Binomials in the History of English

Binomials, e.g. day and night, to have and to hold, dead or alive, for and against, have been employed throughout the history of English in literary texts (poetry and prose), glosses and translated texts, as well as non-literary texts (laws, wills, almanachs, treatises, etc.). This volume offers a range of studies on binomials, their types and functions in selected Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and Present-Day English texts. Searching for motivations and characteristic features of binomials in a particular genre or writer, the chapters engage with many linguistic levels of analysis, in particular phonology, morphology, semantics, etymology, stylistics and formulaic language. An important aspect is the role of translation in creating English binomials. Drawing on philological and corpus-linguistic approaches, the authors employ qualitative and quantitative methods, setting the discussion firmly in the extra-linguistic context. Binomials emerge from these discussions as an important phraseological tool, with rich applications and complex motivations.