Using increasingly sophisticated databases, this volume explores grammatical usage from the Late Modern period in a broad context.

1. Introduction. Late Modern English syntax in its linguistic and socio-historical context Marianne Hundt; Part I. Changes in the VP: 2. The decline of the BE-perfect, linguistic relativity, and grammar writing in the nineteenth century Lieselotte Anderwald; 3. Let's not, let's don't and don't let's in British and American English Anita Auer; 4. Do we got a difference? Divergent developments of semi-auxiliary (have) got (to) in British and American English Christian Mair; 5. From contraction to construction? The recent life of 'll Nadja Nesselhauf; 6. Books that sell - mediopassives and the modification 'constraint' Marianne Hundt; Part II. Changes in the NP: 7. Beyond mere syntactic change: a micro-analytical study of various and numerous Tine Breban; 8. Culturally conditioned language change? A multivariate analysis of genitive constructions in ARCHER Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, Anette Rosenbach, Joan Bresnan and Christoph Wolk; Part III. Changes in Complementation Patterns: 9. On the changing status of that-clauses Günter Rohdenburg; 10. Variability in verb complementation in Late Modern English: finite vs non-finite patterns Hubert Cuyckens, Frauke D'Hoedt and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi; Part IV. Category Change: 11. Opposite developments in composite predicate constructions: the case of take advantage of and make use of Eva Berlage; 12. Constrained confusion: the gerund/participle distinction in Late Modern English Hendrik De Smet; 13. 'You are a bit of a sneak': exploring a degree modifier in the Old Bailey Corpus Claudia Claridge and Merja Kytö; Part V. The Syntax-Pragmatics Interface: 14. If you choose/like/prefer/want/wish: the origin of metalinguistic and politeness functions Laurel J. Brinton; 15. Epistemic parentheticals with seem: Late Modern English in focus María José López-Couso and Belén Méndez-Naya; Part VI. Text-Type Related Change: 16. Syntactic stability and change in nineteenth-century newspaper language Erik Smitterberg; Part VII. Language Contact and Syntactic Change: 17. '(W)ell are you not got over thinking about going to ireland yet': the BE-perfect in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish English Kevin McCafferty.