Composite Predicates in Late Modern English

Ljubica Leone

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English

Routledge
27 October 2025

Language: history & general works; Historical & comparative linguistics; Grammar, syntax

Series: Routledge Focus on Linguistics

This volume provides a concise overview of the diachronic development of composite predicates (CPs) in Late Modern English, offering clearer evidence of ongoing language change using data less readily available in other corpora.

While previous scholarship on CPs exists from a synchronic perspective, this book is the first to focus exclusively on Late Modern English with a diachronic approach to CPs, understood as phraseological verbs consisting of a verb and a deverbal noun or this combination with a preposition, such as to ask a question or to take hold of. The volume builds on real-life spoken data encompassing the proceedings of the Old Bailey at the Central Criminal Court in London, which predate the invention of audio-recording technology. Leone explores syntactic and semantic changes and the role performed by phenomena associated with grammaticalization, lexicalization and idiomatization in this period from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives.

The book sheds light on ongoing processes of change in spoken data, enriching knowledge on language change in this period and offering directions for future research. This book will appeal to scholars in English historical linguistics, syntax and semantics, and language change.

By: Ljubica Leone
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm,
Weight: 170g
ISBN: 9781032530956
ISBN 10: 1032530952
Series: Routledge Focus on Linguistics
Pages: 84
Publication Date: 27 October 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Ljubica Leone is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milan, Italy. She received her PhD in Literary and Linguistic Studies from the University of Salerno, Italy.