Linking Form and Meaning ― Studies on Selected Control Patterns in Recent English

The use of large electronic corpora has revealed that the system of English predicate complementation has recently been undergoing major changes, these changes are referred to as the Great Complement Shift. This book documents such changes and innovative trends in recent English. The author draws on large electronic corpora to focus on the semantic properties of core patterns involving infinitival and -ing clauses. In-depth case studies of such patterns presented here uncover new links between form and meaning in these constructions, offering fresh insights into explanatory principles to account for variation and change in the system of English predicate complementation.

Juhani Rudanko is Professor of English at the University of Tampere, Finland. His recent work has focused on the system of English predicate complementation in recent centuries and on the pragmatic analysis of political discourse in the early American Republic.