Vantage Theory (VT) and Cognitive Grammar (CG) both rely crucially on the cognitive phenomenon of categorization as well as on the semantic/pragmatic notion of participant point of view in making claims about human linguistic production and perception. In this paper these commonalities of commitment are explored, as are the differences in the ways…

Analyzes the rightward movement of noun and prepositional phrases in the Early Old English poem "Beowulf." Evidence is provided for heavy noun phrase shift, with a characteristic major intonational boundary between the main verb and the postponed noun phrase, and preposition phrase extraposition, where the intonational boundary was much…

Sociolinguistic analysis of the speech patterns in Spenser's "The Faerie Queen, Book VI" indicated that the socially different characters' language styles did not vary much among themselves or from the narrative, suggesting that the strict verse scheme requirements and a concern for unity of literary style leveled out speech particularities. (CB)

An analysis of stress patterns in Old English, from the perspective of a framework based on lexicalist metrical phonology, indicates that there was a central Old English stress rule that operated from left-to-right, in contrast to to the central rule for present day English. (46 references) (Author/CB)

An alternative account of the Old English verb-complement word order and the change from OV to VO is offered, based on an analysis of 16 Old English texts. Evidence is provided that the change does not involve abrupt reanalysis but rather synchronic competition between two grammars, beginning in the Old English period and continuing into Middle…