Juhani Rudanko

This book investigates the language used by protagonists in four major political debates in the early history of the United States. The first of these concerns the controversy in the first United States House of Representatives in the summer of 1789 on whether a proposal for a bill of rights should be considered in an expeditious fashion or whether the issue should be left till much later. The second is the principal debate on whether a sedition act should be enacted in July 1798, and the third concerns the enactment of the Logan Act of 1799. The fourth investigates the elections for the Legislature of the State of New York in the spring of 1800, which was the key event affecting the outcome of the presidential election of 1800. In each case there was a sharp disagreement between groups of politicians representing different points of view, and each event was significant from the point of view of the political history of the United States. The authors introduce these four debates, as well as the notion of informal fallacy - taken to designate an argument that is unsatisfactory in some way - before analysing deceptive fallacies and demonstrating how fallacy theory can be used as a critical tool in the examination of political argumentation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political communication, rhetoric and argumentation, US history and politics, and diachronic linguistics, especially diachronic pragmatics.

This book implements a new approach to the study of manipulative tactics in selected Congressional debates in the early history of the United States, highlighting the ways in which language can be used to manipulate an audience. The identification and analysis of different informal fallacies is central in the approach adopted by the authors, and they privilege the role of covert intentions as a frequent ingredient of manipulation. They also show how different speakers can use different subtypes of the same fallacy in a debate, and investigate the tension between the policy preferences and goals of politicians, and existing laws. The book has been written without jargon, all concepts and terminology from the field of linguistic pragmatics are clearly defined, and it is accessible to the interested layperson wishing to become familiar with manipulative techniques in political rhetoric.

This book offers a new perspective on selected discourses and texts bearing on the evolution of a distinctively American tradition of free speech. The author’s approach privileges fallacy theory, especially the fallacy of ad socordiam, in a key Congressional debate in 1789 and other forms of verbal manipulation in newspaper editorials during the War of 1812. He argues that in order to understand James Madison’s role in the evolution of a broad conception of freedom of speech, it is imperative to examine the nature of the verbal attacks targeted at him. These attacks are documented, analyzed with the concept of aggravated impoliteness, and used to demonstrate that it was Madison’s toleration of criticism, even in wartime, that provided a foundation for a broad conception of freedom of speech. This book will be of interest to both scholars and lay readers with an interest in the application of discourse analysis and historical pragmatics to political debates, argumentation theoryand fallacy theory, and the evolution of the concept of freedom of speech in the early years of the United States.

This book explores the concept of complementation in the adjectival domain of English grammar. Alternation between non-finite complements, especially to infinitives and gerundial complements, has been investigated intensively on the basis of large corpora in the last few years. With very few exceptions, however, such work has hitherto been based on univariate analysis methods. Using multivariate analysis, the authors present methodologically innovative case studies examining a large array of explanatory factors potentially impacting complement choice in cases of alternation. This approach yields more precise information on the impact of each factor on complement choice as well as on interactions between different explanatory factors. The book thus presents a methodologically new perspective on the study of the system of non-finite complementation in recent English and variation within that system, and will be relevant to academics and students with an interest in English grammar, predicate complementation, and statistical approaches to language.

This book sheds new light on the nature of gerunds in English, utilizing data from very large electronic corpora in order to compare pairs of patterns viewed as constructions. It serves as a contribution to the study of complementation, an under-researched area of investigation which bridges observations at the intersection of lexico-grammar, syntax and semantics. As a result, the reader develops their understanding of the meaning and use of each pattern within the system of English predicate complementation as it has evolved in recent times. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of English linguistics, especially English grammar.

This book explores the grammar of to infinitives and gerundial -ing clauses, which is a central area at the interface of syntax and semantics, against the background of what has been called the Great Complement Shift. Over the course of six chapters, the author explores the semantic properties of constructions where the general spread of gerundial -ing clauses occurs at the expense of to infinitives. The author draws on large electronic corpora, ensuring that new perspectives are opened on the basis of authentic corpus evidence. He identifies trends of variation and change in the use of the two constructions and proposes The Choice Principle, an innovative perspective on the semantics of to infinitives and gerundial -ing complements. This book will be of interest to researchers and students working on English grammar or the recent history of English grammar.

This book showcases fresh research into the underexplored territory of complementation through a detailed analysis of gerunds and ‘to’ infinitives involving control in English. Drawing on large electronic corpora of recent English, it examines subject control in adjectival predicate constructions with ‘scared’, ‘terrified’ and ‘afraid’, moving on to a study of object control with the verbal predicate ‘warn’. In each chapter a case study is presented of a matrix adjective that selects both infinitival and gerundial complements, and a central theme is the application of the Choice Principle as a novel factor bearing on complement selection. The authors argue that it is helpful to view the patterns in question as constructions, as combinations of form and meaning, within the system of English predicate complementation, and convincingly demonstrate how a new gerundial pattern has emerged and spread in the course of the last two centuries. This book will appeal to scholars of semantics, corpus linguistics, and historical linguistics as well as those with an interest in variation and change in recent English more generally.

This book explores the grammar of to infinitives and gerundial -ing clauses, which is a central area at the interface of syntax and semantics, against the background of what has been called the Great Complement Shift. Over the course of six chapters, the author explores the semantic properties of constructions where the general spread of gerundial -ing clauses occurs at the expense of to infinitives. The author draws on large electronic corpora, ensuring that new perspectives are opened on the basis of authentic corpus evidence. He identifies trends of variation and change in the use of the two constructions and proposes The Choice Principle, an innovative perspective on the semantics of to infinitives and gerundial -ing complements. This book will be of interest to researchers and students working on English grammar or the recent history of English grammar.

Complementation in British and American English applies a new empirical methodology to the study of the English language. It focuses on predicate complementation as a core area of English grammar on the basis of the Bank of English Corpus. At over 600 million words, this electronic corpus is the largest systematic corpus of the language in existence today. It offers a unique database of authentic usage for the study of the system of predicate complementation in British and American English. The authors make full use of this database, paying special attention to the language of newspapers and the spoken language in the two main regional varieties of English. The book illustrates a new and methodologically exciting direction in the study of the English language in the twenty-first century.

In this book, Juhani Rudanko sheds important new light on James Madison's contributions to the debates on freedom of speech, during the formative period of 1789 to 1801 in the United States. When Madison proposed amendments that eventually formed the core of the Bill of Rights (June 8, 1789), the reaction from the Federalist party majority was initially hostile. Rudanko examines Madison's patterns of argumentation in eventually persuading the House of Representatives to proceed with consideration of the Bill of Rights. The book also presents new insights on key debates of the Sedition Act, examining initial Federalist arguments when the Act was approved, July 1798, and identifies changes in those arguments soon afterwards.

Juhani Rudanko, in Complements and Constructions, offers a pioneering perspective on the grammar of important prepositional complementation patterns in English. Rudanko focuses on sentential complements dependent on the prepositions from and to and on transitive and intransitive verbs selecting such complements. The study introduces and develops the proposal that such patterns, as well as the into -ing pattern, should be viewed as constructions in the sense of construction grammar. Rudanko's analysis of the complementation patterns as constructions serves to explain important aspects of their meaning. With data from both eighteenth-century and present-day English, Rudanko reveals the increasing productivity of the patterns, which is an additional argument supporting their status as constructions. The data-oriented approach lends strength and solidity to the analysis of the patterns as constructions.

Provides a pioneering and data-oriented investigation of the syntax and semantics of important prepositional complementation patterns dependent on the prepositions in, to, at, on, with, and of in present-day English.This book provides a pioneering and data-oriented investigation of the syntax and semantics of important prepositional complementation patterns dependent on the prepositions in, to, at, on, with, and of in current English. The investigation is based on a sample of matrix verbs that governs the pattern of sentential complementation. The data includes the Brown and LOB corpora, English dictionaries and grammars, and the intuitions of native speakers.Rudanko sets up taxonomies of matrix verbs and argues that they often can be based on relatively few core classes. He questions whether verbs selecting a pattern also select other patterns of sentential complementation. Noting the quantity and quality of such alternation, he observes how differences in form are linked to differences in meaning. The study of relevant matrix verbs, supplemented with discussion of alternation and other syntactic and semantic properties of the patterns, points to the semantic functions that are associated typically with each pattern of complementation.

This book offers a new and compendious account of important verbal patterns in present-day English. Serving as a central source of data, it updates and refines earlier research contributing to the syntactic and semantic description of English. Rudanko establishes an original framework, and systematically analyzes patterns of complementation using the tool of case grammar. The examination of Control, or EQUI, is a common theme and an important problem for transformationalists, and English syntacticians will value Rudanko's work on infinitive complements.