Infinitival Vs Gerundial Complementation With Afraid Accustomed And Prone

Infinitival vs Gerundial Complementation with Afraid, Accustomed, and Prone

This book explores the concept of complementation in the adjectival domain of English grammar. Alternation between non-finite complements, especially to infinitives and gerundial complements, has been investigated intensively on the basis of large corpora in the last few years. With very few exceptions, however, such work has hitherto been based on univariate analysis methods. Using multivariate analysis, the authors present methodologically innovative case studies examining a large array of explanatory factors potentially impacting complement choice in cases of alternation. This approach yields more precise information on the impact of each factor on complement choice as well as on interactions between different explanatory factors. The book thus presents a methodologically new perspective on the study of the system of non-finite complementation in recent English and variation within that system, and will be relevant to academics and students with an interest in English grammar, predicate complementation, and statistical approaches to language.

Political Argumentation in Early America

This book investigates the language used by protagonists in four major political debates in the early history of the United States. The first of these concerns the controversy in the first United States House of Representatives in the summer of 1789 on whether a proposal for a bill of rights should be considered in an expeditious fashion or whether the issue should be left till much later. The second is the principal debate on whether a sedition act should be enacted in July 1798, and the third concerns the enactment of the Logan Act of 1799. The fourth investigates the elections for the Legislature of the State of New York in the spring of 1800, which was the key event affecting the outcome of the presidential election of 1800. In each case there was a sharp disagreement between groups of politicians representing different points of view, and each event was significant from the point of view of the political history of the United States. The authors introduce these four debates, as well as the notion of informal fallacy - taken to designate an argument that is unsatisfactory in some way - before analysing deceptive fallacies and demonstrating how fallacy theory can be used as a critical tool in the examination of political argumentation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political communication, rhetoric and argumentation, US history and politics, and diachronic linguistics, especially diachronic pragmatics.

The Cambridge Dictionary of English Grammar