Prefer
-
Thomas Egan
Abstract
This paper traces the historical development of the verb prefer, with a particular emphasis on its occurrence with non-finite complements. Special attention is paid to the spread of the ‘prefer to’ construction in the 19th century at the expense of ‘prefer -ing’, a development running counter to the prevailing trend of the expansion of the gerund form of complement, sometimes referred to as the Great Complement Shift. The prefer constructions are compared to other constructions encoding comparison and an explanation is offered as to why ‘prefer to’ was a comparatively late developer.
Abstract
This paper traces the historical development of the verb prefer, with a particular emphasis on its occurrence with non-finite complements. Special attention is paid to the spread of the ‘prefer to’ construction in the 19th century at the expense of ‘prefer -ing’, a development running counter to the prevailing trend of the expansion of the gerund form of complement, sometimes referred to as the Great Complement Shift. The prefer constructions are compared to other constructions encoding comparison and an explanation is offered as to why ‘prefer to’ was a comparatively late developer.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Norse influence on English in the light of general contact linguistics 15
- The Germanic roots of the Old English sound system 43
- Monetary policy and Old English dialects 73
- The order and schedule of nominal plural formation transfer in three Southern dialects of Early Middle English 95
- The temporal and regional contexts of the numeral ‘two’ in Middle English 115
- Grammaticalisation, contact and corpora 131
- Discourse organization and the rise of final then in the history of English 153
- The origins of how come and what…for 177
- “Providing/provided that” 197
- Prefer 215
- The 400 million word Corpus of Historical American English (1810–2009) 231
- Gender change from Old to Middle English 263
- “Please tilt me-ward by return of post” 289
- Multilingualism in the vocabulary of dress and textiles in late medieval Britain 313
- “No man entreth in or out” 327
- Beyond questions and answers 349
- The demise of gog and cock and their phraseologies in dramatic discourse 369
- Index 383
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Norse influence on English in the light of general contact linguistics 15
- The Germanic roots of the Old English sound system 43
- Monetary policy and Old English dialects 73
- The order and schedule of nominal plural formation transfer in three Southern dialects of Early Middle English 95
- The temporal and regional contexts of the numeral ‘two’ in Middle English 115
- Grammaticalisation, contact and corpora 131
- Discourse organization and the rise of final then in the history of English 153
- The origins of how come and what…for 177
- “Providing/provided that” 197
- Prefer 215
- The 400 million word Corpus of Historical American English (1810–2009) 231
- Gender change from Old to Middle English 263
- “Please tilt me-ward by return of post” 289
- Multilingualism in the vocabulary of dress and textiles in late medieval Britain 313
- “No man entreth in or out” 327
- Beyond questions and answers 349
- The demise of gog and cock and their phraseologies in dramatic discourse 369
- Index 383
