In their recent book, English: The Language of the Vikings, Joseph Embley Emonds and Jan
Terje Faarlund attempt to make the case that from its Middle period onwards, English is a …

This innovative volume offers a comprehensive account of the study of language change in
verb meaning in the history of the English language. Integrating both the author's previous …

While the 'progressive'construction [BE Ving](Hewas playing tenniswhen Jane came in) has
been studied extensively both diachronically and synchronically, studies of its functional …

During the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the English language went through two quite
remarkable changes: it lost the verb-second (V2) system that is characteristic of many …

This study reveals how two important focus articulations change over time in written English.
Constituent focus, often accompanied by contrast, makes use of the clause-initial position in …

The essence of language has been described in terms of many metaphors. Saussure
compared the gradual unfolding of linguistic rules, their conventionalized application and …

This study examines possible crosslinguistic influence on basic word order processing in a
second language (L2). Targeting Swedish V2 word order we investigate adult German …

This paper investigates the affinities between V2 in Old English, the Spec, CP position, and
the deictic þ/s-system (demonstratives se/seo/þæt as well as an etymologically related set of …

Although texts produced by (very) advanced Dutch learners of English as a foreign
language (EFL) may be perfectly grammatical, they often feel distinctly non-native. Dutch, as …

This article presents a quantitative study of the referential status of PPs in clause-initial
position in the history of English. Earlier work (Los 2009; Dreschler 2015) proposed that …