Towards a More Analytic Expression of Grammatical Relationships: The Use of Prepositions and Adverbs in Early English Correspondence (Critical Essay)

ABSTRACT The focus of my paper is syntactic. It analyses different functions and positions of uninflected words, more precisely prepositions and adverbs, in fifteenth-century English correspondence. By Late Middle English grammatical relationships and meanings previously expressed by means of affixation (inflectional endings and prefixes) had been largely taken over by prepositions and adverbial particles which had become necessary elements in most noun and verb phrases.