“Early Modern English Prose Selections: Directions in Historical Corpus Linguistics”.

This paper consists of two parts: the first and major part describes the corpus Early Modern English Prose selections (EMEPS) together with some discussion on the recent trend in corpus linguistics, and the second part includes a case study based on EMEPS. The case study discusses the historical shift of the complementation patterns of the verb forbid in English, with a focus on the Early Modern English period. It demonstrates the gradual decline of that-clauses and the rise of to-infinitives and -ing constructions in the period under construction.