The conference, MMECL: Middle and Modern English Corpus Linguistics, held at the University of Innsbruck in 2009, was an excellent occasion, where we discussed various issues on historical corpora and variation and change of the English language from Middle to Modern English. This volume, edited by the conference organizers, includes selected papers presented at this conference.

This books describes the eleven English verbs forbid, refuse, forbear, avoid, prohibit, prevent, hinder, refrain, fear, doubt, deny and their complementation from the historical perspective. The verbs have experienced the decline of that-clauses and the rise of various complement forms in the history of English.