Complements and Constructions: Corpus-Based Studies on Sentential Complements in English in Recent Centuries

Juhani Rudanko, in Complements and Constructions, offers a pioneering perspective on the grammar of important prepositional complementation patterns in English. Rudanko focuses on sentential complements dependent on the prepositions from and to and on transitive and intransitive verbs selecting such complements. The study introduces and develops the proposal that such patterns, as well as the into -ing pattern, should be viewed as constructions in the sense of construction grammar. Rudanko's analysis of the complementation patterns as constructions serves to explain important aspects of their meaning. With data from both eighteenth-century and present-day English, Rudanko reveals the increasing productivity of the patterns, which is an additional argument supporting their status as constructions. The data-oriented approach lends strength and solidity to the analysis of the patterns as constructions.