Chapter 7. Going to completion

Chapters in this book

1. Prelim pages i
2. Table of contents v
3. Preface and acknowledgments ix
4. Contributors xi
5. Part I. Introduction and background
6. Chapter 1. Approaching change in 18th-century English 3
7. Chapter 2. Society and culture in the long 18th century 13
8. Chapter 3. Grammar writing in the eighteenth century 27
9. Chapter 4. The Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE) 45
10. Chapter 5. Research methods 61
11. Part II. Studies
12. Chapter 6. “Ungenteel” and “rude”? On the use of thou in the eighteenth century 77
13. Chapter 7. Going to completion 97
14. Chapter 8. Periphrastic do in eighteenth-century correspondence 117
15. Chapter 9. Indefinite pronouns with singular human reference 137
16. Chapter 10. Ongoing change 159
17. Chapter 11. Incipient and intimate 179
18. Chapter 12. Change or variation? Productivity of the suffixes ‑ ness and ‑ ity 197
19. Part III. Changes in retrospect
20. Chapter 13. Zooming out 221
21. Chapter 14. Conservative and progressive individuals 235
22. Chapter 15. Changes in different stages 243
23. Chapter 16. A wider sociolinguistic perspective 255
24. References 271
25. Appendix: Editions in the Corpora of Early English Correspondence 295
26. Index 305