Review of Bouzada-Jabois, Carla. 2021. Nonfinite Supplements in the Recent History of English. Bern: Peter Lang. ISBN: 978-3-034-34226-1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/b19142

Abstract

This monograph explores subjectless -ing and -ed supplement constructions in the recent history of English from a corpus-based perspective. Supplements are defined as constructions in the clausal periphery that do not fulfil a core syntactic function within the matrix clause, and whose deletion typically does not have syntactic, semantic or grammatical consequences for either the structure or the interpretation of the clause.Despite their peripheral status, supplements are prototypically linked to the main clause in various ways. The analysis of these two very common types of non-finite supplement allows for a better characterization of the periphery of the clause in terms of more and less prototypical elements. The monograph also contributes to the description of the diachronic variation of the features that characterize the construction in Late Modern English and Present-Day English. On this level, the study reveals increasing homogeneity among supplements over time and proposes that this reflects a trend towards the regularization of the non-finite periphery in English.Chapter 1 introduces the construction which is the focus of the study and Chapter 2 presents the review of the relevant literature and a survey of the main features that characterize it, also providing a terminological overview of the concept of supplement and examining a number of features that have been used to define this concept with a view to establishing a clear-cut definition of the term and distinguishing it from other similar constructions. Chapter 3 deals with methodological issues concerning corpus linguistics in general, the corpora used for the analysis of supplements in the study, as well as the retrieval process used to build the database. Chapters 4 and 5 represent the