Constructions and Environments

This monograph presents the first comprehensive diachronic account of copular and passive verb constructions in Old and Middle English. Peter Petr? analyzes: ? The mysterious loss of the high-frequency verb weor?an ''become'' as a casualty of changing word order in narrative during Middle English. ? The merger of is ''is'' and bi? ''shall be, is generally'' into a single suppletive verb, and how i...