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In English the NP1 V NP2 construction typically involves arguments that are construed as Agent and Patient, or Subject and Object. It is associated with the notion of transitivity and analyzed accordingly, even when it exhibits only the syntactic properties of transitivity but not its semantic characteristics. This phenomenon is well-known and has been accounted for by linguists (Lakoff 1977; Hopper and Thompson 1980, among others) as a result of the absence of some prototypical transitive features in the utterance. This paper aims at demonstrating that the NP1 V NP2 structure has a semantic value and conveys a general abstract sense, of which prototypical transitivity represents only one particular realization whose occurrence is determined by the semantic and aspectual properties of the context. It will be argued that the sense of this construction can be explained through concepts that are not usually used in the description of transitive utterances, namely conjunction and disjunction. In some examples, the subject enters a relation of conjunction or disjunction with the object. In others, it is the other way round.

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Middle English was a period of transition between the free word order of Old English, with functional variation of adjective form and position with respect to the head noun, and the fixed prenominal placement of single attributive adjectives in Modern English. Aided by the PPCME2 of the Penn-Helsinki corpora, this corpus-driven study explores the range of adjectives attested frequently after the head noun, as well as their relative attraction to the position and, sampling the ME period with emphasis on variables in the corpus metadata, compares the frequencies of postnominally placed adjectives in various genres, capturing their declining overall frequency over time. These general tendencies are commented against the background of postpositives in PDE.

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This is an account of English modals that invokes their exceptional morpho-syntactic tense properties as original preterite-present verbs in order to explain their becoming T elements. Within the framework of minimalist theory, I argue that modal verbs in OE and ME (up to approx. 1470) have an exceptional syntactic status that consists in that they merge directly under v, whereas strong verbs merge as a stem-by-default prior to v, and weak verbs merge as a root with a vowel-by-default also prior to v. Modals necessarily differ from both strong verbs and weak verbs in their τ–licensing, whereas they share with the latter (with both strong verbs and weak verbs) φ–licensing. A specific Probe of T is in charge of the latter for all verbs in the language. Modals pass on to merge directly under T when v ceases to be a locus of interpretable τ–features. A symptom that v loses such a capacity is the loss of the Pret.1/Pret.2 ablaut distinction.

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This paper offers a preliminary cultural semantic exploration of a key social concept of the Melanesian worldview advanced in the anthropological literature of the area. It is argued that the cultural meaning of this notion can be accessed by focusing on the relevant contextual and semantic properties of the corresponding Tok Pisin lexical unit wok(im) (‘work’) examined in a noteworthy cultural text approached as a source of linguistic evidence.

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The paper presents a list of sixty-nine forged charters containing English produced following the Norman Conquest of 1066. The list can be considered a supplement to The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1066–1220 (Da Rold et al. 2010) – a project conducted jointly at the University of Leeds and University of Leicester collecting all known texts containing English, in order to provide an insight and allow research into “transitional”, post-Conquest English. The paper outlines the significance of charters in the Medieval world, and discusses some key issues and misconceptions related to studying this period in the history of the English language.

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The primary focus of this article is on the usefulness of conventional knowledge, pictorial illustrations, and etymological notes in the process of defining the meaning of idioms within the macrostructure of a thematic dictionary of idioms based on cognitive principles of linguistic organization, and on the use of phonological motivation and iconic and scalar ordering as principles for explaining the form of idiomatic expressions. This article makes a noteworthy contribution to the widely-held view in current language teaching and pedagogy that grouping figurative idioms under source domains and conceptual metaphors, using visuals for explaining the literal reading of idioms, providing background information about their literal meanings or origins, as well as drawing students’ attention to the lexical make-up of idioms can be conducive to their learning and understanding and especially beneficial for students’ retention of the meaning and form of such phrases (Kӧvecses and Szabó 1996; Kӧvecses 2001; 2002; Benor and Levy 2006; Boers and Lindstromberg 2008a; Kӧvecses and Csábi 2014).

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This paper is a comprehensive literature review of the role of creativity in second language (L2) learning and use. It seeks to provide a theoretical background of the concept of creativity and show its practical relevance in the L2 context. The article begins with the conceptualisations of general creativity and narrows down to the concept of linguistic creativity and its instances in L2 use. Next, it presents the empirical research findings that point to an important role and benefits of creativity in L2 learning and use. The paper closes with pedagogical implications and methodological guidelines on enhancing creativity in the L2 classroom.

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The present study investigates English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ use of motivational strategies (MS) in Hungarian high schools. It also seeks to identify whether students recognize these strategies. Keller’s (2010) motivational model was employed through the instructional materials motivational survey (IMMS) questionnaire that was translated into Hungarian. A population of 117 Hungarian high school students from grades 9 to 12 filled out questionnaires on their teachers’ use of MS, and 62 high school teachers completed the same questionnaire to report their MS. Classroom observa- tions were also conducted following the Motivational Orientation of Language Teaching (MOLT) scheme proposed by Guilloteaux and Dörnyei (2008). For each grade, face-to-face and online classes were observed. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to process the data. The results show that teachers’ mean scores for all the ARCS categories were higher than those of students, with significant differences between students’ and teachers’ views on attention and relevance. Teachers reported using satisfaction-generating strategies most often, while the observation results indicated that the most frequently used strategy was attention. Students’ grades had no correlation with students’ perception of the use of MS, which might be due to the homogeneity of the sample selected.