This paper investigates the directional forces behind the evolution of the English perfect tense, focusing on the shift from the 'be+PP' to 'have+PP' construction with intransitive verbs. Using three large-scale corpora (EEBO, COHA, and Google Books), the authors analyze the frequency changes of these constructions across centuries. A neural network-based model is employed to detect evolutionary forces. The findings suggest that natural selection, rather than random drift, played a significant role in this grammatical shift.
Publisher
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Published On
Jun 05, 2023
Authors
Shimpei Okuda, Michio Hosaka, Kazutoshi Sasahara
Tags
English perfect tense
grammatical shift
be+PP
have+PP
corpora analysis
natural selection
neural network
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