Yoko Iyeiri, Benjamin Franklin’s English: Form to Function Analyses (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025)
Benjamin Franklin’s English
This is a volume from the Routledge Studies in Linguistics series.
This book focuses on linguistic aspects of Benjamin Franklin’s (1706-1790) writings. As one of the founding fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin left a bulk of documents, including letters and autobiography. Using The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, I have compiled a dataset of his writings for my research, on which the present book is based. I would like to express my thanks once again to the Benjamin Franklin project team at Yale University.
The introduction sets up the research questions by examining recent trends in historical sociolinguistics and discusses the data and methodology in detail. Chapters 2 and 3 adopt a form-based approach, with Chapter 2 focusing primarily on a sociolinguistic perspective. Chapter 3 addresses various linguistic phenomena from both diachronic and synchronic viewpoints.
The final chapter, Chapter 4, serves as the conclusion but places significant emphasis on reevaluating the topics discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 from the perspective of function.
This book is not only relevant for those studying 18th-century English but also serves as a valuable resource for exploring themes related to English from other historical periods.
Contents
List of Tables ix
List of Figures xii
Preface and acknowledgements xiii
Abbreviations xv
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The aim of this study 1
1.2 Why a single person’s English? 2
1.3 Form-to-function approach and corpus linguistics 4
1.4 Benjamin Franklin Corpus and some additional comments 5
Notes 7
2 Form-to-function approach 1: Historical sociolinguistic perspectives 9
2.1 Introductory remarks 9
2.1.1 General 9
2.1.2 Negation in the BF Corpus: A case study 9
2.2 Become 12
2.2.1 The frequency of become 12
2.2.2 The perfect of become 14
2.2.3 Become in the pseudo passive construction 17
2.3 Behalf 18
2.3.1 In behalf of vs. on behalf of 18
2.4 Choose 21
2.4.1 The conditional use of choose 21
2.4.2 Some other aspects of choose 23
2.5 Come 24
2.5.1 Come and its progressive forms 24
2.5.2 The perfect of come 27
2.5.3 Come and its collocation 30
2.6 Fall 33
2.6.1 The frequency of the verb fall and its usage 33
2.6.2 The perfect of fall 35
2.7 Fear 36
2.7.1 The frequency of the verb fear and its first-person use 36
2.7.2 The complementation of the verb fear and its parenthetical use 38
2.7.3 The noun fear 43
2.8 Forget 44
2.8.1 The past participle forms of forget 44
2.8.2 If I forget not 46
2.8.3 Forget and its subject 47
2.8.4 Forget and its complementation 48
2.9 Go 49
2.9.1 Go and its progressive forms 49
2.9.2 The perfect of go 52
2.9.3 Go and its collocation 55
2.10 Like 57
2.10.1 The verb like 57
2.10.2 Like as a hedge 59
2.10.3 Like vs. likely 61
2.11 Methinks 62
2.11.1 Methinks as a fossilized lexical item 62
2.12 Please 66
2.12.1 The pragmatic use of please 66
2.12.2 Please and its transitivity 72
2.13 Pray 74
2.13.1 The pragmatic use of pray 74
2.13.2 The verb pray followed by that-clauses and to-infinitives 79
2.14 Remember 82
2.14.1 Remember and its collocation 82
2.14.2 Discoursal nature of remember 84
2.14.3 Remember and its complementation 86
2.15 Show 89
2.15.1 Show vs. Shew 89
2.15.2 Show and the double-object construction 91
2.16 Think 98
2.16.1 Think and the first and second persons 98
2.16.2 The comment clause I think 100
2.17 Work 106
2.17.1 The preterite and past participle forms of work 106
2.18 Write 107
2.18.1 The preterite and past participle forms of write 107
2.18.2 I wrote a few lines to you, or the dative object construction 109
Notes 113
3 Form-to-function approach 2: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives 118
3.1 Introductory remarks 118
3.2 Arrive 118
3.2.1 The perfect of arrive 118
3.2.2 Arrive and adverbs 119
3.3 Avoid 121
3.3.1 Avoid -ing 121
3.4 Dare 124
3.4.1 The status of dare and its use in comment clauses 124
3.5 Doubt 127
3.5.1 The verb doubt and its complementation 127
3.5.2 The noun doubt and its complementation 130
3.5.3 Doubt and author orientation 132
3.6 Drink 134
3.6.1 Drank and drunk 134
3.6.2 Drink and its objects 136
3.7 Exceedingly 137
3.7.1 Exceeding vs. exceedingly 137
3.8 Forbear 139
3.8.1 Forbear and its complementation 139
3.9 Forbid 141
3.9.1 The past participle forms of forbid 141
3.9.2 Forbid and its complementation 142
3.10 Grow 144
3.10.1 Grow and some syntactic features 144
3.10.2 Grow with animate and inanimate subjects 145
3.11 Help 149
3.11.1 Help and its complementation 149
3.11.2 Cannot help -ing 150
3.12 Need 151
3.12.1 The status of need 151
3.12.2 Other related expressions 153
3.13 Return 155
3.13.1 The perfect of return 155
3.13.2 The verb return and adverbs 157
3.14 Scarce 159
3.14.1 Scarce vs. scarcely 159
3.14.2 Scarce, scarcely, and their collocation 159
3.15 Speak 161
3.15.1 The past participle forms of speak 161
3.15.2 Bespeak, an etymologically related verb 161
3.16 Street 162
3.16.1 In the street vs. on the street 162
3.17 Suffer 164
3.17.1 Transitive and intransitive uses of suffer 164
3.17.2 Suffer plus to-infinitive 165
Notes 166
4 Discussion and conclusion 169
4.1 About this chapter 169
4.2 Discussion from functional perspectives 169
4.2.1 Morphological and orthographic variation 170
4.2.2 Auxiliaries vs. lexical verbs 172
4.2.3 Progressive forms 172
4.2.4 Be-perfect vs. have-perfect 174
4.2.5 Passive 176
4.2.6 The double-object construction 176
4.2.7 Complementation 178
4.2.8 Adverbs 180
4.2.9 Choice of prepositions 181
4.2.10 Comment clauses and author orientation 182
4.2.11 Politeness expressions and others 184
4.3 Concluding remarks 186
4.3.1 Benjamin Franklin’s English 186
4.3.2 On the form-to-function approach 187
Notes 189
References 191
Appendix 203
Index 235
