second. Wearð, being strongly associated with the old way of structuring narrative, decreased too and eventually disappeared.

This four-volume publication is the second version, envisaged already at the planning of the project, of the monumental overview of World Englishes, first launched in 2004 as the two-volume Handbook of Varieties of English. The individual contributions, each covering the phonology or morphosyntax of a specific variety, are by and large identical in the 2004 and 2008 versions, but the overall structure is different: the more recent, ‘derived’ version is organized according to region, whereas the two 2004 volumes focused on worldwide phonology and morphosyntax respectively. Admittedly, the new version retains the same organization to a degree, in that each regional volume first features the phonology of all its varieties and then morphosyntax. In my view, this is a pity, as a coherent presentation of a variety would clearly have been more reader-friendly, but it would presumably have required a considerable amount of re-editing.