An Historical Syntax of the English Language

By F. T. Visser. 2002

884 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The aim of this study is to provide an outline of the development, from the earliest times to the present day, of all the English syntactical constructions with a verbal form as their nucleus. Professor Visser's description is based on a very extensive collection of documentary material covering every kind of writing in prose and poetry in the Old, Middle and Modern periods, drawing on quotations illustrating syntactical pheonomena in Bosworth & Toller, OED, MMED, EDD and DOST, but also making reference to obsolete usages not found in any grammar, and to the views of English and American grammarians of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries on the various syntactical constructions. The volumes of this work originally appeared in the early 60s and 70s and were well received by readers and reviewers. Volumes 1 and 2 have undergone correction in the light of these early reactions.

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Citations in the corpus

• On the Acquisition of Principle B (2005, background): “…languages show Principle B effects and some do not: languages evidently without Principle B include Old English (Penning 1875:3–4, Farr 1905:8, Nagucka 1981, Mitchell 1985:112, Keenan 1994), Middle English (Mustanoja 1966:153, Visser 1970: 422–433, Keenan 1994), and Maori (Keenan 1975, Fodor 1994).”