The Emergence of Modern English Syntax

现代英语句法的出现这个项目的目标是(1)建立一个150万字的早期现代英语文本的电子语料库，(2)利用这个语料库来提高我们对从中古英语向现代英语过渡的句法变化的理解。除了语篇本身，拟议的语料库还将包含广泛的句法分析所需的语法信息。该语料库将在格式上与现有的125万字的宾夕法尼亚-赫尔辛基中古英语分析语料库(PPCME2)和目前正在建设的约克古英语分析语料库相兼容。在项目结束时，学者们将以带注释的电子形式获得从最早的书面文本到1700年的历史英语的连续样本。早期现代英语语料库将允许我们和其他学者解决的语言变化包括：动词-第二语序的丧失，这在早期现代时期接近完成；所谓的“动词到信息的提升”的丧失，包括外围词性‘do’的兴起；以及现代英语被动语态的兴起。除了在促进语法分析方面的作用外，英语语料库对未来语言研究的一个主要影响将是允许学者使用统计方法对句法变化的时间动态进行实证研究。

Kroch99-05488ABSTRACTThe Emergence of Modern English SyntaxThe aims of this project are (1) to create an electronic corpus of 1.5 millionwords of early Modern English text and (2) to use this corpus to improve ourunderstanding of the syntactic changes that characterize the transition fromMiddle to Modern English. The proposed corpus will contain, in addition to thetexts themselves, the grammatical information necessary for extensivesyntactic analysis. The corpus will be compatible in format with the existing1.25 million word Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (PPCME2) andwith the York Parsed Corpus of Old English currently under construction. Atthe end of the project scholars will have available in annotated electronicform a continuous sample of historical English from the earliest written textsto 1700. Among the linguistic changes that the early Modern English corpuswill allow us and other scholars to address are: the loss of verb-second wordorder, which goes to completion in the early Modern period; the loss ofso-called ``verb-to-INFL raising'', including the rise of periphrastic 'do';and the rise of the modern English passive. In addition to its role infacilitating grammatical analysis, one major effect of the English corpus onfuture linguistic investigations will be to permit scholars to use statisticalmethods to study empirically the temporal dynamics of syntactic change.