This article examines (the frequency of) the progressive passive construction (e.g. is being taken) in Present-day English. Through the examination of the large-scale corpora such as COCA, COHA, BNC, we found out that the frequency of this construction is very low. In particular, the frequency of the complex construction, containing more than three auxiliaries like may be being taken / has been being taken / may have been being taken, is much lower. Thus we need to answer why the frequency is so low. We propose a formula predicting the frequency of the complex construction like ([Frequency of the Complex A-B Construction] ≤ ([Frequency of the A Construction] × [Frequency of the B Construction]). According to this formula, the frequency of the progressive passive is directly related to the frequency of the progressive and that of the passive. The progressive is increasing these days, but the passive is rapidly decreasing, especially in AmE. This fact is reflected in the decrease of the progressive passive construction. Another (minor) reason of the low frequency is that some other rival constructions, e.g. the passival and the get-passive, are used, along with the progressive passive.

This article examines if English auxiliary shall is really dying, where it is still used, and why it is dying, and then speculates how long it will survive in what constructions. Our method of the examination is the search of the large-scale corpora like the COHA (The Corpus of Historical American English), which shows the relatively long-term changes of (American) English because it covers the recent 200 years (1810s-2000s) and the BNC (The British National Corpus), which is British English data. There have been so many reports about the disappearing shall-future, e.g. Mair and Leech (2006: 320), which are borne out through our examination of the corpora. The search result is the confirmation of the report that shall is dying. But it is not dead yet. It is still widely used mainly in the 1st person construction. The obsolescence of shall has been caused by both language-internal and external factors. Language internally, the loss (or grammaticalization) of the original lexical meaning of shall, i.e., 'obligation' or 'necessity', is the main reason for its reduction, because the remaining 'pure future' meaning can be expressed by will or other expressions like be going to. In general, language does not tolerate two words or constructions of the same meaning or function that can be exchanged each other anytime. Language externally, such factors as Americanization and colloquialization intervene in the loss of shall. Nevertheless, we cannot predict the complete disappearance of shall with certainty, because not a few historical changes leave the so-called historical remnants. Therefore, we cannot exclude the possibility that shall remains to be used in a certain formal situation or in a number of formulaic uses.

This article is a historical study on the distinction between to-infinitives and bare infinitives. Generally, the to-infinitive denotes the futuristic, indirect potential event, while the bare infinitive denotes the direct one. This meaning distinction between the two infinitival constructions has been persistent through the long history of English, as argued in Fischer(1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1997a, 1997b, 2000). The issue is how and from what this meaning difference is derived. The common account is structural, saying that the to-infinitive has the clausal status such as IP or CP with the inflectional element inside, while the bare-infinitive has the small clause structure such as VP. This account assumes that the infinitival marker to is a meaningless grammatical element(INFL). However, it is argued in this article that the infinitival to is a lexical element having its own lexical meanings and that these lexical meanings of the to are the maintenance of its original prepositional characters. In other words, the lexical meanings of the infinitival to, derived from its original prepositional category, has not been wiped out, although the meanings were a little weakened in ME for a while. The conclusion is that the meanings of the to-infinitives such as futurity and indirectness are due to the morpheme to itself, not to the structure caused by its presence.

Pil-Hwan Lee. 2003. A Historical Study on English Negative Expressions - with Special Reference to the Methodology in English Historical Syntax. Studies in Modern Grammar 31, 107-136. This is a study on the changes in sentential negation in English, from Old English to the present day, in terms of Jespersen`s(1917) Negative Cycle. The Negative Cycle is an assumption that negative adverbs are depleted lexical meaning they undergo phonological and morphosyntactic reduction to a bound morpheme prefixed to the finite verb. The history of English clearly supports this assumption. The issue is how to explain these aspects of changes. van Kemenade(1997a, 1997c, 1999, 2000) tries to account for the history of English sentential negation as a pure case of morphosyntactic change. It means that the change was triggered by structural factors. However, it is argued in this paper that the triggering factor for the change is the weakening of meaning. In other words, negative adverbs are morphologically and syntactically weakened to negative head status due to the semantic bleaching of negation and to the overlapping function in expressing sentential negation in NegP. The two positions in NegP inherently presuppose the functional redundancy in expressing sentential negation, so the specifier of NegP is generally weakened to Neg˚.

Pil - Hw an Lee . 2002 . On the Dev elopment of Eng lish Infinitiv al Cons tructions . S t ud ie s in M od e rn Gram ma r 27, 77- 104 . This is an explanation for the development of the three infinitival constructions which were introduced into English roughly at the same time during the Middle English period, i.e., the so- called Accusitiv cum Infinitivo (or exceptional case-marking ) construction, the f or NP to V construction, and the passive infinitivals . There have been various accounts for the introduction of these constructions . The traditional accounts are synt actic borrowing from Latin and analogical extension. However, Fischer (1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992a, 1992b, 1994) criticizes such accounts, saying that the introduction was due to grammar - internal factors, expecially to the word order change English underwent in this period. It is argued in this article that the loss of inflectional endings is a more important internal change than the word order change. The argument is that the reanalysis, by which new infinitival constructions appeared, was due to the loss of inflectional ending (especially, dative ending ) of the sandwiched NP between the main verb and the infinitive. Furthermore, there is a general agreement that the word order change in English was it self due to the loss of inflectional endings. In this respect , the loss of the inflectional endings is a more basic and important factor for the changes of English Infinitival constructions .

Pil-Hwan Lee. 2000. On the Origin of the Indirect Passive. Studies in Modern Grammar 19, 87-108. Despite some controversy, it is generally accepted that the indirect passive construction(IDC) was introduced into English roughly in the 15th century. Then two relevant questions arise here; `Why the IDC was impossible in OE?` and `How the IDC could be introduced in the 15th century?` It is argued that the indirect object of OE need not and so must not be preposed to the subject position to get a case in a passive sentence, since it is inherently case-marked. Thus the impersonal passive construction could be used instead of the IDC in OE and early ME. Contrary to Lightfoot (1979a, 1979b, 1991), however, I argue that even in OE syntactic passives and lexical passives both existed, so two kinds of passive participles are derived, i.e., a neutralized category having the feature [+V] only and a full adjective [+N, +V]. The emergency of the IDC is explained by the loss of the ability of English verbs to assign an inherent case. If the indirect object is not inherently case-marked, it must move to a position where it can get a case, i. e., to the subject position, under the assumption that the passive participle cannot assign a structural case, either. The effacement between dative and accusative or the fixing of word order had only subsidiary effects on the introduction of the IDC. The disappearance of formal distinctions between dative and accusative is just a triggering factor for the loss of inherent case, which is the reason for the introduction of the IDC.

Lee Pil-Hwan. 1996. An Article on the Positions of Old and Middle English Particles. Studies in Modern Grammatical Theories 9: 1-25. In this article I account for the various positions of Old and Middle English particles in terms of verb second movement and extraposition. The base order of Old English is generally believed to be SOV, so a particle appears before the verb at the base. But a particle may be separated from the verb, when the verb moves to COMP by verb second movement or when the particle itself is extraposed over the verb. I argue that a particle can move to the right of the verb. However, there is no restriction on the landing site to which a particle is moved, contrary to Kemenade`s(1987) assumption that an Old English particle can move to the immediate right of the verb, or to the right of one further NP object only. This explanation is also contradictory to Pintzuk`s(1991, 1992, 1993) assumption that a particle does not move at all in Old English. An Old English particle is moved over the verb not by a construction-specific particle movement, which optionally permutes the particle with one object but by extraposition. For that reason, there may appear various elements between the verb and the extraposed particle.