Budget Amount *help |
¥3,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,800,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥3,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,400,000)
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Research Abstract |
1. With the help of the Grant the present investigator bought English Prose Drama on CD-ROM, OED2 on CD-ROM, and several other electronic materials, which enabled him to gather enormous number of the examples of negative sentences needed to perform the present project. Based upon the evidence of these sentences, he has made clear the following three points, among others : (i) be was earlier than have in co-occurring with the auxiliary do in negative sentences, (ii) the copula be and the passive be alike began to co-occur with do around the year 1590, but the progressive be was later than the copula and the passive be by roughly two hundred years, and (iii) have began to co-occur with do in negative sentences just a little after 1700. The dates in these findings antedate those given in the linguistic literature at large published so far by 50 to 100 years. The present investigator has worked out these findings in a paper entitled "An Aspect of the Development of Negative Sentences in Modern English" and presented it at the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics held at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, on 7-11 September 2000. 2. The present investigator published a book A History cf English late in 2000, in which he incorporated the essence of his findings stated above.
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