The changing verb phrase in present-day British English

本研究旨在探讨英语动词结构在最近的过去在现代英语口语中的变化。最近英语变化的一个例子是所谓的进行式结构的使用越来越多。“我在唱歌”)，例如麦当劳的标语“我爱它”，而在过去，人们可能会简单地说“我爱它！”另一个例子是在英语中使用所谓的完成式结构来指代一个确定的时间。“我读过了。”因此，在过去，像“I have seen him last week”这样的句子是不可接受的——对许多说话者来说仍然是不可接受的——而最近，像这样的结构被证明是相当频繁的。该项目旨在研究英语中这种变化的性质、程度和原因。将使用最近开发的口语材料集（语料库），其中包括20世纪60年代和90年代的自发英语口语。选择口语作为数据来源是很重要的，因为语言学家普遍认为语言的变化源于这种媒介。

This research aims to investigate in which ways English verbal constructions have changed in the recent past in spoken present-day English. An example of a recent change in English is the increased use of the so-called progressive construction (e.g. 'I am singing'), exemplified in the McDonalds slogan 'I'm loving it', where in the past one might have simply said 'I love it!'. Another example is the use of a definite time reference with the so-called perfect construction in English (e.g. 'I have read it.'). Thus, whereas in the past a sentence like 'I have seen him last week' was unacceptable - and still is to many speakers - constructions like this have been attested with some frequency recently. The project aims to study the nature, extent and reasons for such changes in English. Use will be made of a recently developed collection of spoken material (a 'corpus') which contains spontaneous spoken English from the 1960s and from the 1990s. The choice of spoken language as a source of data is important, given that it is generally agreed among linguists that changes in languages originate in that medium.