Argument structure in flux: The development of impersonal constructions in Middle and Early Modern English, with special reference to verbs of desire.

This book review discusses "Argument structure in flux: The development of impersonal constructions in Middle and Early Modern English, with special reference to verbs of desire" by Noelia Castro-Chao. The book examines the changes in argument structure in the English language, specifically the decline of impersonal constructions, using a Construction Grammar framework and quantitative corpus linguistics methods. It analyzes data from the Oxford English Dictionary, the Middle English Dictionary, and the Early English Books Online database. The book aims to fill a gap in the literature by exploring the factors that led to the decline of impersonal constructions and the patterns that replaced them in Early Modern English. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 focus on the diachronic development of complementation patterns for the verbs lust, long, and thirst, showing a decrease in clausal realizations and an increase in zero complements for lust, an increase in prepositional complements for thirst, and prepositional complements becoming the most frequent pattern for long. The study contributes to our understanding of the history of English and challenges Jespersen's reanalysis hypothesis. [Extracted from the article]