This book presents the first empirical study of the historical development and geographical spread of mediopassive constructions in English. It examines the productivity of this grammatical pattern, its dissemination throughout Modern English, and specific preferences for its use across different text types. The study integrates corpus-based descriptions with cognitive linguistic models, utilizing concepts such as 'prototype', 'family resemblances', 'patch', and 'construction'. The theoretical framework is grounded in real textual data sourced from publicly accessible machine-readable corpora, text-databases, and a specialized corpus of American mail-order catalogues.

This work is positioned as a significant contribution to the field, offering a novel empirical approach to understanding grammatical change. By combining corpus linguistics with cognitive theory, it aims to bridge the gap between data-driven analysis and theoretical modeling. The study is expected to be of interest to both empirical and theoretical linguists, providing a detailed account of a specific linguistic phenomenon. Its focus on real textual data ensures a grounded and robust analysis of mediopassive constructions.