Title: The Present Perfect and the Preterite in Late Modern and Contemporary English
Subtitle: A corpus-based study of grammatical change
Series Title: Studies in Corpus Linguistics 114
Publication Year: 2024
Publisher: John Benjamins
http://www.benjamins.com/
Book URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/scl.114

Author: Xinyue Yao
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027214430 Pages: 253 Price: U.S. $ 143.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027214430 Pages: 253 Price: U.K. £ 92.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027214430 Pages: 253 Price: Europe EURO 110.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027214430 Pages: 253 Price: Europe EURO 116.60
eBook: ISBN: 9789027248602 Pages: 253 Price: U.S. $ 143.00
eBook: ISBN: 9789027248602 Pages: 253 Price: U.K. £ 92.00
eBook: ISBN: 9789027248602 Pages: 253 Price: Europe EURO 110.00
Abstract:

This book examines developments in the use of the present perfect and the preterite in Late Modern and contemporary English, with a focus on American and British English. Drawing on neo-Gricean pragmatics, it proposes a novel and principled analysis of the verb forms’ context-independent meanings and context-dependent inferences. State-of-the-art corpus linguistic methods are used to track their functional changes over two and a half centuries. The book presents new evidence of grammatical change and offers a compelling, contact-based account of regional variation. It brings together the insights of various fields, including formal semantics, historical linguistics, linguistic typology, and variationist sociolinguistics.

Written In: English (eng)