Middle English Prepositions and Adverbs with the Prefix «be-» in Prose Texts

A Study in Their Semantics, Dialectology and Frequency

This book offers the first comprehensive study of Middle English prepositions and adverbs combining the prefix «be-» with a preposition, an adverb or a numeral recorded in prose texts. Six best established lexemes, i.e., «before, beyond, behind, beneath, between» and«betwixt»are analysed. The investigated aspects include the semantics of the prepositions and adverbs, their dialectal and textual distribution as well as their frequency of use viewed both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. The study draws on the linguistic data retrieved from a collection of specially selected complete prose texts from the «Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose». The description of the obtained results is enhanced with numerous tables and figures.