Author Description

This Monograph Presents The First Comprehensive Diachronic Account Of Copular And Passive Verb Constructions In Old And Middle English. Loss Of The High-frequency Verb Weorðan 'become' Is Explained As A Result Of Changing Word Order In Narrative During Middle English. The Merger Of Is 'is' And Bið 'shall Be, Is Generally' Into A Single Suppletive Verb Is Related To The Development Of A General Analytic Future Shall Benally, The Co-occurrence Of Multiple Changes Led To Become And Wax Crossing A Threshold Of Similarity With Existing Copulas, From Which They Analogically Adopted Full Productivity. Environmental Linguistics -- In Dialogue With Previous Studies -- Theory And Method -- The Past Tense -- The Present Tense -- Copularization Of Becume And Weaxe -- Evaluation Of The Results. Peter Petré. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.