The historical development of the verb doubt and its various patterns of complementation
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Yoko Iyeiri
Abstract
The present paper discusses the historical development of the verb doubt. In Present Day English, doubt is usually considered to yield whether-clauses in affirmative sentences and that-clauses in negative ones. However, this has not always been the case in the history of English. During the period from late Middle English to early Modern English, the same verb provides various constructions like infinitives, gerunds, lest-clauses, and but-clauses. Moreover, the history of English saw the development of I doubt as an epistemic phrase. By contrast, the development of the epistemic use is not prominent in negative sentences, which is most probably related to the development of no doubt as well as the simultaneously ongoing development of the auxiliary do.
Abstract
The present paper discusses the historical development of the verb doubt. In Present Day English, doubt is usually considered to yield whether-clauses in affirmative sentences and that-clauses in negative ones. However, this has not always been the case in the history of English. During the period from late Middle English to early Modern English, the same verb provides various constructions like infinitives, gerunds, lest-clauses, and but-clauses. Moreover, the history of English saw the development of I doubt as an epistemic phrase. By contrast, the development of the epistemic use is not prominent in negative sentences, which is most probably related to the development of no doubt as well as the simultaneously ongoing development of the auxiliary do.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
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Part I. Setting the scene
- Technology and phraseology 15
- Corpus-driven approaches to grammar 33
- Valency – item-specificity and idiom principle 49
- Fowler’s Modern English Usage at the interface of lexis and grammar 69
- The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1) 89
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Part II. Considering the particulars
- The lexicogrammar of present-day Indian English 117
- The semantic and grammatical overlap of as and that 137
- The historical development of the verb doubt and its various patterns of complementation 153
- The grammatical properties of recurrent phrases with body-part nouns 171
- A corpus-based investigation of cognate object constructions 189
- Revisiting the evidence for objects in English 211
- Lexico-functional categories and complex collocations 229
- Polysemy and lexical priming 247
- Local textual functions of move in newspaper story patterns 265
- Loud signatures 289
- Index 317
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Setting the scene
- Technology and phraseology 15
- Corpus-driven approaches to grammar 33
- Valency – item-specificity and idiom principle 49
- Fowler’s Modern English Usage at the interface of lexis and grammar 69
- The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1) 89
-
Part II. Considering the particulars
- The lexicogrammar of present-day Indian English 117
- The semantic and grammatical overlap of as and that 137
- The historical development of the verb doubt and its various patterns of complementation 153
- The grammatical properties of recurrent phrases with body-part nouns 171
- A corpus-based investigation of cognate object constructions 189
- Revisiting the evidence for objects in English 211
- Lexico-functional categories and complex collocations 229
- Polysemy and lexical priming 247
- Local textual functions of move in newspaper story patterns 265
- Loud signatures 289
- Index 317
