This volume offers a selection of papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics held at the University of Santiago de Compostela. From the rich programme (over 130 papers were given during the conference), the present twelve papers were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in the fields of English historical syntax and morphology. Some of the issues discussed are the emergence of viewpoint adverbials in English and German, changes in noun phrase structure from 1650 to the present, the development of the progressive in Scots, the passivization of composite predicates, the loss of V2 and its effects on the information structure of English, the acquisition of modal syntax and semantics by the English verb WANT, or the use of temporal adverbs as attributive adjectives in the Early Modern period. Many of the articles tackle questions of change through the use of methodological tools like computerized corpora. The theoretical frameworks adopted include, among others, grammaticalization theory, Dik’s model of functional grammar, construction grammar and Government & Binding Theory.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Teresa Fanego 1

Two types of passivization of ‘V+NP+P ’constructions in relation to idiomatization Minoji Akimoto 9

On the development of a friend of mine Cynthia L. Allen 23

Historical shifts in modification patterns with complex noun phrase structures: How long can you go without a verb? Douglas Biber and Victoria Clark 43

Grammaticalization versus lexicalization reconsidered: On the late use of temporal adverbs Laurel J. Brinton 67

The derivation of ornative,locative,ablative,privative and reversative verbs in English: A historical sketch Dieter Kastovsky 99

From gold-gifa to chimney sweep? Morphological (un)markedness of Modern English agent nouns in a diachronic perspective Lucia Kornexl 111

A path to volitional modality Manfred G. Krug 131

Is it, stylewise or otherwise, wise to use -wise? Domain adverbials and the history of English -wise Ursula Lenker 157

The loss of the indefinite pronoun man: Syntactic change and information structure Bettelou Los 181

The progressive in Older Scots Anneli Meurman-Solin 203

Detransitivization in the history of English from a semantic perspective Ruth Möhlig and Monika E. Klages 231

Morphology recycled: The Principle of Rhythmic Alternation at work in Early and Late Modern English grammatical variation Julia Schlüter 255