This book delves into Benjamin Franklin’s English, illustrating the variable nature of 18th-century American English and his stylistic manipulation of the potentiality of English.This book is a fantastic reference for students and scholars of historical linguistics, varieties of English, and World Englishes.

Preface and AcknowledgementsList of Tables and FiguresAbbreviations1. Introduction1.1. The aim of this study1.2. Why a single person’s English?1.3. Form-to-function approach and corpus linguistics1.4. Benjamin Franklin Corpus and some additional comments2. Form-to-Function Approach 1: Historical Sociolinguistic Perspectives2.1. Introductory remarks2.1.1. General2.1.2. Negation in the BF Corpus: A case study2.2. Become2.2.1. The frequency of become2.2.2. The perfect of become2.2.3. Become in the pseudo passive construction2.3. Behalf2.3.1. In behalf of vs. on behalf of2.4. Choose2.4.1 The conditional use of choose2.4.2. Some other aspects of choose2.5. Come2.5.1. Come and its progressive forms2.5.2. The perfect of come2.5.3. Come and its collocation2.6. Fall2.6.1. The frequency of the verb fall and its usage2.6.2. The perfect of fall2.7. Fear2.7.1. The frequency of the verb fear and its first-person use2.7.2. The complementation of the verb fear and its parenthetical use2.7.3. The noun fear2.8. Forget2.8.1. The past participle forms of forget2.8.2. If I forget not2.8.3. Forget and its subject2.8.4. Forget and its complementation2.9. Go2.9.1. Go and its progressive forms2.9.2. The perfect of go2.9.3. Go and its collocation2.10. Like2.10.1. The verb like2.10.2. Like as a hedge2.10.3. Like vs. likely2.11. Methinks2.11.1. Methinks as a fossilized lexical item2.12. Please2.12.1. The pragmatic use of please2.12.2. Please and its transitivity2.13. Pray2.13.1. The pragmatic use of pray2.13.2. The verb pray followed by that-clauses and to-infinitives2.14. Remember2.14.1. Remember and its collocation2.14.2. Discoursal nature of remember2.14.3. Remember and its complementation2.15. Show2.15.1. Show vs. Shew2.15.2. Show and the double-object construction2.16. Think2.16.1. Think and the first and second persons2.16.2. The comment clause I think2.17. Work2.17.1. The preterite and past participle forms of work2.18. Write2.18.1. The preterite and past participle forms of write2.18.2. I wrote a few lines to you, or the dative object construction3. Form-to-Function Approach 2: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives3.1. Introductory remarks3.2. Arrive3.2.1. The perfect of arrive3.2.2. Arrive and adverbs3.3. Avoid3.3.1. Avoid -ing3.4. Dare3.4.1. The status of dare and its use in comment clauses3.5. Doubt3.5.1. The verb doubt and its complementation3.5.2. The noun doubt and its complementation3.5.3. Doubt and author orientation3.6. Drink3.6.1. Drank and drunk3.6.2. Drink and its objects3.7. Exceedingly3.7.1. Exceeding vs. exceedingly3.8. Forbear3.8.1. Forbear and its complementation3.9. Forbid3.9.1. The past participle forms of forbid3.9.2. Forbid and its complementation3.10. Grow3.10.1. Grow and some syntactic features3.10.2. Grow with animate and inanimate subjects3.11. Help3.11.1. Help and its complementation3.11.2. Cannot help -ing3.12. Need3.12.1. The status of need3.12.2. Other related expressions3.13. Return3.13.1. The perfect of return3.13.2. The verb return and adverbs3.14. Scarce3.14.1. Scarce vs. scarcely3.14.2. Scarce, scarcely and their collocation3.15. Speak3.15.1. The past participle forms of speak3.15.2. Bespeak, an etymologically related verb3.16. Street3.16.1. In the street vs. on the street3.17. Suffer3.17.1. Transitive and intransitive uses of suffer3.17.2. Suffer plus to-infinitive4. Discussion and Conclusion4.1. About this chapter 4.2 Discussion from functional perspectives4.2.1. Morphological and orthographic variation4.2.2. Auxiliaries vs. lexical verbs4.2.3. Progressive forms4.2.4. Be-perfect vs. have-perfect4.2.5. Passive4.2.6. The double-object construction4.2.7. Complementation4.2.8. Adverbs4.2.9. Choice of prepositions4.2.10. Comment clauses and author orientation4.2.11. Politeness expressions and others4.3. Concluding remarks4.3.1. Benjamin Franklin’s English4.3.2. On the form-to-function approachReferencesElectronic resourcesBibliographyAppendixList of LettersIndex