Change in Contemporary English

Geoffrey Leech is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. Marianne Hundt is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at the University of Zurich. Christian Mair is Professor of English Linguistics in the Department of English at the University of Freiburg. Nicholas Smith is Lecturer in the School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Salford.

• 1. Introduction: grammar-blindness in the recent history of English?; 2. Comparative corpus linguistics: the methodological basis of this book; 3. The subjunctive mood; 4. The modal auxiliaries; 5. The so-called semi-modals; 6. The progressive; 7. The passive voice; 8. Expanded predicates; 9. Non-finite clauses; 10. The noun phrase; 11. Linguistic and other determinants of change.

Review of the hardback: 'CCE suggests a number of issues that will no doubt inspire much research in the future, not only in English, but in any language for which electronic corpora are available over a fifty- to hundred-year period. … Regardless of any limitations of the corpora, the authors have developed a rigorous methodology for tagging, quantifying and analyzing electronic corpus materials, and revealing the multifactorial nature of change in use.' Elizabeth Closs Traugott, English Language and Linguistics