INVERSION IN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH

UNIVERSIDADE DE SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA FACULTADE DE FILOLOXÍA DEPARTAMENTO DE FILOLOXÍA INGLESA INVERSION IN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH José Carlos Prado Alonso 2007 Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Facultade de Filoloxía Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa INVERSION IN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH Tesis doctoral realizada por José Carlos Prado Alonso y supervisada por los doctores María Teresa Fanego Lema y Juan Carlos Acuña Fariña Visto bueno de los directores: Fdo. José Carlos Prado Alonso Fdo. Dra. María Teresa Fanego Lema Fdo. Dr. Juan Carlos Acuña Fariña ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In undertaking research of this nature, one naturally seeks out the intellectual and personal support of a great many people, perhaps, more people than it would be possible to mention. Nevertheless, I will attempt here to express my gratitude to most of them. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisors, Professors Teresa Fanego and Carlos Acuña, not only for their academic guidance and keen intellectual judgement but also for their patience, constant encouragement, and in particular for their help during difficult moments of the project. The research reported here is part of a larger project – Variation, Linguistic Change, and Grammaticalisation – sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (grants nos. HUM2004-00940 and HUM 2007-60706), the Autonomous Government of Galicia (grant no. PGIDITO5 PXIC20401PN), and the European Regional Development Fund. The support of these institutions, as well as the positive feedback of the members of the research group throughout the course of this investigation, is hereby also gratefully acknowledged. I owe my deepest gratitude to Christian Mair for inspiring me to actually begin this dissertation. Others scholars who helped me out and whom I feel very grateful to are Betty Birner and Gregory Ward, and especially Rolf Kreyer who was kind enough to allow me access to his (then) unpublished work. Thank you Rolf for sharing with me your valuable contributions to the study of full inversion. This work has profited from your comments and suggestions. Likewise, I feel greatly indebted to all my colleagues at the Department of English in the University of Santiago de Compostela for their encouragement over the years. Thanks also ... - tailieumienphi.vn