ICEHL 18

International Conference on English Historical

Linguistics

KU Leuven

14-18 July 2014

2

3

Plenary sessions

English historical philology past, present, and future: A narcissist’s view

Robert D. Fulk Indiana University Bloomington

The ultimate aim of this paper is to provide a sketch of what the future likely holds for English historical philology. Defining what philology is, however, demands a substantial preamble, since quite possibly no two scholars would agree on the meaning of the word; hence, any definition will to some degree be personal, a product of individual practice. One fairly objective way of approaching the subject is to trace the history of the discipline and show how present circumstances are the product of disciplinary changes over time. Even so, a scholar’s background and personal interests cannot help but influence the ways that the various sub-disciplines of philology come to play the greater or lesser roles that they do: these sub-disciplines include historical linguistics and the study of manuscripts (including paleography, codicology, stemmatics, and scribal practices), orthographic systems (including orthoepy), poetic meter, rhyme, translators’ practices, and numismatics, among other concerns. A series of case studies illustrating the development of a philologist (me, if you care to know) shows how such areas of study are related to one another. These include, in a series of developments over time, (1) etymological studies in the lexicons of Old English and Middle Welsh, (2) morphological studies, focusing particularly on Germanic verbs and the Verschärfung (or “Holtzmann’s law”), (3) studies of poetic meter, shedding light on the dating and editing of anonymous texts, (4) linguistic and manuscript studies in relation to textual criticism and textual interpretation, and (5) the construction of up-to-date handbooks and textbooks of historical English as a necessity for the continuance of English philology as a viable set of practices.In some respects the practice of philology appears to face a difficult future, in part because the corporatization of higher learning disfavors fields like this one. In some other respects the future holds considerable promise, largely as a result of the digitization of research tools, which has made it easier to engage effectively in philological pursuits. Books that were once hard to acquire are now freely available electronically, and electronic resources have greatly simplified the task of replacing aging editions, handbooks, and instructional tools and thus

4

keeping the discipline relevant. Digitization has also enabled the rise of corpus linguistics, which in some of its forms has taken a decidedly philological turn, for example encoding paleographical and codicological information within texts in historical databases. Challenges remain; opportunities abound.

Gradualness vs. abruptness in acquisition and change

Marit Westergaard UiT The Arctic University of Norway

A central issue in historical syntax is whether changes are typically gradual or abrupt, i.e. whether they may span several centuries or whether they appear between one generation of speakers and the next. This question may have different answers depending on whether change is considered at the level of the speech community or in the grammatical competence of individual speakers. In this talk, I briefly outline some central issues related to gradualness vs. abruptness, such as reanalysis, grammar competition and the distinction between I-language and E-language, illustrating with some central examples and pointing out some problematic issues. I also discuss some examples of synchronic variation, providing evidence from language acquisition studies that children are sensitive to fine syntactic distinctions from early on. Finally, I suggest that the key to understanding variation and change is in identifying the size of syntactic rules, and argue that most changes affect very small parts of the grammar. Thus, a possible reconciliation of the two perspectives, gradualness vs. abruptness, may lie in considering change in terms of what I refer to as micro-cues.

Flanders Fields and the consolidation of Canadian English

Charles Boberg McGill University, Montreal

World War I, in which over half a million Canadians served, played a decisive role in forging a new Canadian nation. Beyond the tragedy it wrought, it gave English Canadians a clearer sense of who they were as a people and contributed to the consolidation of a national variety of Standard Canadian English. This paper will present evidence of this formative period from acoustic analyses of interviews with Canadian First

5

World War veterans, demonstrating the value of archival materials in the historical linguistics of the recent past.

Identifying stances: The (re)construction of strategies and practices of stance in a historical community

Peter J. Grund

University of Kansas Recent sociolinguistic research (e.g., Englebretson 2007; Jaffe 2009) has shown the complex ways in which different present-day communities and individuals construct and signal stance, or, simply put, a speaker’s position as regards the content of his/her message. While stancetaking has received increasing attention in English historical linguistics, studies have focused on the inventory of linguistic resources available to express stance (e.g., Biber 2004) or the employment of a limited set of features by particular authors or in particular text categories (e.g., Fitzmaurice 2004). Little research has considered in depth how the full inventory of stance markers can be utilized by historical communities or members of those communities for particular discoursal, interactional, and social purposes. Such a sociopragmatic approach to stance points up the challenge, and at the same time – as present-day sociolinguistic research suggests – the necessity, of reconstructing the community contexts in order to fully comprehend the discursive goals underpinning community members’ stancetaking. Focusing on a particular historical community, my talk demonstrates the complexity of delineating that community and the norms and motivations of its members in order to map their construction of stance. My focus is on the colonial American community of Salem (Village and Town) and neighboring localities that responded to the perceived attack on community members from witches in 1692–1693. A study of stancetaking devices in the more than 400 witness depositions extant from the trial proceedings against alleged witches highlights the collaborative and communal nature of stancetaking. Furthermore, it underscores the community members’ negotiation of stance in response to the legal context, the sociocultural setting, and the conventions of narrative retelling. Not until these intersecting contexts and factors are carefully considered do the complex dynamics of stancetaking emerge at Salem. In addition to revealing the multifaceted, strategic use of stance in a specific socio-historical setting, my study thus suggests the importance to

6

us as historical linguists of anchoring our interpretations firmly in the historical communities whose usage we are investigating. Although reconstructing such communities can be difficult, devoting attention to them has significant payoff: they will help us add depth to our understanding of how language users at early stages of English shaped, negotiated, and utilized linguistic resources for particular pragmatic and social purposes. Biber, Douglas. 2004. “Historical Patterns for the Grammatical Marking of Stance: A

Cross-Register Comparison.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5(1): 107‒136. Englebretson, Robert (ed.). 2007. Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation,

and Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fitzmaurice, Susan. 2004. “Subjectivity, Intersubjectivity, and the Historical

Construction of Interlocutor Stance: From Stance Markers to Discourse Markers.” Discourse Studies 6: 427‒448.

Jaffe, Alexandra (ed.). 2009. Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

On structural hypercharacterization: Some examples from the history of English syntax

María José López-Couso

University of Santiago de Compostela Hypercharacterization (Lehmann 2005) or accretion (Kuteva 2008) is a widely attested cross-linguistic phenomenon which involves the accumulation of redundant linguistic material. In this talk I examine a number of cases of syntactic accretion from various periods in the history of English, paying attention to the motivations and functions of hypercharacterized forms and constructions. The selected case studies include, among others, the use of resumptive pronouns in extraction contexts and the development of so-called ‘strengthened’ adverbial subordinators (e.g. for because, like as if). These examples show that accretion is interesting not only in and of itself, but also because it provides appealing instances of linguistic competition between variants and because it may result in the development of new structures.

7

General sessions and workshops

How them could have been his

Rhona Alcorn University of Edinburgh

Keywords: Pronoun, Middle English, Etymology Personal pronoun paradigms of Middle English show some radical developments from their Old English precursors, e.g. the introduction of 3 pl. th- forms, and the transition from Old English 3 nom. sg. fem. hēo to Middle English she. (On the history of ‘she’, see the abstract by Roger Lass and Margaret Laing.) One seldom-mentioned development is the appearance from about 1200 of a new, s-ful form type in contexts where one might expect a reflex of Old English acc. pl. hīe, as in (1), or (less commonly) acc. sg. fem. hīe, as in (2).

(1) Þet is þe felliste best þet me clepeþ hyane / þet ondelfþ þe bodies

of dyade men and hise eteþ ‘That is the most savage beast that one calls ‘hyena’ / which digs up the bodies of dead men and eats them’ (Morris 1866 [1965]: 61, ll.23–25)

(2) Huoþet ziȝþ ane wyfman, and wylneþ his ine herte … ‘Who-that sees a woman, and desires her in (his) heart …’ (Morris 1866 [1965]: 11, ll.1–2)

Such forms did not survive beyond the 15

th century.

The origin of these forms has never been satisfactorily explained. Noting corresponding s-ful forms in other Germanic varieties (e.g. Old Frisian acc. sg. fem. and acc. pl. s(e), Old Saxon acc. sg. fem. sia and acc. pl. sia (masc. & fem.), siu (neut.)), Nielsen (1981: 165 (§21), 227 (§7)) suggests their appearance in Middle English is perhaps a result of ‘contacts with the Continent’ but supplies no further detail. Morsbach (1897: 331), on the other hand, takes them to be native formations, originating in forms corresponding to other Germanic s-initial forms and later worn down to a clitic ‘s’, which subsequently evolved into non-clitic variants including Middle English as, es, is, hes, his, hise. Morsbach does not, however, tackle

8

the obvious question of why acc. pl. and acc. sg. fem. forms in (-)s(-) are not attested in English until a comparatively late date (Howe 1996: 140).

I will argue that these s-ful forms are indeed native English formations but will propose a different origin—one which explains (a) why they were confined to the contexts illustrated by examples (1) and (2), and (b) why these forms emerged when they did.

Howe, S. 1996. The personal pronouns in the Germanic languages. Berlin: Walter de

Gruyter. Morris, R. (ed.) 1866. Dan Michel Ayenbite of Inwyt, vol. I: Text, EETS OS 23.

[Reissued P. Gradon 1965.] London: Oxford University Press. Morsbach, L. 1897. Review of O.F. Emerson, The history of the English Language.

Anglia Beiblatt 7/11:321-38. Nielsen, H.F. 1981. Old English and the continental Germanic languages. Innsbruck:

Ins tut f r Sprachwissenscha der niversität Innsbruck.

Heaven and earth: Some metaphorical connections

Marc Alexander & Christian Kay University of Glasgow

Keywords: lexicon, thesaurus, category, metaphor, supernatural Completion of the Historical Thesaurus of English project (HT) has opened up new possibilities for the study of the English lexicon. It is now available in print as the Historical Thesaurus of the OED (Kay et al. 2009), as a searchable online resource (www.glasgow.ac.uk/historicalthesaurus/), and, for subscribers, as a component of the online Oxford English Dictionary (www.oed.com/). Users of the latter should note (a) that it is under revision and therefore not an exact match for the other versions, which are based on the second edition of the OED, and (b) that it does not contain Old English words unrecorded after 1150. These are included in the print and Glasgow online versions, using material from A Thesaurus of Old English (Roberts and Kay 2000).

The HT database contains some 793,742 word forms arranged in 225,131 semantic categories, linked vertically by relationships such as hyponymy and meronymy and horizontally by synonymy and, to a lesser extent, antonymy. Automatic routines enable links between categories in this hierarchy to be identified and quantified through tracking of recurrent word forms. In a current project, Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus (www.glasgow.ac.uk/metaphor, funded by the Arts and

9

Humanities Research Council from January 2012 to December 2014), researchers are examining these links with a view to creating a ‘metaphor map’ showing the development of systematic metaphors throughout the history of English. This paper will describe these procedures and the problems involved in applying them, such as the elimination of homonymy and unmotivated polysemy. It will focus particularly on issues for historical linguists in identifying metaphors, such as semantic change, both within English and in source languages, and shifting world-views. Discussion will centre on a case study of metaphorical links evidenced in categories of Supernatural Phenomena, including Deity, Angel, Devil, Heaven and Hell. It is hypothesized that these categories will link to concepts in the physical, emotional and moral universes, and that decisions about metaphor will need to take account of prevailing world-views, such as belief or otherwise in the ‘reality’ of the supernatural. In conclusion, the paper will introduce another new project: SAMUELS (Semantic Annotation and Mark Up for Enhancing Lexical Searches, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council from January 2014 to March 2015), which is exploring the contribution HT can make to disambiguating polysemous word forms in texts, including those from earlier periods. Kay, Christian, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels and Irené Wotherspoon (eds). 2009.

Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Roberts, Jane and Christian Kay with Lynne Grundy. 2000. A Thesaurus of Old English, King’s College London Medieval Studies XI, 1995, 2 vols. Second edition, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. http://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/

The get-passive in nineteenth-century English: Corpus analysis and prescriptive comments

Lieselotte Anderwald

University of Kiel Keywords: GET-passive, GET-constructions, corpus analysis, prescriptive grammar, nineteenth century English The GET-passive, together with HAVE GOT, has seen considerable prescriptive criticism in the twentieth century (e.g. reported in Ballard 1939: 23-26; Mittins et al. 1970: 33-35). Since we know from historical corpus studies that the rise of the GET-passive is a Late Modern English phenomenon

10

(Denison 1993, 1998; Hundt 2001; cf. also Gries and Hilpert 2012 for the twentieth century), it makes sense to assume a link with the onset of prescriptive grammar writing (in the second half of the eighteenth, and in particular in the nineteenth century). And indeed, prescriptive grammars have been blamed for the comparatively slow rise of the GET-passive over the course of the nineteenth century (Hundt 2001). However, this claim has not been substantiated by evidence from the grammars themselves yet. In this talk, I will trace the rise of GET over the nineteenth (and into the twentieth) century in corpora and differentiate the individual constructions that GET was (and is) used in. I will then correlate the shift in constructional use with prescriptive comments in nineteenth-century grammar books, based on my Collection of Nineteenth-Century Grammars, which contains over 250 grammar books from Britain and the US. As my talk will show, criticism of GET and GET-constructions occurs; however, the GET-passive curiously is almost exempt from this criticism. I will propose some speculative reasons why this may be so. However, it seems likely that criticism of the GET-passive is a truly twentieth-century phenomenon – one of the striking cases where nineteenth-century normative grammar writing is much less normative than often thought. Ballard, Philip Boswood. 1939. Teaching and Testing English. London: University of

London Press. Denison, David. 1993. English Historical Syntax: Verbal Constructions. London & New

York: Longman. Denison, David. 1998. “Syntax.” In Suzanne Romaine, ed. The Cambridge History of

the English Language Vol. IV: 1776-1997. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 92-329.

Gries, Stefan Th., and Martin Hilpert. 2012. “Variability-based Neighbor Clustering: A bottom-up approach to periodization in historical linguistics.” In Terttu Nevalainen and Elizabeth Closs Traugott, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 134-144.

Hundt, Marianne. 2001. “What corpora can tell us about the grammaticalisation of voice in get-constructions.” Studies in Language 25: 49-88.

Mittins, William Henry, Mary Salu, Mary Edminson, and Sheila Coyne. 1970. Attitudes to English Usage. London: Oxford University Press.

11

Personal pronouns as clitics in Middle English: Between spelling and sound

Anna Antkowiak

Adam Mickiewicz University Keywords: pronoun, clitic, Middle English This paper is a part of a PhD project which aims at depicting aspects of pronominal cliticisation regarding environmental conditioning factors governing the process in the Middle English period. Although, classical handbooks on the history of the English language barely mention the process (Mossé 1952, Mustanoja 1960, Fisiak 1965, Visser 1978, Blake 1992), diachronic and contemporary studies often refer to English pronouns as clitics. The main rift lies in the perspectives on the defining criteria: whether the syntactic and phonological features ought to co-occur, or whether the two planes of criteria should not to be taken as mutually complementary (Anderson 2005: 32).

Due to the nature of the data considered, spelling was taken as a starting point, with the assumption that with the lack of standard orthography scribal spellings might have mirrored actual pronunciation. Under the individual entries for personal pronoun the Middle English Dictionary Online [MED] lists several contractions which are specific to this word category, e.g.:

(1) segget < segge hit

tis < hit is artou < art thou shere < she were shaltus < shalt hes, shalt them yave < ye have

The sample is representative in terms of phonological contexts

illustrated by MED. Such phonological reduction might be a sign of cliticisation, as clinging for stress is one of the prerequisites of the process. However, even a quick look reveals a flaw. Pronominal ‘cliticisation’ as illustrated under (1) seems to be restricted only to a subset of the pronominal paradigm; the preference appears to stem from only a handful of environments being favoured. Whereas clitics, unlike affixes, are claimed to be phonologically indifferent to a host.

The present research aims at verifying whether pronouns were as prone

12

to cliticisation, in phonological terms, already within Middle English, as they seem to be now (cf. Dixon 2007). Research aims at utilising the poetic dictum of the times, incorporating metre and the remaining alliteration, as the major source of information regarding placement of stress (Minkova 2003), however, it seemed crucial to incorporate syntactic criteria, albeit very carefully considering the specificity of the text types chosen, in order to complement the findings based on the phonological factors, in the hope of establishing that the contracted spellings do mirror the clitic status of the pronouns in question, and are not merely scribal ease aimed at quicker execution of commonly found pronoun combinations. Anderson, Stephen R. 2005. Aspects of the theory of clitics. Oxford University Press. Beukema, Frits - Marcel den Dikken (eds.). 2000. Clitic phenomena in European

languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company Blake, N. (ed). 1992. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol.II 1066-

1476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. M. W. – Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.). 2002. Word: Across-linguistic

typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. 2007. “Clitics in English”, in English Studies 88.5: 574-600. Fischer, Olga. 1992. “Syntax”. In: Blake, N. (ed). 1992. The Cambridge History of the

English Language. Vol. II 1066-1476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fisiak, Jacek. 1965. Morphemic Structure of Chaucer’s English. University of Alabama

Press. Gerlach, Brigit – Janet Grijzenhout (eds.). 2000. Clitics in Phonology, Morphology and

Syntax. Lingustik Aktuell – Lingustics Today 36. Amsterdam – Philadelfia: Benjamins.

Kemenade, Ans van – Nigel Vincent (eds.).1987. Parameters of Morphosyntacitc Change. Cambridge University Press.

Klavans, Judith. 1995. On clitics and cliticization. New York: Garland Publishing Inc. Koopman, Willem, F. 1994. “Evidence for Clitic Adverbs in Old English. An Evaluation.”

In: Britton, Derek. (ed.). 1994. English Historical Linguistics. Papers from the 8th international conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Koopman, Willem, F. 1997. “Another look at clitics in Old English”, in Transactions of the Philological Society 95.1: 73-93.

Minkova, Donka. 2003. Alliteration and sound change in early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mossé, Fernand. 1952. A Handbook of Middle English. (Translated by James A. Walker.) Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.

Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. Middle English Syntax. Helsinki: Societe Neophilologique. Pintzuk, Susan. 1996. Cliticization in OE. In Aaron L Halpern – Arnold Zwicky (eds)

Approaching second: second position clitics and related phenomena, Stanford CA: CSLI, 3758-409

Somers Wicka, Katerina. 2009. From phonology to syntax: pronominal cliticization in Otfrid’s ‘Evangelienbuch’. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

13

Visser, F. Th. 1978. An historical syntax of the English language. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Zwicky, Arnold – Geoffrey K. Pullum. 1983. “Cliticization vs. Inflection: English N’T.” ,

in Language 59.3: 502-513. Zwicky, Arnold M. 1985. “Clitics and particles”, in Language 62.2: 283-305.

Headless free relatives and resumption in Old English

Bartnik, Artur Catholic University of Lublin

Free relatives illustrated in (1) are analysed as headless because the case of the underlined pronoun is assigned by the embedded verb and the structure contains a resumptive pronoun (cf. Allen 1980). (1) And ðone ðe ðu nu hæfst, nis se ðin wer (Alc.P.V.37) Another possible analysis of such structures employed in this paper involves correlativization, as illustrated in (2) (cf. Liptak 2009, Truswell 2008): (2) [correlative clause… relative phrase...] [main clause... correlate…] Correlativization is a non-local relativization strategy (cf. Srivastav 1991, Bhatt 2003), in which a restrictive relative clause appears to the left of a(n) (non)-adjacent nominal expression linked to it. The Old English structure shown above meets all the criteria established for correlatives: a relative clause appears in the left periphery, the correlate contains a demonstrative and the syntactic relation between the two constituents is loose though they form one semantic unit (Liptak 2009, Truswell 2008). A corpus-based study shows that free headless relatives exhibit different syntactic properties and two types should be distinguished: ‘demonstrative’ correlatives (þone þe) and ‘whoever’ correlatives (starting with swa..). Both types feature two patterns, identical and non-identical, in which the cases of the correlative elements are the same or different. Consider: (3) identical pattern type 1

þam þe ge nellað forgifan, þam ne beoð forgifene. (coaelhom, ÆHom_7:53.1090)

14

(4) non-identical pattern type 1 And ðone ðe ðu nu hæfst, nis se ðin wer (Alc.P.V.37) (5) identical pattern type 2

eal swa hwæt swa ic þe gehet eal ic hit gesette. (coblick,LS_20 :147.155.1807)

(6) non-identical pattern type 2 mid swa hwam swa ic hit mid fynde, beo he min þeow. (cootest,Gen:44.10.1883)

We will argue that those patterns exhibit a number of differences. First, in identical patterns (type 1) the dative case is common, while in identical patterns (type 2) the accusative is practically the only option. Second, non-identical patterns are more common in type 2 with more case combinations. This means that relativizers can carry any non-nominative case just like their correlates in the main clause. The case combinations in non-identical patterns of type 1 are limited. Third, both types do not have the same case assignment mechanism: while in type 2 cases are independently assigned within the clauses, in structures of type 1 cases can be assigned by case attraction, as shown in (7): (7) þone þe hæme wið nyten, ne læt ðu hine libban. (cootest,

Exod:22.19.3279)

Measures in medieval English recipes: Culinary vs. medical

Magdalena Bator & Marta Sylwanowicz University of Social Sciences, Warsaw

Keywords: recipe, measure, Medieval

The recipe has been categorized as a separate text type investigated among others by such scholars as Görlach (e.g., 1992, 2004), Carroll (1999, 2004) or Mäkinen (2004, 2006). It has been defined as 1) ‘formula for remedy’, 2) ‘prescription’, and 3) ‘statement on ingredients required’ (Görlach 2004). A diachronic study of the recipe shows a great way of development the text type has undergone, since the earlier a recipe the more it varies from what we know today.

The proposed paper deals with medieval recipes from the 14th

and 15th

c. Two types of recipes will be analyzed and compared, i.e., the culinary and the medical recipe. The function of both types seems to be very similar, i.e.,

15

to instruct how to prepare a particular dish/medicine. Thus, the recipes should be structured in a similar manner. Appearances can be deceitful, however. A closer look at samples of both types proves that the two are far apart.

The paper attempts at providing a general examination of one of the distinctive features of the recipe, i.e., the way of giving measures (mostly the weights and amounts). There are three basic systems of weight: (i) the apothecaries’ weight, (ii) the avoirdupois weight, and (iii) the troy weight. Firstly, each of the systems will be briefly discussed. Next, the vocabulary referring to measures in both corpora (i.e., the culinary and the medical) will be presented. And finally, the two ways of measure specification will be compared in order to reveal differences in the structure of particular recipes.

The corpus used for the present study can be divided into the culinary and the medical corpus. The former consists of recipes found in Hieatt and Butler’s Forme of Cury (14

th c.), Austin’s Two 15

th-century cookery books

(15th

c.) and Hieatt’s A gathering of Medieval English recipes (14th

and 15th

c.). The latter consists of medical texts collected in the Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT) corpus, an electronic collection of medical treatises from c. 1375 to c. 1500 compiled by Taavitsainen, Pahta and Mäkinen (2005). These texts are subdivided into three categories, i.e., Surgical texts, Specialized texts, and Remedies and materia medica. The medical corpus used for the present study will consist of the material from the last category, illustrating the remedy-book tradition, i.e., writings of a less learned and theoretical character. Most texts included in this section are in the form of recipes. In addition, the material will be supplemented with the medical recipes written c. 1330, included in the Appendix to the MEMT corpus. Austin, T. (ed.) 2000. Two 15th-c. cookery books. Oxford: OUP. Carroll, R. 1999. “The Middle English recipe as a text-type”, Neuphilologische

Mitteilungen 100: 27-42. Carroll, R. 2004. “Middle English recipes: Vernacularization of a text-type”, in:

Taavitsainen, I. ‒ P. Pahta (eds.), Medical and scientific writing in Late Medieval English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 174– 196.

Görlach, M. 1992. “Text-types and language history: The cookery recipe”, in: Rissanen, M. et al. (eds.), History of Englishes: New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 736-761.

Görlach, M. 2004. Text types and the history of English. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hieatt, Constance B. (ed.) 2008. A gathering of Medieval English recipes. (Textes Vernaculaires du Moyen Age 5). Turnhout: Brepols.

16

Hieatt, Constance B. – Sharon Butler (eds.) 1985. Curye on Inglysch: English culinary manuscripts of the 14th c. (Early English Text Society, SS 8). London: Oxford University Press.

Mäkinen, M. 2004. “Herbal recipes and recipes in herbals – intertextuality in early English medical writing”, in: Taavitsainen, I. ‒ P. Pahta (eds.), Medical and scientific writing in Late Medieval English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 144 – 173.

Mäkinen, M. 2006. Between herbals et alia: Intertextuality in Medieval English herbals. Doctoral dissertation. University of Helsinki, Faculty of Arts, Department of English and The Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English.

Taavitsainen, I. ‒ P. Pahta ‒ M. Mäkinen (eds.) 2005. Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT). CD-ROM with MEMT Presenter software by Raymond Hickey. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

(W)ho, w(h)en, w(h)ere, and w(h)at? The eighteenth-century pronunciation of ‘wh’

Joan Beal & Ranjan Sen University of Sheffield

Compared to other areas of the language, there is relatively little research on the phonology of Late Modern English, arguably due to the idiosyncratic notation used by eighteenth-century authors, rendering it difficult to search for phonological information. We outline plans for a searchable database of eighteenth-century English phonology, and test whether such a resource might usefully answer questions about phonological variation and change.

Our test case involves the representation of ‘wh’ in nine eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionaries. In present-day RP, whale, what, where begin with /w/, whilst who, whole have initial /h/. Eighteenth-century sources present evidence, through their orthographic systems, of variation across authors between /hw/ and /w/ for the first set, hence a preserved versus unpreserved contrast in where/wear. Walker presents the loss of the contrast as a special case of ‘h-dropping’, which was just beginning to attract social stigma at this time in lower-class London English. Burn and Perry (Scottish) usually have /w/, although there are interesting isolated instances of /hw/. Spence (from Newcastle with Scottish heritage) uses distinct symbols for the initial consonants in where and wear, and even uses this symbol in who, whole. Therefore, in addition to the apparent social variation in the pronunciation of such words, geographical diversity can also be reconstructed, reflected in modern-day reflexes of the contrast

17

in the British Isles, with /w, h/ the norm in England, but with /hw/ and even /f/ in Scotland.

By examining a pilot transcribed corpus of lexical items from nine pronouncing dictionaries, and also incorporating modern phonetic evidence into the realisation of ‘wh’, we are able to analyse the data in terms of segmental and suprasegmental phonology, morphology, homophony, onomatopoeia, and frequency, identifying clear influences of each to varying degrees according to geography and chronology.

Old ‘truths’, new corpora: Old English conjunct clauses revisited

Kristin Bech University of Oslo

Keywords: Old English, conjunct clauses, discourse function, word order, verb-final This paper returns to the issue of the word order of conjunct main clauses in Old English. It has often been claimed, to the point of becoming an axiom, that Old English conjunct main clauses, i.e. clauses starting with the coordinating conjunction and or but, and which contain an overt subject, typically have verb-final (surface) word order (see e.g. Mitchell 1985; van Kemenade 1987; Traugott 1992; Pintzuk 1995, Baker 2012), as in (1).

(1) 7 On his broke he Gode fela behæsa behet and in his illness he God.DAT many promises made ‘and in his illness he made many promises to God’ (cochronE,ChronE_[Plummer]:1093.3.3116)

However, although Bech (2001a, 2001b) showed that only a small proportion of conjunct clauses are in fact verb-final, the conception that conjunct clauses are typically verb-final is still prevalent, and the topic thus needs to be re-addressed. In this paper, I therefore first corroborate the earlier empirical findings with new, robust, and replicable data from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). The data show that only 9.5% of the conjunct main clauses are in fact verb-final. If verb-late constructions are included as well, the percentage rises to 21.6%, which is still low. I then have a fresh look at a crucial point made in the early studies, namely that even though conjunct main clauses are not typically verb-final, a majority of verb-final main clauses (57%) are conjunct

18

clauses. The question is what motivates this ‘asymmetry’. I claim that it is due to information structure and discourse factors, more specifically the intersection between the discourse function of conjunct clauses and the discourse function of the different word order patterns. I compare the verb-final pattern to the verb-second pattern (XVS), in which no asymmetry is found: conjunct clauses are not V2, and V2 clauses are not conjunct clauses. As regards syntax, there is still no consensus in the literature concerning the exact landing sites of clause elements in the structure, and the syntactic models developed so far are not able to account for all the empirical facts. Hence, at present much research is concerned with the possible influence of information-structural factors on the word order of Old English. The ultimate aim of this paper is to illustrate the fine-grained system of Old English sentence structure, in which the various syntactic possibilities are exploited to the full for communicative purposes. Baker, Peter S. 2012. Introduction to Old English. Wiley-Blackwell. Bech, Kristin. 2001a. Are Old English conjunct clauses really verb-final? In L.J. Brinton

(ed), Historical linguistics 1999: selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9-13 August 1999, 49-62. John Benjamins.

Bech, Kristin Bech, Kristin. 2001b. Word Order Patterns in Old and Middle English: A Syntactic and Pragmatic Study. PhD dissertation, University of Bergen. <https://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/3850>

van Kemenade, Ans. 1987. Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. Foris Publications.

Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax, vols. I & II. Clarendon Press. Pintzuk, Susan. 1995. Variation and change in Old English clause structure. In D.

Sankoff, W. Labov and A. Kroch (eds), Language Variation and Change 7, 229-260.

Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk & Frank Beths. 2003. The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). Department of Linguistics, University of York. Oxford Text Archive, first edition. <http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YcoeHome1.htm>

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1992. Syntax. In R. M. Hogg (ed), The Cambridge History of the English Language.

19

I didn’t dare to make the smallest repartee, I need hardly tell you: A corpus-based study of the infinitival complements governed by need

and dare in the recent history of English

Sofia Bemposta-Rivas University of Vigo

Keywords: Complement clause; modal; lexical verb; retraction; grammaticalization. This paper aims to shed light on the status of the verbs need and dare as either lexical or auxiliary verbs in Late Modern and Present Day English. These verbs are attested already in OE and are grammaticalized at different points in time (Warner 1993; Beths 1999; Krug 2000; Taeymans 2004, 2006; Loureiro-Porto 2009). This study analyses their infinitival complementation options and their textual distribution, as well as their morphological and syntactic features in an attempt to explain the nature of the linguistic change undergone by these verbs. The Penn Parsed Corpus of British Modern English, a large parsed corpus containing data from 1770 to 1914, provides an excellent collection to test these assumptions in the Late Modern English period. The British National Corpus Baby will be used to compare the results of need in Late Modern and in Present Day English.

The analysis of the morphological and syntactic features of these verbs suggests that need and dare illustrate a change in progress towards a more regularized status from Late Modern English onwards. Morphologically, there is some connection between the type of complement and the presence or absence of -(e)s and -ed as, respectively, inflectional markers of third-person singular present and past tenses. In the earlier periods, the uninflected forms of both verbs are the dominant ones attested in these contexts. This situation changes from 1770 onwards, when dare always shows the inflected forms and need tends to exhibit the morphemes -(e)s and -ed. Further, the fact that need and dare show non-finite forms, i.e. to-infinitive and -ing forms, when they select a to-infinitive or an NP complement remark their lexical status.

Syntactically, the preference for a to-infinitive complement can be related to the use of need and dare in complex contexts (Rohdenburgh 2003, 1996) and also to the role of iconicity (Fischer 1992 and Fischer and Nänny 1999). In contrast to need, the position of lightly stressed adverbs is indicative of the status of dare in the clause. As for the co-occurrence with auxiliaries, this is restricted to NP complementation in the case of need and to to-infinitives with dare. In addition, whereas need is neutral as regards

20

polarity when it selects a to-infinitive clause, dare tends to occur more often in non-assertive contexts. Following Tagliamonte (2004: 50), I claim that the more grammaticalized constructions, i.e. need and dare with bare infinitive clauses, are entrenched in formulaic utterances or are used in certain discourse rituals.

This study accounts for the varying layers of grammaticalization accomplished by the different forms of these verbs (see Hopper 1991: 23), and serves as an illustration of the unidirectionality hypothesis (Traugott 2001, Haspelmath 2004; contra Fischer 2000 and Norde 2012)

Beths, Frank 1999: ‘The History of Dare and the Status of Unidirectionality*’.

Linguistics 37-6: 1069-1110. Fischer, Olga 1992: ‘Syntax’. The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. II:

1066-1476. Norman Blake, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 207-408. Fischer, Olga 2000: Pathways of Change: Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam:

John Benjamins. Fischer, Olga and Max Nänny 1999: ‘Iconicity as a Creative Form in Language Use’.

Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Literature. Max Nänny and Olga Fischer, eds. Amsterdam: John Benhamins. 26-36

Haspelmath, Martin 2004: ‘On Directionality in Language Change with Particular Reference to Grammaticalization’. Up and Down the Cline – The Nature of Grammaticalization. Olga Fischer, Muriel Norde and Harry Perridon, eds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 17-44.

Hopper, Paul J. 1991: ‘On some Principles of Grammaticalization’. Approaches to Grammaticalization, Volume I. Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Heine, eds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 17-35.

Krug, Manfred 2000: Emerging English Modals. A Corpus-based Study of Gramaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Loureiro-Porto, Lucía 2009: The Semantic Predecessors of Need in the History of English (c750-1710). Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

Norde, Muriel 2012: ‘Degrammaticalization’. The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization. Heiko Narrog and Bernd Heine, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 475-546.

Rohdenburg, Günter 1996: ‘Cognitive Complexity and Increased Grammatical Explicitness in English’. Cognitive Linguistics 7: 149-182.

Rohdenburg, Günter 2003: ‘Cognitive Complexity and Horror Aequi as Factors Determining the Use of Interrogative Clause Linkers in English’. Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English. Günter Rohdenburg and Britta Mondorf, eds. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 205-49.

Taeymans, Martine 2004: ‘An Investigation into the Marginal Modals DARE and NEED in British Present-day English: A Corpus-based Approach’. Up and Down the Cline – The Nature of Grammaticalization. Olga Fischer, Muriel Norde and Harry Perridon, eds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 97-114.

21

Taeymans, Martine 2006: An Investigation into the Emergence and Development of the Verb Need from Old to Present-Day English: A Corpus-based Approach. PhD dissertation. Antwerp: Universiteit Antwerpen.

Traugott, Elisabeth Closs 2001: Legitimate Counterexamples to Unidirectionality. Paper presented at Freiburg University, 17 October 2001.

Tagliamonte, Sali 2004: ‘Have to, Gotta, Must. Grammaticalization, Variation & Specialization in English Deontic Modality’. Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Hans Lindquist and Christian Mair, eds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 35-55.

Warner, Anthony R. 1993: English Auxiliaries. Structure and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Composite predicate constructions: Lexicalisation or delexicalisation?

Eva Berlage University of Hamburg

Keywords: lexicalisation, delexicalisation, fossilisation, decategorialisation, composite predicate constructions In this paper, I will compare two types of composite predicate constructions which are syntactically and semantically parallel: those of the type make fun of and those of the type take notice of. Both patterns are introduced by a so-called light verb (make, take) and both of them are followed by an NP (fun, notice) and a preposition (of). My claim is that these constructions have undergone two different types of language change: composite predicate constructions without a simple verb counterpart (like make fun of) go down the path of lexicalisation while those that contain a simple verb counterpart (like take notice of, which has the simple verb counterpart notice) become delexicalised.

With reference to Trousdale (2008) and Berlage (forthcoming), lexicalisation processes affecting the constructions will be accounted for in terms of a) the extent to which the construction (e.g. make fun of, take notice of) has become fossilised and b) the extent to which the nominal (e.g. fun or notice) has become decategorialised, losing e.g. the ability to take determiners and/or premodifiers. By contrast, constructions in which the NP enhances its prototypical grammatical properties (to occur e.g. as the subject of a passive construction) and in which the nominal shows an increasing syntactic freedom (in terms of its modifiability) will be interpreted as being part of the process of delexicalisation. These claims

22

will be tested against corpus data which represent fictional British English from the 16th century to the present day.

The empirical analyses are followed by a discussion of why we find so diverse syntactic developments in constructions that superficially look so similar. Here, I take into consideration both semantic reasons which relate to aspectual differences between composite predicates and simple verb counterparts (cf. e.g. Prince 1972; Vogt 2002; Huddleston/Pullum et al. 2002) and discourse-functional explanations. Discourse-functional explanations draw attention to speakers’ need for flexible modification patterns (cf. e.g. Jespersen 1942: 117; Nickel 1968: 15-6; Brinton 1996: 194; Kytö 1999: 179) and their striving for economy of expression (cf. e.g. Biber 2003; Biber et al. 2009; Leech et al. 2009; Biber/Gray 2011). Berlage, Eva (Forthcoming). “Opposite developments in composite predicate

constructions: The case of take advantage of and make use of.” In: Marianne Hundt (ed.), The Syntax of Late Modern English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biber, Douglas (2003). “Compressed noun phrase structures in newspaper discourse: The competing demands of popularization vs. economy.” In: Jean Aitchison and Diana M. Lewis (eds.), New Media Language. London: Routledge. 169-81.

Biber, Douglas and Bethany Gray (2011). “Grammatical change in the noun phrase: the influence of written language use.” English Language and Linguistics 15(2): 223-50.

Biber, Douglas, Jack Grieve and Gina Iberri-Shea (2009). “Noun phrase modification.” In: Günter Rohdenburg and Julia Schlüter (eds.), One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 182-93.

Brinton, Laurel J. (1996). “Attitudes towards increasing segmentalization: Complex and phrasal verbs in English.” Journal of English Linguistics 24: 186-205.

Huddleston, Rodney, Geoffrey K. Pullum et al. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jespersen, Otto (1942). A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Vol. VI: Morphology. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.

Kytö, Merja (1999). “Collocational and idiomatic aspects of verbs in Early Modern English: A corpus-based study of MAKE, HAVE, GIVE, TAKE, and DO.” In: Laurel J. Brinton and Minoji Akimoto (eds.), Collocational and Idiomatic Aspects of Composite Predicates in the History of English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 167-206.

Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair and Nicholas Smith (2009). Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nickel, Gerhard (1968). “Complex verbal structures in English.” International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 6: 1-21.

23

Prince, Ellen (1972). “A note on aspect in English: The take a walk construction.” In: Senta Ploetz (ed.), Transformationelle Analyse. Frankfurt: Athenum. 409-19.

Trousdale, Graeme (2008). “Constructions in grammaticalisation and lexicalization: Evidence from the history of composite predicate constructions in English.” In: Grame Trousdale and Nikolas Gisborne (eds.), Constructional Approaches to English Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 33-67.

Vogt, Helmut (2002). “Semantische Unterschiede zwischen komplexen Verbalfügungen vom Typ give/have/take a look und ihren einfachen Verbentsprechungen.” In: Reinhard Rapp (ed.), Sprachwissenschaft auf dem Weg in das Dritte Jahrtausend. Akten des 34. Linguistischen Kolloquiums in Germersheim 1999. Bern: Lang. 237-44.

The paths and pace of deverbal derivation in the earliest quotations of the Oxford English Dictionary

Michael Bilynsky

Ivan Franko National University in Lviv

Keywords: verbs, deverbal derivatives, OED earliest quotations, sequential paths, electronic modeling Shared-root derivation from over 17,000 English verbs has been put into eighteen single or multiple (owing to variant suffixes) slots inserted with deverbal nouns, adjectives and participles as well as second order adverbs and nouns. The aim of the study lies in the elaboration of the many-faceted software-enriched heuristics of the corpus of the OED first quotations for the study of deverbal word families and the reflections of the synonymy of verbs in the strings of their derivatives over time.

All possible combinations of the categories of shared-root lexemes within deverbal families have been examined for the sequence of the attestation of the respective elements and the chronological width between them.

Historically, the constituents of a synonymous string represent a chain of onomasiological events reflected in the OED-dated textual prototypes. A similar view on the reconstruction of historical synonymy by docking the OED textual prototypes of senses of words and the synonymy of words taken from the canonical Roget’s thesaurus has been implemented in [1]. In the suggested framework we use the strings of synonymous verbs from all the available alternative dictionaries of synonyms.

Each pair of strings consisting of a string of synonymous verbs with the chronologically positioned constituents and a derivationally reflected string

24

of coinages with the constituents placed in the order of the elements of the former string, thus (mis)matching their own successive chronology, builds up a matrix. The matrix is reversible by exchanging the column and line status of the respective strings. Such matrices are also built on the pairs of strings of derivatives. An average thesaurus yields several hundred thousand matrices. We will generalize on the tendencies of the sequential similarity (chronotropism) of the expansion of the compared strings.

A synonymous string and its diachronic reconstruction are characterized by a succession of their elements. In some cases these successions are identical, but in most they are characterized by a reshuffling of the constituents.

Each of the two successions of elements in the synonymous string is representable as a vector. The length of the vector equals the sum total of the weight factor values of all the elements in the dominant of the string. This value takes into account the number of synonyms in the string and the present-day ordinal or relative chronological (alternatively, OED-dated) positions of a synonym, respectively. The difference in the lengths of the two vectors constitutes the geometry of a diachronic reconstruction of the present-day synonymy. The fluctuations of this difference are established for strings of varied lengths and categorical affiliation. They reveal the sequential intactness and reshuffling of elements in parent and derived (near-)synonymy among the stringed deverbal word families over time.

The suggested electronic framework admits of the diversely partitioned processing of the material according to the relevant etymological or synchronic (sub-)layers. All the queries are supported by the on-site precedent/exhaustive downloading of examples as well as re-settable curvature visualizations of the distribution of quantitative parameters. Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. With additional material from

A Thesaurus of Old English. Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels, Irène Wotherspoon. Volume 1: Thesaurus. Oxford University Press. 2009. Vol. 1783 p.

25

Mortal lazy and deadly curious: Some diachronic notes on the intensifiers mortal and deadly

Zeltia Blanco-Suárez

University of Santiago de Compostela

Keywords: intensifiers, subjectification, grammaticalisation, mortal, deadly Intensification strategies in language are manifold, including prosody and repetition (cf. Bolinger 1972; Claridge 2011). Intensifiers, as perhaps the most prototypical of the intensification strategies, have for long been at the forefront of academic discussions. The reason for such prominence in scholarly debates owes to their tendency to rapid change and to their constant ‘recycling’ (Tagliamonte 2008) or renewal (cf. Méndez-Naya 2008; Barnfield and Buchstaller 2010; D’Arcy 2013).

The present paper is also concerned with intensifiers. More specifically, it sets out to explore the diachronic development of the death-related intensifiers deadly and mortal. In spite of the long-recorded history of these two words with the meaning ‘causing or liable to cause death’ (first records dating from the 11

th and 14

th centuries, respectively), mortal did not

develop a purely intensifying function until the 18th

century (cf. the OED). In the case of deadly, however, the boosting function emerged much earlier, already in the 14

th century, according to the OED.

Deadly and mortal share a common path of evolution, originally expressing literal or descriptive meanings, ((1)-(2)), later on rising in subjectivity and expressing more subjective or affective meanings ((3)-(4)), and eventually grammaticalising as intensifiers, as in (5) and (6). They thus seem to develop along the lines of Adamson (2000).

(1) He wonded þe Kyng dedely fulle sore. (1330. OED, s.v. deadly adv.

1a).

(2) At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene. (1387-95. OED, s.v.

mortal a. 1b).

(3) They..Gazde each on other and lookt deadly pale. (1597. OED, s.v.

deadly adv.3).

(4) The Nymph grew pale, and in a mortal fright. (1693. OED, s.v.

mortal a. and adv.4).

(5) I þat es sa dedli dill [‘foolish, dull’] (1400. OED, s.v. deadly adv.4).

(6) But that, he being very gay and lively, she was mortal jealous of

him; (ECF. 1748. Samuel Richardson. Clarissa, vol. 5, Letter I, p.7).

26

Through a collocational analysis, it will be shown that these forms, despite their parallel evolution and shared meanings, differ in regard to their uses and degrees of productivity as intensifiers. This diachronic study will thus reveal how deadly and mortal peaked to fame and went out of fashion again, being therefore ‘recycled’, in line with many other intensifiers in the history of English.

Data for the present paper have been drawn from a variety of sources, including the OED, the MED, Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Fiction (ECF), Nineteenth Century Fiction (NCF), and the extended version of the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (CLMETEV). Adamson, Sylvia. 2000. ‘A lovely little example: Word order options and category

shift in the premodifying string’. In Pathways of change. Grammaticalization in English, eds. Olga Fischer, Anette Rosenbach, and Dieter Stein: 39-66. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Bolinger, Dwight. 1972. Degree words. The Hague: Mouton. Barnfield, Kate, and Isabelle Buchstaller. 2010. ‘Intensifiers in Tyneside: Longitudinal

developments and new trends’. English World-Wide 31(3): 252-287. Claridge, Claudia. 2011. Hyperbole in English: A corpus-based study of exaggeration.

Cambridge: CUP. D’Arcy, Alexandra. 2013. ’So slow yet totally frenetic: Intensification in longitudinal

perspective’. Paper presented at Studies in the History of English (SHEL-8). Brigham Young University. September 2013.

Méndez-Naya, Belén. 2008. ‘Introduction’. Special issue on English intensifiers, English Language and Linguistics 12(2): 213-219.

Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2008. ‘So different and pretty cool! Recycling intensifiers in Toronto, Canada’. English Language and Linguistics 12(2): 361-394.

CLMETEV = Corpus of Late Modern English Texts. Compiled by Hendrik de Smet.

Department of Linguistics, University of Leuven. ECF = Eighteenth Century Fiction. Chadwyck Healey. 1996-2013. Available online at:

http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk/home/home_c18f.jsp. EEBO = Early English Books Online. Chadwyck Healey. 2003-2013. Available online at:

http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home. MED = Middle English Dictionary. Kurath, Hans et al., eds. 1952-2001. Ann Arbor, MI:

University of Michigan Press. Available online at: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/.

NCF = Nineteenth Century Fiction. Chadwyck Healey. 2000-2013. Available online at: http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk/home/home_c19f.jsp.

OED= Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Online version with revisions available

27

Verbal misconduct through the lens of Victorian London newspapers

Birte Bös University of Duisburg-Essen

Keywords: Metalinguistic labels, Victorian newspapers, verbal misconduct, conceptual space This study investigates the conceptualisations of inappropriate verbal behaviour in Victorian London newspapers, drawing on material from the British Newspaper Archive. In line with the tenets of corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS), it combines quantitative and qualitative approaches, constantly moving “back and forth between data in the form of concordances, collocations and clusters on the one hand and, on the other, the contextual information (i.e. the actual texts)” (Haarman and Lombardo 2009: 8; see also Brownlees 2012: 21f.).

This study firstly compiles an inventory of metalinguistic labels for verbal misconduct, including, for example, representations such as abusive, insulting and foul language, profanities, obscenities and vulgarities. Verbal misconduct, a criminal offence by definition of the Metropolitan Police act 1839 (sect. 54, no. 13), was often reported in the popular ‘Petty crime’ sections of Victorian papers. Yet, instances are, for example, also found in political hard news.

Based on the cotext and the implications of the sociohistorical contexts (cf. Pahta and Taavitsainen 2010: 551), the metalinguistic labels retrieved are, in a second step, mapped in conceptual space. Comparable to Culpeper’s outline of modern impoliteness labels (2012: 98), this mapping considers dimensions of usage, one of the most important ones being that of public vs. private spheres. In this way, this study aims to capture the historical facets of such metalinguistic labels and to shed more light on Victorian norms and expectations regarding (in-)appropriate verbal behaviour. Brownlees, Nicholas (2012), “The beginnings of periodical news (1620-1665)”. In:

Roberta Facchinetti; Nicholas Brownlees; Birte Bös & Udo Fries, News as Changing Texts: Corpora, Methodologies and Analysis, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 5-48.

Culpeper, Jonathan (2012), Impoliteness. Using Language to Cause Offence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

28

Haarman, Louann and Linda Lombardo (2009), “Introduction”. In: Louann Haarman & Linda Lombardo (eds.), Evaluation and Stance in War News. A Linguistic Analysis of American, British and Italian Television News Reporting of the 2003 Iraqi War. London: Continuum, 1-26.

Pahta, Päivi & Irma Taavitsainen (2010), “Scientific discourse”. In: Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Historical Pragmatics. Handbooks of Pragmatics 8. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter Mouton, 549-586.

Free adjuncts in Late Modern English: A corpus-based study

Carla Bouzada-Jabois University of Vigo - KU Leuven

Keywords: free adjunct, adverbial, dependency, control, text type Free adjuncts (FA) are typically non-finite constructions conveying adverbial meaning with respect to a main clause, as in then advancing to their City, they humbled themselves to the Ground (COOKE-1712,1,427.140). This paper aims to study the distribution of FAs in the Late Modern English (LModE) period and to compare the results with those of other studies based on data from Early Modern (Río-Rey 2002) and Contemporary English (Kortmann 1991). For that purpose, a corpus-based study has been carried out, with examples retrieved from the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English. Two main variables will be analysed: (i) subject control and (ii) textual distribution.

(i) Subject control: Syntactically, FAs are dependent subjectless constructions and this implies that the subject of the FA must be found in the main clause (Visser 1972: 1132, Kortmann 1991: 5), as illustrated in It was taken about the middle of June, creeping on the ground, near Charlton in Kent (ALBIN-1736,24.665). It has been claimed in the literature that subject identity between the subject of the main clause and the subject of the FA is the default case. Accordingly, FAs have been classified as either related (subject-identity) or unrelated (no subject-identity) (Kortmann 1991: 43). In this study I depart from such proposal and will classify FAs that find their controller inside the main clause (either explicit or even implicit) as related even if this controller is not the subject. My data confirm that the default case recognised by the literature is indeed the trend in the LModE period since it accounts for 78 percent of the examples in the database. Only 12 percent of the examples are unrelated, and around 10 percent correspond to the group of related examples in which the referent is found in a constituent in the main clause that is not the subject. In my

29

account control properties have an influence on the position of the FA with respect to its main clause. In short, final extraclausal position is favoured by the data when there is subject identity and, in consequence, the subject is discourse-activated. In FAs without subject identity, either initial or final position are feasible with similar frequencies.

(ii) Textual distribution: In the study of FAs’ textual distribution, I will examine the productivity of the different text types in which they occur. Studies on FAs usually claim that FAs are clearly preferred in written discourse (and that, in consequence, they even show text-type dependency) rather than in spoken language (Thompson 1983: 45-46; Kortmann 1991: 38; Río-Rey 2002: 315). This study confirms that the productivity of FAs in written-related texts overtakes, by far, the use of FAs in speech-related genres. With respect to specific text-types, those genres of a more narrative type seem to account for most of the instances of FAs in the database. Kortmann, Bernd. 1991. Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in English: Problems of control

and Interpretation. London: Routledge. Kroch Anthony, Beatrice Santorini and Ariel Diertani. 2010. Penn Parsed Corpus of

Modern British English. Rio-Rey, Carmen. 2002. Subject control and coreference in Early Modern English free

adjuncts and absolutes. English Language and Linguistics 6(2): 309-323. Thompson, Sandra A. 1983. Grammar and Discourse: The English Detached Participial

Clause, in F. Klein-Andreu (ed.) Discourse Perspectives on Syntax. New York: Academic Press, 43-65.

Visser, Fredericus Th. 1972. An Historical Syntax of the English Language, Part II: 2: Syntactical Units with One Verb. Leiden: Brill.

The development of ‘conditional’ should in English

Anne Breitbarth Ghent University

Keywords: conditionals, modal verbs, tense, should, grammaticalization The development of the ‘conditional’ use of should, (1-2), has several interesting properties.

30

(1) But it shows the immediate chaos that could be triggered if Greece should leave the eurozone. (http://tinyurl.com/7gcb6a8)

(2) Should Real survive, their Dutch coach, Leo Beenhakker, is likely to find himself facing Ajax, the club he left in November, in the final. (BNC:AKM)

Originally, the sequence of tenses is observed, but this restriction is

now lost. In Early Modern English, still only about 30% of all sentences with formally past tense ‘conditional’ should in the protasis occurred with a present-tense verb in the apodosis, the figures rises to c. 50% in older Modern British English, and the original percentages are reversed in Present-day British English, where the verb of the apodosis is in present tense in c. 70% of all sentences, as in (2).

The present paper will account for (i) the meaning change (deontic > ‘conditional’) and (ii) the change in the tense of the verb in the apodosis using a refined version of Roberts & Roussou’s (2003) theory of grammaticalization as upwards reanalysis and loss of movement (in terms of LF scope positions).

Ad (i), it is argued that should underwent a lexical split. ‘Conditional’ should (as well as ‘subjunctive’/’putative’ should) came to lexicalize Kempchinsky’s (2009) quasi-imperative operator in FinP (cf. Haegeman’s 1986 case for a silent should in subjunctives), while other modal meanings realize lower modal heads.

Ad (ii), it is argued that its position in FinP accounts for its demonstrable scope over Tense. It reached this position by upward reanalysis from the lower LF-position of deontic modals, accounting for the diachronic change w.r.t. the tense in the apodosis.

It is furthermore argued that conditional should Agrees with Force, where Bhatt & Pancheva’s operator quantifying over the world variable in conditional clauses is located (cf. also Kempchinsky 2009), and moves there unless there is an overt complementizer if (cf. Haegeman 2010 for (dialectal) Dutch mocht/moest). The increasing use of present tense in the apodosis is taken to be an indication that a further upward reanalysis, at LF, this time from Fin to Force, is currently underway, turning should into a pure conditional marker. That this is plausible is witnessed by attested examples such as (3) with a finite main verb.

(3) Should Obama gets the nomination, my vote goes to John McCain.

(Trousdale 2012: 173)

31

Bhatt, Rajesh, and Roumyana Pancheva. 2006. Conditionals. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, volume 1 , ed. Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk, 638–687. Oxford: Blackwell.

Haegeman, Liliane. 2010. The movement derivation of conditional clauses. Linguistic Inquiry 41:595–621.

Haegeman, Liliane. 1986. The present subjunctive in contemporary British English. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 17: 61–74.

Kempchinsky, Paula 2009. What can the subjunctive disjoint reference effect tell us about the subjunctive? Lingua 119:1788–1810.

Roberts, Ian, and Anna Roussou. 2003. Syntactic Change. A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Trousdale, Graeme. 2012. Grammaticalization, constructions and the grammaticalization of constructions. In Grammaticalization and Language Change. New Reflections , ed. Kristin Davidse, Tine Breban, Lieselotte Brems, and Tanja Mortelmans, 167–198. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

PCEEC (c. 1410–1681) Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence, parsed

version. 2006. Annotated by Ann Taylor, Arja Nurmi, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Terttu Nevalainen. Compiled by the CEEC Project Team. York: University of York and Helsinki: University of Helsinki.

http://www.users.york.ac.uk/lang22/PCEEC-manual/PPCEME (1500-1710) Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini, and Ariel Diertani. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed

Corpus of Early Modern English. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-2/index.html PPCMBE (1700-1914) Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini and Ariel Diertani. 2010.

Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCMBE-RELEASE-1/index.html

BNC (1980s-1993) The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). 2007. Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. URL: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

Negation, grammaticalization and subjectification: The development of polar, modal and mirative no way-constructions

Lot Brems, Kristin Davidse, Jakob Lesage & An Van Linden

KU Leuven

Keywords: grammaticalization, subjectification, negation, modality, mirativity This paper investigates the paths of grammaticalization and semantic change that led from structures with lexical uses of way to grammatical operators containing ‘no’ way that convey polar, modal and mirative

32

meanings. Preliminary analysis of data from the OED, the Penn Corpora of Historical English, the Corpus of Late Modern English (CLMET), Wordbanks (WB) and the Corpus of American Soap Operas suggests the following main lines of development, which will be further detailed on the basis of extensive qualitative and quantitative data-analyses.

The earliest grammaticalization path yielded emphatic adverbial negators of the forms noneways (13

th C) and no way (14

th C), via bridging

contexts allowing both a lexical ‘in no manner’ and grammatical ‘not at all’ meaning, as in (1).

(1) How miʒte þei mon of synne make clene? Certis, no wey, as hit is

sene. (c1325 Cursor Mundi)

In Late Modern English, a new grammaticalization cycle recruited in no way which numerically took over as negator in the same structural contexts as no way, e.g.

(2) these things need not be specially forced upon him. In no way

should he be led to emphasize them (CLMET)

A different and more recent grammaticalization path has, via bridging contexts such as (3), where a reading of situation- or participant-inherent impossibility can be inferred, led to verbo-nominal expressions (Loureiro-Porto 2010) of modality, which in Present-day English express mainly dynamic (cf. 3), but also epistemic (4) and deontic meanings (Saad et al. 2012).

(3) he … thanked her rather shortly, but said there was no way of managing it. (CLMET)

(4) There’s no way it was a domestic murder. (WB)

In a final semantic shift, which can be related to the two main grammaticalization paths, no way acquires mirative value, i.e. the conveying of surprise, roughly paraphrasable as ‘I can’t believe …’, which may either be blended with negation or modality, or form the sole meaning (5). Mirative no way relates both to the proposition and the interaction between the speech participants.

(5) … a figure appeared by the side of the road. ‘A hitchhiker!’ said Ellie

excitedly. ‘Yeah, no way,’ said Julia. (WB)

33

This paper seeks to explain the semantic shifts in light of the conceptual relations (Lesage 2013) between the negation of propositions, whose “function … is … to emphasize that a fact is contrary to expectation” on the part of the hearer (Wason 1965: 7, cf. Werth 1999), modality, the speaker’s evaluation of the likelihood or desirability of a state-of-affairs, and mirativity, surprise regarding a fact that thwarts the speaker’s expectations (Peterson 2013). We will verify Lesage’s (2013) hypothesis that the development of no way involves a gradual increase in subjectivity (Narrog 2012) and discourse-orientation. Lesage, Jakob. 2013. Surprise and modality, negation and subjectification: Mirative

functions of no way. Unpublished term paper. Linguistics department, KU Leuven.

Loureiro-Porto, Lucía. 2010. “Verbo-nominal Constructions of Necessity with þearf n. and need n.: Competition and Grammaticalization from OE to eModE.” English Language and Linguistics 14 (3): 373–397.

Narrog, Heiko. 2012. Modality, Subjectivity, and Semantic Change: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Peterson, Tyler. 2013. “Rethinking Mirativity: The Expression and Implication of Surprise”. University of Toronto.

http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/2FkYTg4O/Rethinking_Mirativity.pdf. Saad, Khalida, Wouter Parmentier, Lot Brems, Kristin Davidse, and An Van Linden.

2012. “The Development of Modal, Polar and Mirative No Way-constructions”. Paper presented at ICAME 33, 31 May-5 June, University of Leuven.

Wason, Peter Cathcart. 1965. “The Contexts of Plausible Denial.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 4 (1): 7–11.

Werth, Paul. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. Textual Explorations. London: Longman.

Take my advice for what it’s worth: The rise of parenthetical for what it’s worth

Laurel Brinton

University of British Columbia

Keywords: parenthetical, politeness, bridging context In Present-day English, for what it’s worth may function as a syntactically independent parenthetical:

34

(1) a. For what it’s worth, April is supposedly the driest month and May and June, the sunniest (COCA: MAG)

b. His dad, for what it’s worth, says he always tries to help his son (COCA: NEWS)

c. I did not tell him about you, for what it’s worth (COCA: FIC)

Literal uses are possible, though increasingly less common:

(2) I’m willing to buy that for what it’s worth (1952 McCarthy, Groves of Academe; OED)

In parenthetical use, for what it’s worth does not directly modify the

host clause but must be inferred to be modifying an implicit statement such as “I [the speaker] offer you [the hearer] this piece of information for what value it may have”. Thus, like parentheticals in general, it is “non-restrictive”, or “concerns the situation of discourse” (see Kaltenböck, Heine, and Kuteva. 2011: 856; Huddleston and Pullman 2002: 1352).

According to the OED (s.v. worth, def. 3d), for what it’s worth is a “dismissive phr[ase] intimating that something (esp. an accompanying statement) is of uncertain or little value”. But online discussions (see References) come closer to capturing the form’s force and pragmatic function. For what it’s worth is typically appended to expressions of speaker opinion, where it has politeness functions, as in:

(3) For what it’s worth, I was right about my student’s thesis. It needed more work (COCA: MAG)

Assuming that the opinion expressed perhaps differs from the hearer’s,

the speaker adds the parenthetical in order to mitigate the attack on the speaker’s negative face.

Synchronic evidence suggests two possible sources where for what it’s worth is adjoined to an explicit expression of speaker opinion, either a noun phrase (conclusion, opinion, view, judgment) or a full clause (I tell you, I give it to you, you can take it):

(4) a. My suspicion, for what it’s worth, is that Dutch did authorize

the transfer (COCA: SPOK) b. “Well,” she conceded at last. “I’ll tell you. For what it’s worth” (Norton, Borrowers; OED)

35

This paper samples a number of historical corpora of English in order to determine the possible diachronic origins of this parenthetical, with special attention to the role of bridging contexts (Evans and Wilkins 2000). In addition to explicating the development of this particular construction, the paper sheds light on the broader question of the origin of parentheticals. English Language and Usage.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10274/what-does-for-what-its-worth-mean (accessed 10 Nov. 2013).

Evans, Nicholas and David Wilkins 2000. In the mind’s ear: the semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian languages’, Language 76: 546–592.

The Free Dictionary. idioms.thefreedictionary.com/for+what+it’s+worth (accessed 8 November 2013).

Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kaltenböck, Gunther, Bernd Heine, and Tania Kuteva. 2011. On thetical grammar. Studies in Language 35.4: 848–893.

Oxford English Dictionary. John Simpson, ed. 3rd ed. online. See www.oed.com. Wiktionary. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/for_what_it’s_worth (accessed 8

November 2013).

The simultaneity as construction from Old English to Middle English

Cristiano Broccias University of Genoa

Keywords: subordination, simultaneity, Old English, Middle English This paper aims to investigate the development of subordinate temporal clauses expressing simultaneity with the event coded by the main clause (e.g. Present-day English (PDE) Sally saw a cat as she was strolling down the street) from Old English (OE) to Middle English (ME). Recent work has addressed the issue of simultaneity subordination (SS) in Modern English and has pointed out, in particular, the importance of as for the structuring of the SS domain (see Broccias and Smith 2010). However, no systematic analysis of previous stages of the language has yet been carried out (but see Kortmann 1998 for a diachronic overview of various subordinators; Schleburg 2002 for a detailed description of the uses of OE swa and Lenker 2010 on the history of when). Hence, this study will try to fill this gap by focussing in particular on the connectors out of which PDE as emerged (e.g. swa, ealswa, etc., referred to as AS for the sake of convenience). It will be

36

argued that the AS simultaneity construction developed from an essentially correlative construction with verbs of motion or construable as such into a “pure” simultaneity (cf. Kortmann’s 1998 “simultaneity duration”) construction, which hosts other activity, non-motion verbs such as sleep, lie, etc. Importantly, it will be pointed out that such constructional growth resulted in types that are no longer possible (or, at best, marginal) in PDE. In particular, although in PDE as, unlike while/when, is not found with copular be (Eat it while/*as it’s hot), see Morris (1996), it will be shown that this type does occur in ME (all examples will be from the on-line Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse):

(1) a. At mydnyght they sette vpon them as [= PDE while] they were in theyr pauelyons ... (Malory, Le Morte Darthur, 1.13) b. And as [= PDE while/when] he was in the water, þere come a man in his owen lyknesse ... (Early English versions of the Gesta Romanorum, XXIII)

It will be argued that such occurrences may be due to the influence of relative as, as in the TIME AS construction exemplified in (2):

(2) a. And fell a time, as [= PDE while/when] he was oute, ... (Gower, Confessio Amantis, 1.1418) b. So on a tyme as [= PDE while] he was in his prayers he fell on

slep ... (Alphabet of tales: an English 15th century translation of the Alphabetum narrationum of Etienne de Besançon, CCCCXXIV)

It will then be discussed whether the disappearance of examples such as (1) may be related to that of relative as from the standard language. In general, it will be stressed that a full understanding of the SS domain can be arrived at only by invoking a network model of language (e.g. temporal as vs. while and temporal as vs. relative as). Broccias, Cristiano and Nicholas Smith. 2010. Same time, across time: Simultaneity

clauses from Late Modern to Present-Day English. English Language and Linguistics 14.3: 347–371.

Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/) Kortmann, Berndt. 1998. Adverbial Subordinators in the Languages of Europe. In: van

der Auwera, Johan (ed.). Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 457–561.

Lenker, Ursula 2010. Argument and Rhetoric: Adverbial Connectors in the History of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

37

Morris, Loris. 1996. Time and cause in the English connector as. LACUS Forum 23:417-28.

Schleburg, Florian. 2002. Altenglisch swa: Syntax und Semantik einer polyfunktionalen Partikel. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.

The present participle mark-ing in Northern Middle English: A corpus study

Anna Budna

University of Social Sciences, Warsaw

Keywords: corpus, dialect, North, present participle Although the provenance of the current form -ing of the present participle remains obscure, it is certain that its rise reflects the transformation of the earlier present participle marker –ende to Middle English –inde. The most difficult seems to be the explanation of the reason for the emergence of the velar cluster -ng, also typical of gerund, and the demise of the characteristic Germanic present participle marker containing the dental cluster –nd. The most general description of the problem can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, whose editors consider disappearance of the present participle marker –ende a consequence of the phonetic and orthographic confusion.

Of the five Middle English dialects, the North exhibited the most characteristic features, especially as regards morphology and phonology. In Middle English some of its major grammatical innovations spread southwards, thus contributing to the formation of the 16th century English grammar. Consequently, the data from texts composed in the North are considered particularly important for the historical study of English, although Northern scant textual resources representing Early Middle English make the linguistic analysis of that dialect a very difficult task.

The Northern present participle was equipped with quite a unique feature as it attached the suffix –ande, considered typically Scandinavian, although some scholars have launched a hypothesis of its native origin; cf. Björkman (1900).

The evidence for the present study comes from the prose and poetic texts covering the period 1400-1450 and includes data compiled in the electronic versions of the Innsbruck Computer Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts (ICAMET), The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (PPCME2), Chadwyck-Healey’s English Poetry Full-Text Database, and the

38

Michigan Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. The selected texts are those from localized manuscripts, established on the basis of the Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English (LAEME) and A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME).The data scrutiny (also including statistics) is expected to reveal the degree of the influence of the Northern dialect on the formation of the new participle south of the river Humber. Björkman, Erik (1900-1902) Scandinavian Loan-words in Middle English (Studien zur

englischen Philologie 7, 11). Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer. Chadwyck-Healey (1992) English Poetry Full-Text Database. Cambridge: Chadwyck-

Healey Ltd. Jordan, Richard (1974) Handbook of Middle English Grammar: Phonology. Translated

and revised by Eugene J. Crook. The Hague: Mouton. Kroch, Anthony — Ann Taylor (eds.) (2000) The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of

Middle English (PPCME2) (2nd ed.). CD-ROM version. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.

Laing, Margaret (1993) Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.

Markus, Manfred (ed.) (2008) Innsbruck Computer Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts. CD-ROM Full Version 2.3. Innsbruck: University of Innsbruck.

McIntosh Angus― Michael Louis Samuels― Michael Benskin (1986) A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. Vol. 1. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.

McSparran, Frances (ed.) The Middle English Compendium: The Middle English Dictionary, A HyperBibliography of Middle English Prose and Verse, a Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. Ann Arbor: Humanities Text Initiative, University of Michigan. www.ets.umdl.umich.edu

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (2002) (2nd ed. CD-ROM version 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Linguistic appropriation of slang in historical context(s)

Roxanne But University of Sheffield

Keywords: linguistic appropriation, slang, historical pragmatics, context, eighteenth century Linguistic appropriation describes the process whereby speakers of a particular social group (e.g. Asian American teenagers) borrow or adopt language features associated with another social group (‘aite’ for “all right” in AAVE) in their speech for communicative purposes (to sound “black”)

39

(Reyes 2005: 511). ‘Appropriation’ differs from ‘borrowing’ as studied by historical linguists in that the latter focuses on the language internal aspects of the process: What features of a language are borrowed? How do loanwords affect the existing vocabulary in the dominant language? (Campbell 2004: 62). ‘Appropriation’, on the other hand, as studied by sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists, is considered in relation to the external factors involved: Who appropriates the words? What are the social motivations for appropriating a particular linguistic feature?

While linguistic appropriation has received some attention in sociolinguistic and anthropological studies on present-day English slang (see Reyes 2005; Hill 2008), it has not been studied in the history of English (apart from Taavitsainen 2005). This paper aims to describe and analyse the appropriation of a particular slang term, ‘cull’, in a historical context, addressing the following questions: What are the mechanisms behind the appropriation of ‘cull’ and how do these interact? To what extent does appropriation affect the form, functions and lexical/social meanings of the term? Taking a qualitative, historical pragmatic approach, I will explore how ‘cull’ is appropriated in a wide range of eighteenth-century texts, drawn from The Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

The results of my discourse analysis on ‘cull’ will show that different contextual factors (writer, intended readership, activity type, and cultural/background knowledge of the participants) play a role and interact when appropriation of the term takes place in its situational context. As for the effects of the process, ‘cull’ remains stable in terms of its form and lexical meanings; it is generally used in the conventional sense of “a particular kind of fellow”, e.g. “she nailed a queer cull” (The Aviary, 1760). However, the functions and social meanings of the term are negotiable and subject to change, as different writers appropriate ‘cull’ in different kinds of texts (verse and prose) for various and multiple communicative purposes (such as character depiction or identity construction).

This paper will conclude that a contextual approach is crucial for the study of linguistic appropriation, because it can shed light on how and why linguistic features like ‘cull’ are constantly recontextualised and circulated in eighteenth-century texts. Anonymous. 1765. The Aviary: Or Magazine of British Melody Consisting of a

Collection of One Thousand Five Hundred Songs. With Titles of the Principal Tunes … London.

Campbell, Lyle. 2004. Historical Linguistics. An Introduction. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Hill, Jane H. 2008. The Everyday Language of White Racism. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

40

Reyes, Angela. 2005. ‘Appropriation of African American Slang by Asian American Youth’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 9 (4), 509-532. Available from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-6441.2005.00304.x/ [Accessed 28 November 2013]

Taavitsainen, Irma. 2005. ‘Genres and the Appropriation of Science: Loci Communes in English in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period’, In Janne Skaffari, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen and Brita Wårvik, Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past (eds). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 176-196.

A Tretys of Goostely Batayle: One scribe facing more Middle English dialects

Luisella Caon

Leiden University A Tretys of Goostely Batayle is a Middle English allegorical work of unknown origin in which leading a spiritual life is compared with preparing for battle. It is found in seven manuscripts, i.e. Bodl. Rawlinson C 894, Harley 1706, Roy. 17.C.xviii, Bodl. Douse 322, Corpus Christi College Oxford E 220, John Rylands Lib. Eng 94 and Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS 142 (Jolliffe 1974:92).

The text of A Tretys has received little scholarly attention so far, except for an unpublished dissertation

1 and an old printed edition (Horstman

1896). The version in Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS 142 (henceforth CCCC 142), folios 111r-121r is noteworthy because of its language. Its contents draw on several sources and combine other religious treaties such as parts of The Pore Caitif or the entire Three Arrows on Doomsday, sometimes with mistakes. Likewise the language combines variants from different Middle English dialects. The author and the scribe are unknown, but the scribe has left us a text written in a script that contains features of Anglicana Formata and Secretary alongside a number of idiosyncratic scribal features (Parkes 1969). Several things seem change in this text: the script, the sources and the dialects; yet, while the first two features point towards a sloppy scribe, the preservation of the dialect variants indicates that he must have been a faithful scribe according to Mc Intosh’s classification (1986, vol. I:13).

1 Murray, Valerie, An Edition of ‘A Tretise of Gostly Batayle’ and ‘Milicia Christi’, unpublished D.Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 1970.

41

This paper intends to explore the relevance of the dialectal features in A Tretys in CCCC 142. Do the dialectal features create boundaries between the texts used for composing A Tretys? A comparison of this version with the same text in other witnesses should shed light on this matter. Moreover, is it possible to speculate on the scribe’s attitude towards this text? Was the scribe familiar with the subject matter of A Tretys? Some mistakes in the text suggest otherwise. Likewise, if he copied his exemplar faithfully, thus preserving the dialectal features in it, he probably did not know well which kind of text he had in front of his eyes; hence he was not a clergyman. This hypothesis is also supported by the contents of A Tretys, which suggest that its audience were men and women from both the laity and the clergy, thus not excluding that the version in CCCC 142 is the work of a professional scribe and not a clerical one. Baker, Denise N., “Mystical and Devotional Literature”. A Companion to Medieval

English Literature and Culture c.1350–1500, Peter Brown ed, Malden: Blackwell, 2007.

Berkhout, Ellen, A Tretys of Goostely Batayle: an edition of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS 142, folios 111r-121r, unpublished MA Thesis, Leiden University, 2013.

Blake, N. F. Middle English Religious Prose. London: Arnold, 1972. Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS 142, Parker Library on the Web, Corpus Christi College, Stanford University Libraries and Cambridge University Library, <http://parkerweb.stanford.edu>.

Horstmann, C., ed. Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers. Vol II. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1896. 2 vols.

James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of The Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, Cambridge: The Univeristy Press, 1909–12. 2 vols.

Jolliffe, P.S., A Check-List of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974.

McIntosh, Angus, M.L. Samuels, M. Benskin (eds), A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1896.

Parkes, M. B. English Cursive Book Hands, 1250–1500, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.

http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/2578/;jsessionid=801D5A2885455F2D94279029E7480C7C?sequence=2

42

Arguing with the jurors: Personal pronouns and identities in the opening statements of criminal trials (1759-1789)

Krisda Chaemsaithong

Hanyang University Seoul

The connection between the use of pronouns and identity has been a subject of academic interest for some time, both in synchronic and diachronic studies. It has generally been accepted that identity is never stable but always fluid, only emerging locally as the result of processes of construction and negotiation, and so is primarily achieved through discourse.

In courtroom discourse, there has been some evidence that the manipulation of reference strategies and interpersonal devices such as pronouns can lend power to the user, enabling her to control the witness’s narrative, to depict a witness as worthless, and to shape questions in accordance with her goals (Walker 2007:91-92; Cecconi 2008; Cavalieri 2011; Shi 2011). However, the research literature has focused far more on the examination phase than on other sub-genres of courtroom discourse. The opening statement is no exception to this trend. Thus, it is the aim of this paper to explore the multiple identity roles the lawyers constructed for themselves through their pronoun choices, as they presented their cases in this monologic genre of discourse, and how they positioned themselves vis-à-vis other participants.

In particular, this study looks at various ways in which personal pronouns (focusing on first and second person pronouns) may be used in legal discourse, explicating how a set of identities emerge in and through the discourse of the opening statements. Drawing upon fifty-one opening statements as recorded in Proceedings of the Old Bailey, between 1759 and 1789, the qualitative and quantitative analysis shows how personal pronouns constitute an integral part of this monologic genre, thereby giving rise to fictive interaction (Pascual 2002, 2006) between the lawyers and other participants. In addition, this study reveals how the lawyers may shift between identities as storyteller, guidance, and participant in the discourse.

Shi, Guang. 2011. An analysis of modality in Chinese courtroom discourse. Journal of

Multicultural Discourses. 7(2): 1-18 Pascual, E. 2002. Imaginary Trialogues: Conceptual Blending and Fictive Interaction in

Criminal Courts. Utrecht: LOT. Walker, Terry. 2007. Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues. Amsterdam:

John Benjamins.

43

Generating Vfin-IO(Dat)-Vnon-fin-DO(Acc) and Vfin-DO(Acc)-Vnon-fin-IO(Dat) orders in Old English and Old Icelandic

Yana Chankova

South-West University ‘N. Rilski’

Keywords: Scrambling, internal adjunction, non-feature-triggered movement, semantic/pragmatic effects From the perspective of a Minimalist syntax, this paper discusses the core properties of Scrambling and reviews some basic assumptions regarding these properties (e.g. Roberts 1997, Haeberli 1999, Pintzuk 1999 and Trips 2001 for Old English; Rögnvaldsson 1996, Haugan 2001 and Hróarsdóttir 2001 for Old Icelandic, and Thráinssson 2001 and papers in Corver & van Riemsdijk 1994 for Modern Icelandic). I argue for a movement approach to Scrambling phenomena and, following Wallenberg 2009, I take Scrambling to be an optional (i.e. non-feature-triggered) displacement operation that moves internal Arguments and Adjuncts out of their source positions into phrasally-adjoined positions in the left periphery of vP/VP. Specifically, Scrambling is herein described as an instantiation of internal adjunction that obeys Wallenberg’s Conservation of C-Command. But contra semantically-vacuous-movement approaches, this analysis claims that Scrambling is semantically and pragmatically effective movement device.

Crucially, the application of Scrambling has to be relativized to the type of constituent moving and to the type of site it moves into: Vfin-IO(Dat)-Vnon-

fin-DO(Acc) and Vfin-DO(Acc)-Vnon-fin-IO(Dat) orders in Old English and Old Icelandic double object constructions involving three place predicates of the give-class are the focus of this study. The scrambleability of the internal Arguments in Old English and Old Icelandic constructions involving trivalent verbs of the give-class characterized by the Theta grid <Agent, Benefactive/Recipient, Theme> is considered with respect to different referential types of objects. Examples from two corpora have been considered, namely the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (Taylor, Warner, Pintzuk, Beths 2003) and the Corpus of Íslendinga Sögur (Bergljót Kristjánsdóttir 1998).

Among the conclusions are the following: i) Scrambling affects XPs, definite and overtly case-marked object DPs included; ii) Scrambling moves XPs from case-marked source positions into non-case marked target positions, whereby case-licensing of XPs does not require for checker and checked to be adjacent;

44

iii) Scrambling cannot cross a c-commanding functional head; iv) Scrambling involves crossing of at least one non-empty Argument base position; v) Scrambling can have semantic/pragmatic effects.

Corver & van Riemsdijk 1994: Studies on Scrambling: Movement and Non-movement

Approaches to Free Word-order Phenomena. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994 Haeberli 1999: Features, categories and the syntax of A-positions. Synchronic and

diachronic variation in the Germanic languages. Doctoral dissertation, University of Geneva, 1999

Haugan 2001: Old Norse Word Order and Information Structure. Trondheim: NUSTP, 2001

Hróarsdóttir 2001: Word Order Change in Icelandic: From OV to VO. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001

Pintzuk 1999: Phrase Structures in Competition: Variation and Change in Old English Word Order. New York: Garland, 1999

Roberts 1997: Restructuring, Head Movement and Locality. Linguistic Inquiry 48.3, 1997, 423−460

Rögnvaldsson 1996: Word Order Variation in the VP in Old Icelandic. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 58, 1996, 55−86

Thráinsson 2001: Object Shift and Scrambling. The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2001, 148- 212

Trips 2001: From OV to VO in Early Middle English. PhD Dissertation, University of Stuttgart, 2001

Wallenberg 2009: Antisymmetry and the Conservation of C-command: Scrambling and Phrase Structure in Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective. Publicly accessible Penn Dissertations: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/77

Compounds: Poetry vs. prose

Don Chapman Brigham Young University

Keywords: Old English compounds, Noun-Noun compounds, poetic compounds, semantic analysis of compounds. Compounding has long been recognized as a characteristic device of Old English poetry, and several studies have examined the ways that compounds contribute to poetic style.

2 Other studies have also identified

2Some important studies include Krackow (1903), Carr (1939), Brodeur (1959), and Fulk (1992).

45

“poetic compounds” that occur only or primarily in poetry.3 Few studies,

however, have tried to identify whether the compounds occurring in poetry constitute different types of compounds.

4 In other words, do the

compounds occurring solely or predominantly in poetry have different linguistic characteristics from those occurring in both prose and poetry or predominantly in prose? That is the question that this paper will address.

This study will focus on Noun-Noun (NN) compounds, the most prolific type in Old English prose and poetry. In particular, it will focus on the relationships between elements of the compounds, and the relationship between the compound and the referent. The first step of the study will be to expand on Thomas Gardner’s study (1968), to see whether NN compounds that occur predominantly in poetry are more strongly associated with any of the particular relationship categories that Gardner defines. Gardner lists about 6500 compounds, which will constitute the basis of this study.

The second step of this study will be to try to adapt insights from Chapman and Christensen (2007), which accounted for the higher incidence of Noun-Adjective compounds in poetry in terms of restrictive and non-restrictive modification. This proposed paper will see whether the notion of restrictive vs. non-restrictive modification can be useful in separating poetic from non-poetic NN compounds, as well. It is expected that non-restrictive modification will be more characteristic of poetry than prose.

Of course it is unlikely that any type will behave categorically; whatever the type, it is likely to occur in both poetry and prose. The goal of this study will be to see if there are statistically strong predilections of certain types to occur only in poetry or only in prose. In a preliminary study of 300 of these compounds selected randomly, Gardner’s classification system was not statistically significant, but a system based on restrictive/non-restrictive modification was. If these distributions hold up with a larger sample size, they will provide some evidence that a key difference between compounds in prose and poetry is the degree to which the modification is restrictive. Brodeur, Arthur Gilchrist. 1959. The Art of Beowulf. Berkeley: University of California

Press.Carr, C. T. 1939. Nominal Compounds in Germanic. London: Oxford University Press.

Chapman, Don and Ryan Christensen. 2007. “Noun-Adjective Compounds as a Poetic Type in Old English.” English Studies 88: 447-64.

3Griffith (1991), Lapidge (2008). 4Russom (1987) gives a preliminary definition of poetic compounds as those that have a first-element that is redundant to some degree, like the compound guðbill “battle-sword” since swords are meant to be used in battle anyway.

46

Fulk. R. D. 1992. A History of Old English Meter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Gardner, Thomas J. 1968 “Semantic Patterns in Old English Substantival Compounds.” Diss. Heidelberg.

Griffith, M. S. 1991. “Poetic Language and the Paris Psalter.” Anglo-Saxon England 20: 167-86.

Krackow, Otto. 1903. Die Nominalcomposita als Kunstmittel im altenglisch Epos. Weimar: R. Wagner Sohn.

Lapidge, Michael. 2008. “Old English Poetic Compounds: A Latin Perspective.” Intertexts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach. Eds. Virginia Blanton and Helene Scheck. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 17-32.

Russom, Geoffrey. 1987. Old English Meter and Linguistic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The V-2 phenomenon in Old English and Old High German translations

Anna Cichosz, Jerzy Gaszewski & Maciej Grabski University of Lodz

Keywords: V-2 phenomenon, word order, Old English syntax, Old High German syntax, translations Even though both in OE and OHG the most frequent word order of main declarative clauses was V-2, this clause type could also demonstrate other word order patterns. The most interesting area of research are main clauses in which the first position is occupied by an element other than the subject, which in a V-2 language should result in a S-V inversion. In OE the word order of such clauses depends on subject type (pronominal/nominal). In OHG, there is no similar tendency describing the behaviour of personal pronouns (Axel 2007). In addition, in both languages certain introductory phrases never cause inversion, while in OE some phrases cause inversion regardless of subject type (cf. Fischer et al. 2000, Haeberli 2002, Kroch & Taylor 1997). Finally, V-1 main declaratives are relatively common in OHG (e.g. Lippert 1974) unlike in OE.

Since OHG is studied mostly on the basis of translated texts, at least some of these differences may be the result of foreign syntax, which makes comparative studies of these languages challenging from the point of view of methodology. To ensure the comparability of the material from OHG and OE, we decided to use only translated texts from both languages, also paying proper attention to originals (source of potential calques). The

47

analysis makes use of a parallel corpus containing samples of translated texts and their originals (Tatian, Isidor and Physiologus for OHG, The Book of Genesis, The West Saxon Gospels and Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica for OE, ca. 10,000 clauses).

The aim of the study is to investigate the V-2 phenomenon in OE and OHG, providing detailed information on the frequency of V-2 and non-V-2 patterns, the behaviour of personal pronouns and the influence of the introductory phrase on inversion. Our research questions are: a) what word order patterns do OE and OHG main declarative clauses demonstrate? b) which of these are departures from the V-2 order and how can these departures be explained? c) can the selected translations be treated as representative sources of syntactic information? We expect to produce a systematic comparison of OE and OHG word order patterns in a similar textual environment, showing that translations can be valuable sources of syntactic information and that analysing translation strategies in the context of specific structures can shed more light on the similarities and differences between the two languages. Axel, Katrin. 2007. Studies on Old High German Syntax: Left Sentence Periphery, Verb

Placement and Verb Second. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman and Wim van der Wurff. 2000.

The syntax of early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haeberli, Eric. 2002. “Observations on the loss of Verb Second in the history of

English.” In C. Jan-Wouter Zwart and Werner Abraham (eds.), Studies in comparative Germanic syntax, 245-272. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Kroch, A. and Taylor A. 1997. “Verb movement in Old and Middle English: dialect variation and language contact.” In A. van Kemenade and N. Vincent (eds.), Parameters of morphosyntactic change, 297-325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lippert, Jörg. 1974. Beiträge zu Technik und Syntax althochdeutscher Übersetzungen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Isidorgruppe und des althochdeutschen Tatian. München: Wilhelm Fink.

Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax (Volume II). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Petrova, Svetlana. 2006. “A discourse-based approach to verb placement in early

West-Germanic.” In Ishihara, S., Schmitz, M. & Schwarz, A. (eds.), Working Papers of the SFB632, Interdisciplinary studies on information structure (ISIS) 5. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam.153-182.

Pintzuk, Susan. 1993. “Verb seconding in Old English: verb movement to Infl.” The Linguistic Review 10. 5-35.

Robinson, Orrin W. 1996. Clause Subordination and Verb Placement in the Old High German Isidor Translation. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.

Stockwell, Robert. 1984. “On the history of the verb-second rule in English.” In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Historical syntax, 575-592. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter

48

Middle English preposition and adverb emell(e)

Ewa Ciszek-Kiliszewska Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan

Keywords: preposition, emell(e), Middle English, dialect and textual distribution, token frequency Selected Medieval English prepositions have been recently subject to more detailed studies. However, numerous Middle English prepositions still lack proper description or even a mention in Middle English grammars or handbooks.

The present paper focuses on the Middle English preposition and adverb emell(e). The aim of the study is to thoroughly discuss emell(e)’s etymology, semantic profile, dialect distribution, textual distribution, the actual frequency of use (token frequency), spelling and syntax as recorded in the preserved Middle English linguistic material. The analysis relies on acknowledged historical English dictionaries such as the Middle English Dictionary online and the Oxford English Dictionary online as well as on an extensive electronic database, i.e., the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. The results of the analysis demonstrate the use of emell(e) in four more texts and nine more manuscripts than those listed by the Middle English Dictionary online. One of these extra texts discloses the highest token frequency of all texts including the investigated preposition and adverb. Moreover, since emell(e) reveals to be attested exclusively in Late Middle English and most manuscripts employing it have been localized by A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, it is possible to create a detailed map illustrating the dialect distribution of emell(e). The results of the recorded spelling examination call for a spelling change of the Middle English Dictionary online headword.

49

Speech, thought and writing presentation in medieval history writing

Claudia Claridge University of Duisburg-Essen

Keywords: speech presentation, historiography, Old English, Middle English, genre analysis Speech presentation has been part of history writing since its Greek beginnings, but it has hardly been looked at in detail, let alone from a linguistic perspective. Historians, for example, have commented on the rhetorical nature of Thucydides’ speeches, perhaps reflecting vaguely the original speakers’ message but mostly the authorial perspective (Burrow 2007), and on Froissart’s uses of direct speech, such as creating emotional emphasis or focusing on a character’s personality (Nichols 1964). Moore (2011) focused on the effect that indeterminate boundaries between direct speech, indirect speech, and narration have on the notion of faithfulness of representation.

Speech as well as writing and thought presentation can indeed be linked to important aspects of historical writing, such as cause-and-effect interpretations (e.g. speakers’ motivations), (creating) empathy with historical persons, providing proof (e.g. sources, witness statements), and indirect, seemingly non-authorial evaluation, apart from being also a choice for more general rhetorical effects (e.g vividness). The hypothesis is that specific uses and also frequencies of quoting are an important marker of the medieval genre as such, distinguishing it from later history writing (this study is preparatory to a larger chronological investigation).

The paper therefore aims at providing an inventory of possible forms and, in particular, functions of speech, writing and thought presentation in medieval history writing. It also aims at an assessment of its contribution to the historiographer’s specific perspective on and construction of the past.

Semino and Short’s (2004) model of speech, writing and thought presentation, in particular those forms involving reported content, will be used in a both quantitative, corpuslinguistic and qualitative investigation of the material. The data consists of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (A), the Peterborough Chronicle, the Brut Chronicles (with continuations), Trevisa’s Polychronicon, and The English Conquest of Ireland. A small selection of modern history writing (partly from the FLOB corpus, partly miscellaneous sources) will be used for comparative purposes. Attention will also be paid to the question whether originally English works, translated texts, and foreign originals differ in their usage.

50

Burrow, John. 2007. A History of Histories. London: Penguin. Nichols, Stephen G. 1964. “Discourse in Froissart’s Chroniques.” Speculum: A Journal

of Medieval Studies 39.2: 279-87. Moore, Colette. 2011. Quoting Speech in Early English. Cambridge: CUP. Semino, Elena and Mick Short. 2004. Corpus Stylistics. Speech, writing and thought

presentation in a corpus of English writing. London: Routledge.

The Celtic influence on the Old English beon on V-unge construction re-evaluated

Robert A. Cloutier

University of Amsterdam

Keywords: Old English, Celtic, progressive, language contact, contact-induced change, verbal noun One theory on the origin of the progressive in present-day English (PDE) is an Old English (OE) construction comprised of a form of beon ‘to be’ followed by the preposition on ‘on/in’ and a verbal noun formed by adding some variant of the suffix –unge to a verbal root. Some scholars have proposed that this OE construction, and ultimately the PDE progressive, is the result of early language contact between speakers of OE and Brythonic Celtic (BC) (Ó Corráin 1997; Mittendorf & Poppe 2000; Vennemann 2001; Poppe 2002, 2003; Filppula 2003; Ronan 2003; Filppula, Klemola & Paulasto 2008); both Old and Middle Irish and Welsh have attestations of a progressive construction very similar in structure to the OE construction (Ronan 2006). An underlying, and until now unquestioned, assumption in this theory is that BC speakers chose to use the OE verbal noun in this construction as a substitute for their verbal noun presumably because both are verbal nouns; however, BC speakers would have been confronted with three non-finite verb forms in OE, namely the infinitive, present participle and verbal noun, each of which would be used to translate their singular non-finite verb form depending on the context. How can we determine which choice a BC speaker would most likely have made? Siegel (1999) examines six constraints on the transfer and retention of substrate features into Melanesian Pidgin and identifies congruence, perceptual salience and frequency as the most important. This would suggest that BC speakers learning OE would have chosen the non-finite verb form that most closely corresponded functionally and structurally to their verbal noun. Using

51

Siegel’s constraints as a framework to determine whether the OE verbal noun was the most logical choice for BC speakers, I will compare the structural and functional properties of the Old and Middle Irish and Welsh verbal noun to the properties of the three candidates in both OE and Old Saxon, which will serve as a control. I will rely primarily on Ronan (2006) for the Celtic facts; the OE data will come from the Helsinki corpus and the Old Saxon data from the Heliand. Filppula, Markku. 2003. More on the English progressive and the Celtic connection. In

Hildegard Tristram (ed.), The Celtic Englishes III, 150-168. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola & Heli Paulasto. 2008. English and Celtic in contact.

New York: Routledge. Mittendorf, Ingo & Erich Poppe. 2000. Celtic contacts of the English progressive?. In

Hildegard Tristram (ed.), The Celtic Englishes III, 117-145. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Ó Corráin, Ailbhe. 1997. On verbal aspect in Irish with particular reference to the

progressive. In Séamus Mac Mathúna & Ailbhe Ó Corráin (eds.), Miscellanea Celtica in Memoriam Heinrich Wagner, 159-173. Uppsala: University of Uppsala.

Poppe, Erich. 2002. The ‘expanded form’ in Insular Celtic and English: Some historical and comparative considerations, with special emphasis on Middle Irish. In Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola & Heli Pitkänen (eds.), The Celtic roots of English, 237-270. Joensuu: University of Joensuu.

Ronan, Patricia. 2003. Periphrastic progressives in Old Irish. In Hildegard Tristram (ed.), The Celtic Englishes III, 150-168. Heidelberg: C. Winter.

Ronan, Patricia. 2006. Aspects of verbal noun constructions in Medieval Irish and Welsh with reference to similar constructions in Basque. Maynooth: National University of Ireland dissertation.

Siegel, Jeff. 1999. Transfer constraints and substrate influence in Melanesian Pidgin. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 14:1. 1-44.

Vennemann, Theo. 2001. Atlantis Semitica: Structural contact features in Celtic and English. In Laural Brinton (ed.), Historical Linguistics 1999: Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 351-369. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

52

Where did they come from? A native origin for they, their, them

Marcelle Cole Leiden University

Keywords: Old Northumbrian, personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, Old English, Old Norse contact The conviction that the English third-person plural pronouns THEY, THEIR, THEM are not descended from Old English, but are Scandinavian in origin, has been widely held in the literature since Kluge (1899: 940). This view is propagated, not only by textbook descriptions of the history of English, but also by recent in-depth studies (Morse-Gagné 2003). Indeed, the imposition of such Old Norse function words in English is considered indicative of both the intensity and the nature of Old English-Old Norse contact during the late Old English period (Kroch et al. 2000). Doubts have nevertheless been voiced, or at least implied, as to the wholly Scandinavian origin of THEY, THEIR, THEM by scholars who have highlighted the possible implication of the Middle English demonstratives þa, þare, þam in the replacement process (Moore & Marckwardt 1951; Werner 1991). In the light of pronominal usage found in the interlinear gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, which has previously remained uncommented on, this paper will argue that there is evidence in Old Northumbrian of personal and demonstrative pronoun merger that suggests the emergence of THEY, THEIR, THEM might be a native development after all. Kluge F. 1899. Geschichte der Englischen Sprache. 2 volumes. Berlin: Felber. Kroch, A., A. Taylor & D. Ringe. 2000. The Middle English Verb-Second Constraint: A

Case Study in Language Contact and Language Change. In S. Herring, P. van Reenen & L. Schoesle (eds.), Textual Parameters in Older Languages, 353-391. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Moore, S. & A. H. Marckwardt. 1951. Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections. Ann Arbor: George Wahr.

Morse-Gagné, E. 2003. Viking Pronouns in England: Charting the Course of THEY, THEIR, and THEM. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Werner, Otmar. 1991. The Incorporation of Old Norse Pronouns into Middle English: Suppletion by Loan. In P. Sture Ureland & G. Broderick (eds.), Language Contact in the British Isles, 369-401. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

53

Explaining verbal morphosyntactic variation in early English dialect

Marcelle Cole Leiden University

Keywords: morphosyntactic variation, Northern Subject Rule, subject-type constraint, agreement levelling At first glance, the subject-type constraint found to condition the distribution of present-tense markings in Old Northumbrian (Cole forthc., 2012) appears to strengthen the argument for a Brittonic derivation of the so-called Northern Subject Rule (cf. Klemola 2000; Vennemann 2001; Benskin 2011; de Haas 2011). When set within a broader framework of diachronic variation, however, the subject effects that condition processes of levelling in Northumbrian are also found to govern non-standard agreement patterns and levelling processes in varieties of Early Modern and Present-Day English. Pietsch (2005) argues that the emergence of subject effects is likely in a situation where levelling and erosion has led to a breakdown of the inherited agreement system based on person and number. A similar tendency towards morphological restructuring, this time based on a morphological distinction between positive and negative contexts rather than a number distinction, has also been identified in modern dialects where was(n’t)/were(n’t) variation occurs (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1996; Anderwald 2001). All this suggests that there is a tendency within English to accommodate alternative agreement systems in linguistic scenarios in which variation has resulted in the inherited concord system based on a person/number distinction becoming opaque.

This paper will explore data from a variety of studies which suggest that the (near) categorical manifestation of a subject-type constraint, typical of northern Middle English and Middle Scots, and the variable effects witnessed in late Old Northumbrian, Early Modern English and in some non-northern and overseas varieties of Present-Day English should be viewed as manifestations of the same agreement phenomenon. Namely, a concord system based on a pronominal versus non-pronominal distinction, rather than on person-number features, typically characterizes the patterns of variation that appear when covariant forms compete in the same environments. From this perspective, while contact scenarios of population and language contact are undoubtedly conducive to triggering processes of regularisation and morphological simplification, the syntactic constraints that govern the resulting variation require no external input.

54

Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2001. Was/Were-Variation in Non-Standard British English Today. English World-Wide 22.1-21.

Benskin, Michael. 2011. Present Indicative Plural Concord in Brittonic and Early English. Transactions of the Philological Society 109.158-185.

Cole, Marcelle. forthc. Old Northumbrian Verbal Morphology and the (Northern) Subject Rule.

Cole, Marcelle. 2012. The Old English Origins of the Northern Subject Rule: Evidence from the Lindisfarne gloss to the Gospels of John and Mark. In M. Stenroos, M. Mäkinen & I. Særheim (eds.), Language Contact and Development around the North Sea, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 321, 141-168. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Haas, Nynke de. 2011. Morphosyntactic Variation in Northern English: The Northern Subject Rule, its Origins and Early History. PhD dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen.

Klemola, Juhani. 2000. The Origins of the Northern Subject Rule: A Case of Early Contact? In H. Tristam (ed.), The Celtic Englishes II, 329-346. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Pietsch, Lukas. 2005. ‘Some do and some doesn’t’: Verbal Concord Variation in the North of the British Isles. In B. Kortmann, T. Herrmann, L. Pietsch & S. Wagner (eds.), A Comparative Grammar of British English Dialects. Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses, 125-209. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Schilling-Estes, Natalie & Walt Wolfram. 1996. Dialect change and maintenance in a post-insular island community. In Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Focus on the USA, 103-48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

The development of the “causative V-ing” construction in American English

Mark Davies

Brigham Young University

Keywords: corpus, historical, causative, construction, into

The typical “causative V-ing” construction is composed of a verb of force or persuasion (beguile, fool, and embarrass below) + into + an “-ING clause”:

They would beguile us into believing that we are to fall down and worship the image (COHA NF 1847)

I don't see why you should fool yourself into thinking you're sorry (COHA FIC 1922)

While the construction in contemporary English has been studied in some detail, the historical dimension has received relatively little attention.

55

Our study of historical changes with “causative V-ing” is based on more than 5,600 tokens of the construction in the Corpus of Historical American English and the TIME Corpus. This is supplemented by more than 10,000 additional tokens from corpora of contemporary English (COCA, BNC, and GloWbE) – all of which yielded tokens with more than 800 different matrix verbs. This is a much larger and robust dataset than has been used in any previous study.

Some of the historical changes that we will discuss include the following:

Has the construction become more common or less common in English over time?

How much lexical diversity has there been over time, in terms of new matrix verbs (e.g. talk, coerce, trick) that have been used in different periods?

What changes have there been in the semantic classes of verbs that take the construction (e.g. verbs of force, persuasion, trickery, etc)?

Is the use with “neutral” verbs (e.g. lead) and “positive” verbs (e.g. encourage) a recent innovation (as some have suggested), or have these uses been around for a much longer period of time?

What changes have there been in the degree of “directness” of force or persuasion by X on Y to do Z (e.g John (X) coerced Mary (Y) into coming (Z))?

What is the relationship between the “causative V-ing” construction and the simple “to” construction (e.g. he forced her to leave vs he forced her into leaving), especially with regards to the presumed “Great Complement Shift” in English?

How has the “causative V-ing” construction been related over time to the “way construction” (e.g. they lied their way into taking our country into war)?

Did the construction arise “ex nihilo” and “full formed” at some point in time, or did it arise gradually, and what evidence is there for this (i.e., where did the construction come from)?

And finally, what does an in-depth study of this construction tell us about the value of large and diverse historical corpora, and their role in researching syntactic and semantic change?

56

Bridgeman, Lorraine, Dale Dillinger, Constance Higgins, P. David Seaman & Floyd A Shank. 1965. More Classes of Verbs in English. Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Linguistics Club.

Francis, Gill, Susan Hunston and Elizabeth Manning, eds. 1996. Collins Cobuild Grammar Patterns 1: Verbs. London, HarperCollins

Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gries, Stefan Th., and Anatol Stefanowitsch. 2003. Co-Varying Collexemes in the Into-Causative. In Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer (eds.), Language, Culture, and Mind, 225-36. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

Hunston, Susan, and Gill Francis. 2000. Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-Driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Rohdenburg, Gunter. 2007. Functional Constraints in Syntactic Change: The Rise and Fall of Prepositional Constructions in Early and Late Modern English. English Studies, 88:2, 217-233

Rudanko, Juhani.1991. On verbs governing in -ing in present-day English. English studies 72.1:55-72.

Rudanko, Juhani. 2000. Corpora and Complementation: Tracing Sentential Complementation Patterns of Nouns, Adjectives, and Verbs Over the Last Three Centuries. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Rudanko, Juhani. 2002. Complements and constructions. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Rudanko, Juhani. 2005. Lexico- Grammatical Innovation in Current British and American English: A Case Study on the Transitive into -ing Pattern with Evidence from the Bank of English Corpus. Studia Neophilologica 77: 171-87.

Rudanko, Juhani. 2006. Emergent Alternation in Complement Selection: The spread of the Transitive into -ing Construction in British and American English. English Linguistics 34.4: 312-331.

Rudanko, Juhani. 2011. Changes in Complementation in British and American English. London: Palgrave / Macmillan.

Vosberg, U. 2003. Cognitive complexity and the establishment of -ing constructions with retrospective verbs in Modern English. In Dossena, M. and C. Jones (eds.), Insights into Late Modern English, 197-220. Bern: Peter Lang.

Wulff, S., A. Stefanowitsch and S. Gries. 2007. “Brutal Brits and persuasive Americans: Variety-specifc meaning construction in the into-causative.” In G. Radden, K. Köpcke, T. Berg and P. Siemund (eds.), Aspects of Meaning Construction, 265-281. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

57

Is retrievability a guarantee for omission? A look into the recent history of contextual object deletion in American

English

Tania de Dios Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

Keywords: English verb, direct object, object omission, contextual factors, historical American English. In studies dealing with object omission, a capital distinction is normally made between indefinite and contextual deletions. This contrast, originally introduced by Allerton (1975), made popular by Fillmore (1986) and preserved in many subsequent works on the topic (Groefsema, 1995; Herbst and Roe 1996; García Velasco and Portero Muñoz 2002; Möhlig and Klages 2002; Liu 2008; Glass 2012, among others), allows to set apart instances of real object unelaborations (e.g. She is eating) from cases in which the elided referent can easily be retrieved from the surrounding linguistic or situational context (e.g. She looked at me and I noticed). Indefinite omission has been recurrently discussed in the literature, where several accounts of its nature have been posited (Goldberg 2001; Möhlig and Klages 2002; Glass 2012 among others). Contextual object deletion, on the other hand, has received comparatively less attention, although several authors have hinted at interesting issues such as why deletion is open with certain verbs while it does not seem viable with others (Fillmore 1986; García Velasco and Portero Muñoz 2002; Liu 2008). Some of these linguists have argued that it is possible to come across semantically related pairs of verbs where each member behaves differently in terms of object elision licensing. Thus, while an utterance like I’ll be back, I promise would sound perfectly normal, I’ll be back, I guarantee would be considered ungrammatical by these authors. Other scholars (Scott 2006), however, would consider both constructions as acceptable linguistic realizations. In spite of the existence of all these contributions, it seems, nevertheless, that a comprehensive and systematic study of the actual behaviour of these related verbal forms as regards complement deletion is still lacking.

The aim of the present paper is to throw some light on the workings of contextual object omission in the recent history of English. With this objective in mind, I will carry out a corpus-based study of three pairs of verbs formed by items traditionally considered to show differing degrees of object omission admissibility: promise vs. guarantee, look vs. seek and find out vs. discover. For my purposes, data will be drawn from the Corpus of

58

Historical American English (COHA; Davies 2010), which covers the period from 1810 to 2009. The detailed analysis of the data will allow me to (i) determine the omissibility rate of direct objects with each of the selected verbal forms; (ii) elucidate the contextual factors that may favour or disfavour such elisions; (iii) trace potential patterns of usage; and (iv) identify the changes, if any, in the use of these forms in the recent history of American English. Allerton, D.J. 1975. ‘Deletion and proform reduction’. Journal of Linguistics 11(2):

213-237. Davies, Mark. 2010. The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 million words,

1810-2009. Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/. Fillmore, Charles. 1986. ‘Pragmatically controlled zero anaphora’. Proceedings of

Berkeley Linguistics Society 12: 95-107. García Velasco, Daniel and Carmen Portero Muñoz. 2002. ‘Understood objects in

functional gramar’. Working Papers in Functional Grammar 76: 1-24. Glass, Lelia. 2012. ‘Honing a pragmatic account of English implicit objects’.

(Unpublished paper). Goldberg, Adele. 2001. ‘Patient arguments of causative verbs can be omitted: The

role of information structure in argument distribution’. Language Sciences 23: 503-524.

Groefsema, Marjolein. 1995. ‘Understood arguments: A semantic/pragmatic approach’. Lingua 96: 139-161.

Herbst, Thomas and Ian Roe. 1996. ‘How obligatory are obligatory complements?: An alternative approach to the categorization of subjects and other complements in valency grammar’. English Studies 77(2): 179-199.

Liu, Dilin. 2008. ‘Intransitive or object deleting?: Classifying English verbs used without an object’. Journal of English Linguistics 36(4): 289-313.

Möhlig, Ruth and Monika Klages. 2002. ‘Detransitivization in the history of English from a semantic perspective’. In Teresa Fanego, María José López-Couso and Javier Pérez Guerra (eds.). English Historical Syntax and Morphology: Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000. Amsterdam: Benjamins: 231-254.

Scott, Kate. 2006. ‘Wen less is more: Implicit arguments and Relevance Theory’. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 18: 139-170.

59

The Northern Subject Rule in Northern and Midlands Middle English dialects:

Adding be to a picture of morphosyntactic dialect variation

Nynke de Haas Utrecht University

The Northern Subject Rule (NSR) is one of few well-documented points of morphosyntactic dialect variation in early English (cf. Cole 2012a,b for Old English; de Haas 2011, in preparation, for Middle English). By analysing new data on the verb be, this paper will add more detail to our knowledge of the syntactic conditions governing verbal inflection in the NSR in Middle English, and diatopic and diachronic variation in their occurrence.

De Haas (2011, in preparation) analysed data on inflection of strong and weak verbs from two corpora of localized Middle English texts from Northern England and the Northern Midlands, one early Middle English, comprising texts mainly from LAEME (Laing & Lass 2008-) and one late Middle English, comprising local documents from the MEG corpus (Stenroos, Mäkinen, Horobin & Smith 2011). This paper will integrate data on the verb be in the same corpora with the earlier findings, thus refining the analysis of the two syntactic conditions involved in the NSR. This includes the subject condition (under which pronoun subjects trigger different inflection than full noun phrase subjects), but may especially enlighten the analysis of the adjacency condition (under which the special inflection with pronoun subjects is only triggered when verb and subject are adjacent), as the effects of various types of non-adjacent syntactic configurations are relatively poorly understood.

Moreover, the locations of origin of all the corpus texts will be plotted on maps, indicating the strength of the NSR conditions in various locations and, to the extent that this is possible, in different time periods. It will be shown that although the traditional dialect differences between Northern, East Midlands and West Midlands dialect areas remain visible (especially in the verbal morphology employed), the primary dialect division revealed by the NSR variation is one between North and South. The early Middle English data show strong NSR patterns in the Northern dialect area, with a transitional zone extending southward into the Northern Midlands. By comparison, the late Middle English material shows an extended core NSR area which included northern parts of the East Midlands and a transitional zone extending further than before into the East and West Midlands.

60

Cole, Marcelle (2012a). Old Northumbrian Verbal Morphology in the Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels. PhD dissertation. Seville University.

Cole, Marcelle (2012b). ‘The Old English Origins of the Northern Subject Rule: Evidence from the Lindisfarne gloss to the Gospels of John and Mark’. In M. Stenroos, M. Mäkinen & I. Særheim (eds.), Language Contact and Development around the North Sea, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 321, 141-168. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

de Haas, Nynke K. (2011). Morphosyntactic variation in Northern English: the Northern Subject Rule, its origins and early history. Dissertation. Utrecht: LOT. Available online via <www.lotpublications.nl>

de Haas, Nynke K. (in preparation). ‘The Northern Subject Rule in late Middle English: beyond subject type and adjacency’. Manuscript, Radboud University Nijmegen / Utrecht University and University of Stavanger.

LAEME: Laing, Margaret, & Roger Lass (2008-). A linguistic atlas of early Middle

English 1150–1325. Version 1.1. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Online at <http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/ laeme1.html>

MEG Corpus: Merja Stenroos, Martti Mäkinen, Simon Horobin, & Jeremy Smith (2011). The Middle English Grammar Corpus. version 2011.1. University of Stavanger. Online at <http://www.uis.no/research-and-phd-studies/research-areas/history-languages-and-literature/the-middle-english-scribal-texts-programme/meg-c/>

From quantifiers to focus adverbs: The developments of mostly and at least

Tine Defour

Ghent University Keywords: focus adverbs, grammaticalization, subjectification, corpus linguistics, scalarity Particularizing focus adverbs (e.g. notably, particularly, at least) are traditionally classified as a subcategory of restrictive adverbs (Nevalainen 1991), because they limit the application of an utterance predominantly (though not exclusively) to a focused constituent. The inclusion of focused values necessarily implies the exclusion of implied ‘alternatives’. Particularizers are therefore said to evoke speaker-based scales of semantic strength (König 1991; Traugott 2009), on which all relevant values can be ranked. This subjective ranking can result in different degrees of inclusion for different particularizers, ranging from a strong focus (e.g. specifically) to a weak one (e.g. at least) (cf. Ernst 1984).

61

The focus adverbs selected for this study, i.e. mostly and at least, both derive from Old English adjectives with quantifying meanings (læst and mæst, i.e. ‘smallest vs. greatest’ in size or degree). At (the) least mainly modifies quantitative constituents in Middle English data, indicating clear measures or numbers (e.g. “send more money, at the leeste [4,000]”). Later focus modification also includes non-measurable constituents, with increasingly scalar readings indicating that the focused constituent forms the lower limit on a scale of acceptable values (e.g. “[…] search his study (or at least his cabinet)” (CED 1603)). Most(ly) moves from a concrete adverbial use with limited focus modification, signifying ‘to the greatest extent’ (e.g. “the partes that shall be mostly touched be the hart [and] chest” (OED 1580)) to a scalar reading in which mostly indicates that a specific value is applicable to the greater part of a broader group (e.g. “they were mostly good guys”).

Our aim is to describe the forms’ semantic and structural diversifications and interpret their respective developments within a broader frame of grammaticalization and subjectification theories. This allows us to attest a) whether hypothesized shifts from a limited to broader range of modified focus constituents, and from concrete to scalar meanings correlate with higher frequencies and more advanced levels of grammaticalization and subjectivity (cf. Nevalainen 1991), and b) in which ways scalar aspects in early quantifying meanings can trigger later developments towards scalar focus modification (e.g. Traugott 2009). The material for this paper is taken from a selection of historical corpora, including the Helsinki Corpus, A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760, the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts and ARCHER. Results are based on a detailed formal and functional analysis taking into account frequencies, semantic-pragmatic changes and structural properties (i.e. focus constituents, scope). Ernst, Thomas Boyden (1984) Towards an Integrated Theory of Adverb Position in

English. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. König, Ekkehard (1991) The meaning of focus particles. A comparative perspective.

London: Routledge. Nevalainen, Terttu (1991) But, only, just. Focusing adverbial change in Modern

English 1500-1900. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (2009) [2006] The semantic development of scalar focus

modifiers. In Handbook on the History of English, Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds.). Oxford: Blackwell, 335-359.

62

From spatial concepts to time in the history of English: Continuity and remoteness in time: Metonymy and Metaphor

Xavier Dekeyser

KU Leuven – University of Antwerp

In this study we highlight the transition of the temporal adverbs always/algates, expressing continuity in time, and ago, expressing remoteness in time, from their historical prototypical concept of space to that of time and beyond. In these processes both metonymy and metaphor play an important role.

The data in the Middle English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary regarding always and algates suggest a gradual cline from SPACE to TIME (continuity and recurrence) as well as a variety of other meanings, subsumed under the cover-term UNCONSTRAINEDNESS. The SPACE-TIME -X chain (with X standing for some other more abstract meanings) is by no means uncommon, as it seems to occur in most languages of the world (Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer, 1991a and 1991b). The semantic development of these temporal adverbs also features all the properties normally associated with a change like this: metonymy followed by ever increasing or even proliferating metaphorization, fuzzy or non-discrete categories resulting in new meanings (Geeraerts, 1997 and Taylor, 1997).

As is generally known, ago owes its origin to the grammaticalization of the past participle of a verb of movement meaning ‘from one place to another’: Old English agan, Middle English ago(n). This prototypical spatial concept is metaphorically mapped on to a new temporal prototype, in the sense of ‘movement from the present time or the time in question to the past’.

As compared with always/algates, the temporal frame of ago is remarkably monosemous. Indeed, it is marked throughout by a single process of metaphorization from ‘remoteness in space’ to ‘remoteness in time’. Metonymy is only very marginally involved , as in several meetings ago, and affects the entire adverbial phrase and not the adverb ago as such.

Interestingly, an identical metaphorical process has been at work in Dutch: English ago translates as Dutch verleden, which is the past participle of a former, now obsolete verb lijden, meaning ‘go’ or ‘pass away’; so drie jaar geleden is fully congruent with three years ago.

63

Geeraerts, D. 1997. Diachronic prototype semantics. A contribution to historical lexicology. Oxford Studies in Lexicography and Lexicology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Heine, B., Claudi, U. and Hünnemeyer, F. 1991 a From cognition to grammar – Evidence from African languages.” In: Traugott, E.C. and Heine, B. (eds). Approaches to Grammaticalization. Vol. I: 149-187. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Heine, B., 1991b Grammaticalization: a conceptual framework. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Taylor, J. 1997 Linguistic categorization: prototypes in linguistics. 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Which comes first in the double object construction?

David Denison & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza University of Manchester

Keywords: double object, dialect, early English, Modern English, precept Competition between two methods of marking recipient/beneficiary and theme figures in much recent research:

(1) Jim gave the driver £5. (iO before dO) (2) Jim gave £5 to the driver. (dO before PP)

Less frequently acknowledged is a reverse double object variant:

(3) a. ?Jim gave £5 the driver. (dO before iO)

b. Jim gave it him.

If noticed at all, the pattern in 0 is mostly described as a variant confined to

clauses where both objects are pronominal, as in 0b (Quirk et al. 1985: 1396n, Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 248 and n23, Biber et al. 1999: 927-30). However, pattern (3) was much more widespread even in late ModE (Denison 1998: 239, Poutsma 1914-29: I.426), while there is clear dialectal variation within present-day British English (Upton 2006: 329, Siewerska & Hollmann 2007, Gerwin 2013). There is a lack of frequency data on both the history and the dialect distribution of this alternative construction.

In this paper we embark on a systematic investigation of the distribution of pattern 0, mainly in relation to pattern 0. We wish principally to track 0 through space and time in order to understand better its

64

progressive restriction in distribution. In the other direction, we wish to test whether or not variation between 0 and 0 is a straightforward descendant of the Old English system, when object NPs were case-marked and the two orders were equally common (Koopman 1990a, 1990b; Gast 2007). We are examining a rich array of dialect and/or historical English corpora for coverage and representativeness (including ARCHER, CONCE, Corpus of Late 18C Prose, DECTE, FRED, Old Bailey, PCEEC, the Penn parsed corpora, Salamanca Corpus among others), from a careful selection of which we will create a database of examples. We will also examine works in the normative grammatical tradition (e.g. Miège 1688, Ward 1765, Scott 1793, Mitchell 1799) for metalinguistic data on the changing status of variants as dialectal or preferred.

Analysis of the results will offer an important corrective to the bulk of research on the so-called dative alternation between patterns 0 and 0, as well as contributing to a recent strand of theorising that actually recognises the existence of order 0 in PDE (e.g. Bruening 2010a, Bruening 2010b, Haddican & Holmberg 2012, Haspelmath 2004). The history of double object order touches on many linguistic domains, and we expect our data will allow us to work towards a reasonably comprehensive history. Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan.

1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Pearson. Bruening, Benjamin. 2010a. Ditransitive asymmetries and a theory of idiom

formation. Linguistic Inquiry 41.4, 519-62. Bruening, Benjamin. 2010b. Double object constructions disguised as prepositional

datives. Linguistic Inquiry 41.2, 287-305. Denison, David. 1998. Syntax. In Suzanne Romaine (ed.), The Cambridge history of

the English language, vol. 4, 1776-1997, 92-329. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gast, Volker. 2007. I gave it him – on the motivation of the ‘alternative double object construction’ in varieties of British English. Functions of Language 14.1, 31-56.

Gerwin, Johanna. 2013. Give it me! Pronominal ditransitives in English dialects. English Language and Linguistics 17.3, 445-63.

Haddican, William & Anders Holmberg. 2012. Object movement symmetries in British English dialects: Experimental evidence for a mixed case/locality approach. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 15.3, 189-212.

Haspelmath, Martin. 2004. Explaining the ditransitive person-role constraint: A usage-based approach. Constructions 2, 1-71.

Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

65

Koopman, Willem. 1990a. The double object construction in Old English. In Sylvia Adamson, Vivien A. Law, Nigel Vincent & Susan Wright (eds.), Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics: Cambridge, 6-9 April 1987 (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 65), 225-43. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Koopman, Willem F. 1990b. The order of dative and accusative objects in Old English. In Willem Koopman (ed.), Word order in Old English: With special reference to the verb phrase, 133-223. Amsterdam: n.p.

Miège, Guy. 1688. The English grammar, or, The grounds and genius of the English tongue with a prefatory discourse. London.

Mitchell, Hugh. 1799. Scotticisms, vulgar Anglicisms, and grammatical improprieties corrected, with reasons for the corrections. Glasgow.

Poutsma, Hendrick. 1914-29. A grammar of late Modern English, (part I) 2nd edn, (part II) 1st edn. Groningen: Noordhoff.

Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London and New York: Longman.

Scott, William. 1793. A short system of English grammar; with examples of improper and inelegant construction, and Scotticisms. Edinburgh.

Siewerska, Anna & Willem B. Hollmann. 2007. Ditransitive clauses in English with special reference to Lancashire dialect. In Mike Hannay & Gerard J. Steen (eds.), Structural-functional studies in English grammar, 81-102. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Upton, Clive. 2006. Modern regional English in the British Isles. In Lynda Mugglestone (ed.), The Oxford history of English, 305-33. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ward, William. 1765. An essay on grammar, as it may be applied to the English language. In two treatises. London.

“Dispensers of knowledge”: An early investigation into nineteenth-century popular(ized) science

Marina Dossena

Università degli Studi di Bergamo

Keywords: Late Modern English, knowledge dissemination, lexicography, specialized discourse, periodicals Knowledge dissemination is hardly a new phenomenon. People have communicated their discoveries to each other since prehistoric times, though of course the modes of expert-to-expert and expert-to-non-expert communication have varied considerably as thought-styles changed and new scientific approaches developed over the centuries (see for instance Alonso-Almeida & Marrero-Morales 2011). Within this framework, this

66

contribution aims to concentrate on the nineteenth century, a time in which – according to the statistics in the website of the Oxford English Dictionary (www.oed.com) – more lexical items were recorded for the first time than at any other point in the history of the English language (Dossena 2012: 888-889). Of course, many of these new dictionary entries referred to the discoveries, inventions and innovations that make Late Modern times so interestingly close to, and yet still so intriguingly distant from, our own times. In my presentation I intend to outline some research paths for the investigation of the ways in which such novelties were presented to the general public, in order to identify the most significant strategies employed in the texts to elicit the interest of non-experts. The investigation will rely on a specially-compiled corpus of articles published in periodicals both in the UK and in the US, and will combine quantitative and qualitative approaches. After an overview of the most frequent (and significant) sources of new vocabulary in the Oxford English Dictionary, my analysis will concentrate on documents addressed to lay audiences. Special attention will be given to titles on account of the multiple functions they may have, and which are summarized by Sala (forthcoming); the role of illustrations, where available, will also be considered; finally, intertextual references will be discussed, on account of their value as sources of further information and – consequently – as potential links meant to maintain the readers’ interest in the topics under discussion. Alonso-Almeida, Francisco & Marrero-Morales, Sandra 2011. Introduction to the

special issue ‘Diachronic English for Specific Purposes’. Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos (LFE) 17, Autumn 2011, 13-22.

Dossena, Marina 2012. Late Modern English – Semantics and Lexicon. In Bergs, Alexander & Brinton, Laurel (eds), HSK 34.1 – English Historical Linguistics – An International Handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter, 887-900.

Sala, Michele forthcoming. Language Change in Legal Research Article Titles. In Poppi, Franca & Cheng, Winnie (eds), The Three Waves of Globalization: Winds of Change in Professional, Institutional and Academic Genres. Newcastle u.T.: Cambridge Scholars.

67

The increasingly marked status of non-subjects in initial position after the loss of verb second

Gea Dreschler

University of Amsterdam - Radboud University Nijmegen

Keywords: syntax, information structure, verb second, Old English, markedness. Old English verb second, originally treated as a purely syntactic phenomenon (e.g. Van Kemenade 1987 and Pintzuk 1999), has increasingly come to be considered in terms of information-structural factors (see Bech 2001, Van Kemenade & Westergaard 2011, Hinterhölzl & Petrova 2011). The general consensus in these works is that information-structural factors guide the variation between verb-second and verb-third orders in Old English main clauses: discourse-old subjects precede the finite verb (resulting in v3 order), while discourse-new subjects follow the finite verb (resulting in v2 order). This new perspective on verb second in Old English has in turn led to adaptations of the scenarios about the decline of this word order pattern, which is dated between 1400 and 1500 (van Kemenade 1987, Haeberli 2002). It is in this respect that Los (2009) identifies another main information-structural aspect of Old English as a verb-second language, namely a multifunctional first (i.e. pre-subject) position which can host both unmarked and marked themes. When verb-second is lost, the first position loses its multifunctional character and as the subject then becomes the unmarked theme (cf. Halliday 1967), the pre-subject position acquires a marked character (see also Los & Dreschler 2012).

In this paper I will investigate the timing of these developments and the relation to the loss of verb second. I will present an analysis of the types of elements in clause-initial position, together with their information-structural properties, in texts from 1500 to 1910. The study will be based on the syntactically annotated corpora for Early Modern English (PPCEME, Kroch, Santorini & Diertani 2004) and Modern British English (PPCMBE, Kroch, Santorini & Diertani 2010). I focus on three different information-structural aspects: information status (or accessibility), anaphoricity (or discourse-oldness) and markedness (e.g. contrast or frame-setting). The data show that after 1500, the proportion of subject-initial clauses steadily increases, with the most important change taking place in the Modern English period. In the same period, prepositional phrases (PPs) become the most important non-subject clause-initial elements, and their function

68

changes from predominantly providing unmarked links to the previous discourse to an increasingly contrastive or frame-setting use. Bech, Kristin (2001). Word order patterns in Old and Middle English: a syntactic and

pragmatic study. PhD dissertation. University of Bergen. Halliday, Michael A. K. (1967). Notes on transitivity and theme in English. Part 2.

Journal of Linguistics 3: 199-244. Haeberli, Eric (2002). Observations on the loss of Verb Second in the history of

English. In: C. J.-W. Zwart & W. Abraham (eds.). Studies in comparative Germanic syntax: Proceedings from the 15th workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 245–72.

Hinterhölzl, R. & S. Petrova (2010). From V1 to V2 in West Germanic. Lingua 120, pp.315-328

Kemenade, Ans van (1987). Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. Dordrecht: Foris.

Kemenade, Ans van and Marit Westergaard (2012). Syntax and Information Structure: Verb Second variation in Middle English. In: Anneli Meurman-Solin, Maria Jose Lopez-Couso, and Bettelou Los (eds). Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English. Oxford University Press, 87-118.

Kroch, Anthony R., Santorini, Beatrice & Diertani, Ariel. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English, <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-2/index.html >.

Kroch, Anthony R., Santorini, Beatrice & Diertani, Ariel. 2010. Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English, <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCMBE-RELEASE-1/index.html >.

Los, Bettelou ( 2009). The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English: information structure and syntax in interaction. English Language and Linguistics 13(1): 97–125.

Los, Bettelou & Gea Dreschler (2012). The loss of local anchoring: From adverbial local anchors to permissive subjects. In: Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Traugott (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of the History of English. New York: Oxford University Press, 859-871

Pintzuk, Susan (1999). Phrase structures in competition: Variation and change in Old English word order. New York: Garland

69

Moving beyond date of first attestation and language of origin: Examining the impact of loanwords on a lexical field in Early Modern

English

Philip Durkin & Kathryn Allan

Oxford English Dictionary & University College London

Keywords: lexicology, loanwords, synonymy, lexical fields, Early Modern English Studies of loanwords in Early Modern English (and in most other periods of the history of the language) have long struggled to move beyond an examination of dates of first attestation and language of immediate origin, usually based on the data of the Oxford English Dictionary. Such data has the virtue of being readily extracted, summarized, and quantified, in a manner that can readily be applied to a large sample, and can easily be replicated by other researchers. However, such an investigation gives little insight into questions of word frequency, register, or relationships with other lexical items, such as competition with near or full synonyms. This paper will examine how the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) and Early English Books Online can be used in conjunction with data from historical dictionaries (including the Middle English Dictionary and the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue as well as OED) in order to gain insight into the growth and development of a lexical field over time, particularly through the accommodation of words that were borrowed from Latin and French in late Middle English and Early Modern English. It will take as a test case the group of words placed in HTOED in the category ‘sweet’ (adjective) as a subsection of section 01.03.05 ‘taste’, particularly in the period 1400 to 1700. It will investigate how far it is possible to establish (using the tools outlined above): relative word frequency in a particular meaning; use in different registers or in varieties of technical and non-technical discourse; and any tendencies to restriction to particular subcomponents of a broader meaning. In so doing, it will attempt to identify methodologies that can be applied across large datasets to test empirically the hypothesis that the huge influx of loanwords in Early Modern English (and to an extent also in the later fifteenth century) is closely connected with the expansion of the distinctive lexical resources of different stylistic and technical registers, and with the exploitation of full or partial synonyms in literary language for rhetorical purposes.

70

Valency effects in English verb-particle and light verb constructions (and what it tells us about grammaticalisation)

Marion Elenbaas Leiden University

In this talk I compare the argument structure of two well-known English

examples of complex predicates: the Verb-Particle Construction (VPC), illustrated in (1), and the Light Verb Construction (LVC), illustrated in (2).

(1) He pulled up the blind. (2) She took a walk.

While acting as a single predicate, each component part of the complex

predicate acts as a predicate in its own right, and contributes to the argument structure. In (3), the particle away has a transitivising effect (compare (3’)), and in (4), a nominalised intransitive verb (see (4’)) occurs in a transitive structure.

(3) He slept the afternoon away. (VPC) (3’) He slept (*the afternoon). (4) He had a sleep. (LVC) (4’) He slept.

The complex predicate in (3) is transitive, the internal argument

introduced by the particle, but the complex predicate in (4) is strictly speaking intransitive: it licenses an external argument only. The deverbal nominal appears to be predicate and argument at the same time, however, as shown by the fact that the deverbal nominal can be the subject of a passive, as indicated in (5) (see also Mohanan 2006:470).

(5) A short sleep was had.

If VPCs and LVCs are both complex predicates, these apparent

differences in argument structure have to be accounted for. The main research question I will address is given in (6).

(6) What do the valency properties of the component parts of LVCs

and VPCs reveal about the synchronic and diachronic status of these component parts and of the entire complex predicate?

71

In order to answer this question, I examine corpus data from Modern English (1500-1900) (The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpora, Kroch et al. 2004 and Kroch et al. 2010) and Present-Day English (1900-present) (The British National Corpus, BNC).

I then provide a unified account of both types of complex predicate in terms of Ramchand’s (2008) split vP analysis, in which the verbal domain is decomposed into three subevent projections: INIT(iation)P, PROC(ess)P, and RES(ult)P. The maximal decomposition is presented in (7).

(7) [initP init [procP proc [resP res XPrheme]]]

Particles (VPCs) and deverbal nominals (LVCs) lexicalise the Rheme,

which is part of the description of the predicate (see Pantcheva 2009). In the analysis I propose, particles head a PP and may introduce an argument (see Ramchand and Svenonius 2002). Deverbal nominals are ambiguous between predicate and argument. I will argue that particles are more grammaticalised than deverbal nominals, and therefore that VPCs are more grammaticalised than LVCs. Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini, and Ariel Diertani. 2004. The Penn-Helsinki

Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. Online: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-2/index.html.

Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini, and Ariel Diertani. 2010. The Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English. Online: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCMBE-RELEASE-1/index.html.

Mohanan, Tara. 2006. Grammatical verbs (with special reference to light verbs). The Blackwell Companion to Syntax ed. by Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk, vol. II, 459-492. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing.

Pantcheva, Marina. 2009. First phase syntax of persian complex predicates: Argument structure and telicity. Journal of South Asian Linguistics 2:1.53-72.

Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon: A first phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ramchand, Gillian, and Peter Svenonius. 2002. The lexical syntax and lexical semantics of the verb-particle construction. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. by Line Mikkelsen and Christopher Potts, 387-400. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

72

Why Scotsmen will drown and shall not be saved: On the development of will and shall in Older Scots

Christine Elsweiler

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Keywords: Older Scots, modal verbs, will, shall, future reference Present-day Scots and British Standard English share the core modal verbs can, must, may, will and shall. Although, formally, these modals are very similar in both varieties, in Scots they are used differently from Standard English (cf. Miller 1993 and Beal 1997). According to the prescriptive tradition, in Standard English shall is used in the 1

st person to denote mere

future. In the 2nd

and 3rd

person will is required. In Scots, will is used in the 1

st person without expressing volition. Shall, on the other hand, expresses

determination in the 2nd

and 3rd

person (cf. SND, s.v. will). Whereas the history of the modal verbs is well documented for English

(e.g. Fischer 2007, Gotti et al. 2002, Warner 1993), to date, a description of the historical development of the modal verbs in Scots is still wanting, although as early as the 18

th century Scottish writers such as Beattie (1797)

provided lists of Scotticisms, which included, among others, the diverging use of will in Scots. Studies of modal verbs in both Older and Modern Scots are few and far between (e.g. Dossena 2003, Brown & Miller 1975).

This paper investigates the origin of the deviating distribution of will and shall in Scots. It aims to provide a descriptive account of the semantic development of will and shall from the 14

th to the 18

th century based on a

corpus study using the Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots database (1380–1500), the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (1450–1700) and the Corpus of Scottish Correspondence (1500–1715). The study analyses the distribution of the modal meanings of will and shall with a particular focus on grammatical person and time reference across different genres and dialect areas. In the 14

th through to the 16

th centuries the grammatical person in

which will and shall are used mainly depends on the genre and does not yet show the present-day distribution. As concerns tense and modality, the deontic uses of will and shall prevail in the 14

th and 15

th centuries, in

particular in regulative texts. Epistemic uses are typical of other genres, such as biblical texts. There are also several examples where will and shall are used interchangeably, without any apparent difference in modal meaning. Such cases could be especially interesting as a source of incipient change. Generally, shall and will have future reference with modal

73

overtones. Mere future reference predominantly features in dependent clauses, particularly in relative clauses. Beal, Joan. 1997. “Syntax and Morphology”. Charles Jones. ed. The Edinburgh History

of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 335-377. Beattie, James. 1797. Scoticisms, arranged in alphabetical order, designed to correct

improprieties of speech and writing. Edinburgh: printed for the booksellers, 29-30.

Brown, Keith and Jim Miller. 1975. “Modal verbs in Scottish English”. Work in Progress 8. Edinburgh: Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, 99-114.

Dossena, Marina. 2003. “Hedging in Late Middle English, Older Scots and Early Modern English: The Case of SHOULD and WOULD”. Hart, David. ed. English Modality in Context: Diachronic Perspectives. Bern: Peter Lang, 197-222.

Fischer, Olga. 2007. Morphosyntactic Change. Functional and Formal Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 159-258.

Gotti, Maurizio et al. 2002. Variation in Central Modals. A Repertoire of Forms and Types of Usage in Middle English and Early Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang.

Miller, Jim. 1993. “The Grammar of Scottish English”. J. Milroy and L. Milroy. eds. Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. Harlow: London, 99-138.

SND = Grant, William and David Murison. eds. 1941-76. The Scottish national dictionary designed partly on regional lines and partly on historical principles, and containing all the Scottish words known to be in use or to have been in use since c. 1700. Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association.

Warner, Andrew. 1993. English Auxiliaries: Structure and History. Cambridge: CUP.

Because her Majesty said...: Agency, power and reported speech in Early Modern correspondence

Mel Evans

University of Birmingham

Keywords: reported discourse, Early Modern English, correspondence, pragmatics, stylistics Following Leech and Short’s ([1981] 2007) influential formal framework for literary prose, the study of reported discourse in English has received increasingly nuanced examinations of the formal and functional dimensions of the quoted utterance. Analyses of witness statements (e.g. Matoesian 2000) and conversational narratives (e.g. Johansen 2011) have illustrated the significant pragmatic force of reported speech, which can manipulate the perception of agency and attitude of both the original speaker and the

74

reporter. Relatedly, studies of literary genres have demonstrated the diverse narrative effects of the conventionalised formal modes, and the degree of artifice and idealisation bound-up with representations of fictional speech (e.g. Thomas 2012). Yet questions remain about the development of reported speech in historical varieties English, particularly in terms of the (bi-directional) relationship between form and function. Moore’s (2011) study of Middle English suggests that modern concepts of authenticity, verisimilitude, and clear, bounded categories were at a nascent stage throughout the 15th and early 16th century, with a more fluid and variable practice identified across, and between, literary and non-literary genres. The subsequent stages of the development of reported speech in English thus warrant attention, in order to identify how the formal and functional dimensions of modern reported speech became established in written formats.

The present paper reports early findings of an investigation into the distribution, forms and function of reported speech in Early Modern correspondence, a genre conventionally situated towards the ‘spoken’ end of the spoken-written continuum, and one that, to my knowledge, has not been systematically studied in regards to reported discourse. Combining corpus-based and qualitative analytic techniques, I analyse a range of political and personal letters from CEEC and self-compiled corpora to explore how the demands of information exchange, material constraints, and other contextual elements influence the forms and possible functions of reported discourse for sixteenth-century letter writers. In particular, I consider how interpersonal factors, such as power, social distance, agency and authenticity inform, or reflect, the selection and presentation of reported speech. The original data provides a means to investigate the hypothesis that the functions of reported speech required for correspondence may have played a significant role in the development of the formal characteristics present in later periods of English. Johansen, M. 2011. ‘Agency and responsibility in reported speech’ Journal of

Pragmatics 43, 2845-2860. Leech, G. and M. Short. 2007. Style in Fiction 2nd Edition. Harlow: Pearson Education

Limited. Matoesian, G. 2000. ‘Intertextual authority in reported speech: production media in

the Kennedy Smith rape trial’, Journal of Pragmatics, 879-914. Moore, C. 2011. Quoting Speech in Early English Cambridge: CUP Thomas, B. 2012. Fictional Dialogue: speech and conversation in the modern and

postmodern novel Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.

75

The spread of (in-)definiteness marking in Early English: Reconstructing category emergence in the lab

Olga Feher, Kenny Smith, Nikolaus Ritt & Elnora Ten Wolde

University of Edinburgh - University of Vienna Our paper deals with article emergence in Early English, focussing on the spread of grammars in which first the definiteness (cf. McColl Millar 2000, Sommerer 2012)and later the indefiniteness (cf. Rissanen 1967) of NP reference was obligatorily marked (with the and a(n) as default markers). We address the specific question why the emerging grammars with obligatory (in-)definiteness marking managed to spread among speakers for whom it must – in early phases – still have been optional.

On the basis of Accommodation Theory (e.g. Auer & Hinskens 2005, Coupland 2010, Trudgill 1986), we hypothesize that speakers with optional (in-)definiteness marking would have found it easier to accommodate to speakers with categorical rules, because they merely had to increase their usage of a grammatically viable option, while speakers with categorical rules would have had to violate their grammars and might have been insensitive to the finer pragmatic distinctions governing optional determiner use. Therefore, speech produced in communication between speakers with different grammars would have converged on patterns reflecting categorical (in-)definiteness marking rules, so that these rules would have inevitably spread.

We tested our proposal through a communication game with a miniature language designed for this purpose (for experimental methods in the study of cultural language evolution see e.g. Kirby, Cornish & Smith 2008). The language allowed the construction of simple Verb-Subject sentences describing movement types (e.g. boingla for jumping) made by either one or two animals (e.g. hoppo ‘frog’). While plurality was invariably signalled by post-nominal particles (e.g. wib), singular marking (by different particles, e.g. dak) was obligatory in one ‘variety’ and optional in the other. As the absence of plural marking implied singular, explicit singular marking was also redundant. In the communication game, participants trained on obligatory singular marking were matched with participants trained on optional marking. In each trial, one participant described a scene, and the other had to identify it among a set of different pictures. A number of such trials were played, with roles switching after each trial. This setup allowed us to test the prediction inherent in our account of article emergence, namely that accommodation would select obligatory rather than optional category marking.

76

In our presentation, we explain our hypothesis, report the results of our study, and discuss how experiments involving artificial languages can help to test hypotheses actual changes like English article emergence. Auer, Peter & Frans Hinskens. 2005. The Role of Interpersonal Accommodation in a

Theory of Language Change. In Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens & Paul Kerswill (eds.), Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages, 335–357. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Coupland, Nikolas. 2010. Accomodation theory. In Jürgen Jaspers, Jef Verschueren & Jan-Ola Östman (eds.), Society and language use, 21–27. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Kirby, Simon, Cornish, Hannah & Kenny Smith. 2008. Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: an experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 105, 10681-10686

McColl Millar, Robert. 2000. Some suggestions for explaining the origin and development of the definite article in English”. In Olga Fischer, Annette Rosenbach & Dieter Stein (eds.). Pathways of Change: Grammaticalization in English. 275-310. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Rissanen, Matti. 1967. The uses of “one” in Old and Early Middle English. Helsinki: Societé Néophilologique.

Sommerer, Lotte. 2012. Investigating the emergence of the definite article in Old English: About categorization, gradualness and constructions. Folia Linguistica Historica 33. 175–213.

Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.

English morphosyntax from the northern perspective: The resilience of the Northern Subject Rule

Julia Fernández-Cuesta Universidad de Sevilla

Keywords: Northern Subject Rule, Northern English, standardisation, supralocalisation, historical sociolinguistics This paper addresses the origin and diffusion of one of the most intriguing features of varieties of northern British English, the Northern Subject Rule, a syntactic pattern of agreement based on type of subject and adjacency (proximity to the verb) rather than on person and number. In these varieties verbal -s was the sole marker of the present indicative, except when a personal pronoun subject was adjacent to the verb, in which case the ending was zero (or the reduced ending) in all persons, except in the second and third person singular, which always had -s. Although it has been

77

traditionally recognised as one of the most characteristic features of Northern Middle English and Older Scots, the NSR is first attested in Old Northumbrian (Cole 2012) and persisted as a low-frequency variant in Early Modern English, and has been attested in varieties of Present-day northern English (Beal and Corrigan 2000, Buchstaller et al. 2013).

Analysis of the distribution of the NSR in a corpus of wills and inventories reveals that the syntactic pattern at the core of the rule was one of the most resilient features of early Modern Northern English. Data show that the NSR survived its original surface morphology in the North, with local -s competing with supralocal -th throughout the 16th century, to the extent that in texts written by members of the higher social ranks the local suffix almost completely replaced the supralocal one. The results of my analysis show that the resilience of the NSR in Early Modern English was clearly conditioned by sociolinguistic factors, which also help to explain its trajectory and final demise.

A further aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the presence of the NSR in southern varieties of English, as is the case with other original northern features such as present indicative -s and the plural forms of the personal pronouns, can be explained as a result of diffusion at a time when mobility and popular travel ‘lent shape to some of the definitive transformations of the era.’ (McRae 2009: 7)

Beal, Joan & Karen Corrigan. 2000. ‘Comparing the present with the past to predict

the future for Tyneside English.’ Newcastle and Durham Working Papers in Linguistics 6, 13-30.

Buchstaller, Isabelle, Karen Corrigan, Anders Holmberg, Patrick Honeybone & Warren Maguire. 2013. ‘Investigating convergence in morphosyntactic and phonological variability: A case study in 2 localities.’ Journal of English Linguistics 17(1). 85-128.

McRae, Andrew. 2009. Literature and Domestic Travel in Early Modern England.. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

78

Contingent polysemy and discursive thresholds: Toward a sociohistorical

framework for semantic change

Susan Fitzmaurice University of Sheffield

Keywords: Late Modern English, semantic change, sociohistorical semantics, polysemy, discursive threshold. Semantic change has long been understood as a set of processes that shape the complexity of the lexicon within a particular set of situations and contexts; that is, semantic change depends on the (social) conditions of language use (e.g. Ullmann, 1962). What is more difficult, however, is to yoke together the stages and types of change to the different material circumstances that appear to be critical to change. In this paper, I situate Traugott & Dasher’s (2002) Invited Inference Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC) model of pragmatic and semantic change within a social framework that attends to the cultural and discursive conditions that may be criterial in change. I discuss the role of the ‘discursive threshold’ (Whitlock, 2000; Pilosoff, 2012) in triggering change. I introduce the notion of ‘contingent polysemy’ (the meanings of a word have different weight and relevance to different speakers at the same time depending upon factors such as age, education, gender, experience and socioeconomic and other social attributes).

In order to illustrate the framework and test its efficacy, I examine the historical polysemies in the vocabulary used to treat race in the heyday of British colonialism, namely the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I examine in particular the role of catastrophic events such as wars and key political changes such as decolonisation and independence in shaping meanings and promoting particular uses of words such as ‘native’ and ‘colonial’. This case study affords careful scrutiny of the social factors that condition the focussing of particular meanings for particular groups of speakers in a particular historical moment and how those meanings vary. Concentrating on the history of the lexicon of British colonial administration in late modern English, I show how its polysemy may be understood in terms of the social and material circumstances of speakers operating in different settings with different ideological and cultural contexts within the same period. I also identify the moments at which Britain’s colonies become independent as key discursive thresholds that trigger semantic change. Accordingly, I will demonstrate how the history of meaning can

79

usefully be grounded in social and cultural change in general as well as in terms of key historical events in a principled way.

Pilosoff, Rory. 2012. The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from

Zimbabwe. Harare: Weaver Press. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ullmann, Stephen. 1962. Semantics: An Introduction to the Science of Meaning.

London: Blackwell. Whitlock, Gillian. 2000. The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography.

London: Cassell.

All for one and one for all: The formation, evolution and functions of Modern English ing-clauses

Lauren Fonteyn & Nikki van de Pol

KU Leuven Keywords: diachronic corpus linguistics; Modern English; adverbial subordinate clauses; non-finites with -ing; verbal gerunds; free adjuncts; absolute constructions; conceptual networks; cognitive complexity This paper provides an overview of the diachronic evolution of three non-finite clauses in –ing in Modern English (1500-1914): the (verbal) gerund (VG) (1), the free adjunct (FA) (2) and the absolute (AC) (3):

(1) On beaching the boat on the sand, the lug-sail was taken down. (PPCMBE, 1900)

(2) Observing that he saw I was looking after him, I turned about and followed him. (OBC, 1818)

(3) The resistance of the air having been avoided, (…) all fall exactly in the same time. (PPCMBE, 1859)

Based on detailed analysis of a dataset drawn from the PENN parsed corpora (5000 ACs, 400 VGs, 400 FAs), we will argue that throughout the Modern English period, these constructions came to be encapsulated in a single conceptual network of backgrounding strategies.

We first consider the formation of the network. Initially, VGs occurred with a limited set of prepositions in determinerless contexts and mainly profiled generic or nonspecific indefinite events (4) (Fanego 2004; De Smet 2008). In Modern English, however, two important developments occurred.

80

The first involved the creation of a formal continuum (a) from VG to AC when VGs started occurring with possessive ‘subjectoids’ (Huddleston and Pullum 2002) and later also common case NPs (Fanego 2004) and (b) from VG to FA when VGs started allowing controlled readings and combining with prepositions which can also function as conjuctions (e.g. after, before, etc.). Secondly, the VGs most dominant function became that of integrating a specific event serving as a backgrounded adverbial into a foregrounded event (5):

(4) The remedie of this, doth not stand onelie, in making good

common laws for the hole Realme, but also (…) in obseruing priuate discipline euerie man carefullie in his own house. (PPCEME, 1563–8)

(5) After being ready [VG], we took coach; and being very sleepy[FA], drouzed most part of the way to Gravesend. (PPCEME, 1666-67)

This development caused a conceptual split between the VG in subject/object use and the one in adverbial use (Houston 1989). The latter, it is suggested, became part of a conceptual network with ACs, which had a backgrounding function, and with FAs, which developed such a function in Modern English (Killie & Swan 2009).

The second part of the study focusses on the interaction between adverbial VGs, FAs and ACs. Once the network was established, the constructions in it interacted and shifts in terms of the uses that they preferred can be observed: While FAs and VGs developed a function closer to that of core adverbials (5), the AC increasingly expressed quasi-coordinate elaboration meanings (6) (van de Pol 2013):

(6) This lady was in a gown …, and the skirt falling to her feet.

(PPCMBE, 1718)

It is argued that the interplay between factors such as cognitive complexity and ease of processing (Rohdenburg 2009), on the one hand, and an increasing inclination towards densification (Leech et al. 2009), on the other, played a key role in determining which functions were adopted by which constructions.

Finally, it is suggested that the formation of this network resulted in the three -ing constructions strengthening each other’s place in the language inventory. The decline of FAs and ACs in other Germanic languages may in that sense be attributed to their lack of such network.

81

De Smet, Hendrik. 2008. ‘Functional motivations in the development of nominal and verbal gerunds in Middle and Early Modern English.’ English Language and Linguistics 12.1. 55–102.

Fanego, Teresa. 2004. ‘On reanalysis and actualization in syntactic change: the rise and development of English verbal gerunds’. Diachronica 21.1: 5-55.

Houston, Ann. 1989. ‘The English gerund: syntactic change and discourse function.’ In Ralph W. Fasold and Deborah Schiffrin (eds.). Language change and variation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 173-196.

Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Killie, K. & T. Swan. 2009. ‘The grammaticalization and subjectification of adverbial –ing clauses (converb clauses) in English’. English Language and Linguistics 13. 337-363.

Leech, Geoffrey, Hundt, Marianne, Mair, Christian and Smith, Nicholas. 2009. Change in Contemporary English: A grammatical study. Studies in English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

van de Pol, Nikki. 2013. ‘In absolute detail: the development of English absolute constructions from adverbial to additional-context marker.’ presented at the 34th ICAME conference. Santiago de Compostella, 22-26 May.

Rohdenburg, Günter. 2009. ‘Cognitive complexity and increased grammatical explicitness in English.’ Cognitive Linguistics 7.2. 149-182.

Does morphological simplification affect word-order in Early Middle English? The case of labile verbs

Luisa García García University of Seville

A substantial number of Old English causative pairs of the type lie/lay undergoes a process of morphological syncretism in early English, whereby both the intransitive and the causative sense come to be expressed by the same invariable form; see e.g. melt intransitive in 1) The ice melts and causative in 2) The sun melts the ice. García García 2012 puts forth the hypothesis that morphological syncretism in the expression of valency (i.e. intransitive and transitive-causative usages in a single form) may have a connection with syntactic parameters, specifically the overt expression of all verbal arguments and a fixed or at least consistent word order, in which a certain element order is preferred to others. To verify this hypothesis a comparison between the syntactic behaviour of labile verbs of the melt-type and non-labile verbs (transitive- or intransitive-only verbs) has to be carried out. Specifically, the relative position of subject, verb and object in constructions with labile verbs used in a transitive sense has to be

82

compared with that in constructions with transitive-only verbs. Further, the position of subject and verb in clauses with labile verbs used in an intransitive sense should be contrasted to those using intransitive-only verbs. Finally, the overt expression of arguments in labile and non-labile verbs has to be quantified. In a previous paper in collaboration with Esaúl Ruiz Narbona (García García & Ruiz Narbona forthcoming), a few early Middle English verbs were analysed with respect to the parameters just mentioned. In the present study, I intend to widen the scope of the analysis to achieve more conclusive results. Both the number of verbs and the conditioning factors under consideration will be increased. All labile verbs originating from a former causative opposition present in LAEME (A Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English) will be analyzed, and their syntactic behaviour compared to transitive-only and intransitive-only verbs with a similar number of occurrences. The conditioning factors that will be considered in the present paper are clause type, subject type, object type and constituent length. García García, Luisa 2012. “Morphological Causatives in Old English: The Quest for a

Vanishing Formation”. Transactions of the Philological Society 110:1, 122-148. García García, Luisa & Ruiz Narbona, Esaúl. “Labile verbs and word order in early

Middle English: an initial study”. Forthcoming in Selim. LAEME: A Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English:

http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme/front_page/about_laeme.html

The literary dialect features of the linguistic South 1500-1900

Maria F. Garcia-Bermejo Giner, Javier Ruano García & Maria Pilar Sánchez Garcia

University of Salamanca

Keywords: English Dialectology, Southern English Dialects, English Dialect Literature, English Literary Dialects The linguistic South has traditionally received less attention either from researchers or from literary authors. South Western and Kentish Engish, initially associated with country bumpkins and uncouth characters in the Early Modern Period, were the varieties most frequently represented or studied. In later centuries this trend continued although other southern dialects became the focus of writers and researchers alike. The main reason for this may have been its apparent similarity with Standard English.

83

Compared with the North, the Southern sources for The English Dialect Dictionary (1898-1905) seem scanty: c 428 items for the 11 (Survey of English Dialects) southern counties, against c 808 items for the six northern counties In recent years researchers are beginning to remedy this (For instance, Liselotte 2004, Melchers 2010, Wagner 2013 or Wakelyn 1988).

The aim of this paper is a description of the main dialect features (phonological as well as morphosyntactical) selected by writers in their literary representation of the eleven southern counties in the Early and Late Modern English periods. A comparison will be made with contemporary philological literature. Research will be based on The English Dialect Dictionary primary sources as well as on those now made available in The Salamanca Corpus (2011-) Anderwald, Liselotte. 2004. “The varieties of English spoken in the South-East of

England: Morphology and syntax”. In B. Kortmann et al. (eds.) A Handbook of Varieties of English: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 175-95.

García-Bermejo Giner, María F. 2013. “The Southern Dialect in Thomas Churchyard’s The Contention bettwixte Churchyearde and Camell (1552)”. Hans Sauer and Gaby Waxenberger. eds. Recording English, Researching English, Transforming English. Frankfurt-am-Main: 245-263.

García-Bermejo Giner, María F. et al. (eds.) 2011—. The Salamanca Corpus: A Digital Archive of English Dialect Texts. Salamanca. Available at:

http://salamancacorpus.usal.es/SC/ index.html Melchers, Gunnel. 2010. “Southern English in Writing”. Raymond Hickey. ed.

Varieties of English in Writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 81-98. Orton, Harold et al. 1967-71. Survey of English Dialects: The Southern Counties.

Leeds: E. J. Arnold & Son. Wagner, Susanne. 2013. “South West English”. In T. Hopkins and J. McKenny (eds.)

World Englishes I - The British Isles. London: Bloomsbury Academics, 167-88. Wakelyn, Martyn F. 1988. “The Phonology of South-Western English, 1500-1700.”

Jaceck Fisiak. ed. Historical Dialectology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter: 609-644. Wright, Joseph (ed.) 1898-1905. English Dialect Dictionary. 6 vols. Oxford: Henry

Frowde.

Grammaticalization of markers of ingressive aspect in the English and Scots of the late 14

th and the 15

th centuries

Wojciech Gardela

University of Edinburgh

According to Brinton (1988), ginnan, fōn and tacan begin to function as markers of ingressive aspect in Old English, whereas commencen (comsen,

84

becomsen), prōcēden, fallen, gōn, grouen, setten, brēken and bresten assume this function in Middle English only. However, her study does not take into consideration dialectal data, especially as far as the grammaticalization of markers of ingressive aspect is concerned in the English and Scots of the late 14

th and the 15

th centuries. Furthermore,

existing studies of the category of aspect in the English and Scots of the late 14

th and the 15

th centuries are inadequate and incomplete (Devitt, 1989;

Görlach, 2002; King, 1997; Macafee, 1992-93; Moessner, 1997); they did not have access to the kinds of corpora now available, and they did not deal with this topic from the point of view of the grammaticalization theory.

King (1997: 158) states, “Older Scots was affected by the same sort of fundamental linguistic restructuring undergone by English in its transition from Old to Middle and Early Modern English.” Furthermore, King (1997: 158) adds, “the Scots and/or Northern linguistic input often differed from that of Midland, Southern and South-eastern dialects of early Middle English”, thus resulting in the emergence of features specifically characteristic of Scots. While it is safe to assume that markers of ingressive aspect found in Middle English also operated in Older Scots, the following questions need to be addressed: a) what items serve grammatical function as markers of ingressive aspect? b) in what ways these markers of ingressive aspect constitute a case of grammaticalization which fills a gap in the continuum from lexical to grammatical.

I use late 14th

and the 15th

century English and Scots texts from the following corpora to tackle the above research questions: a) the Edinburgh Corpus of Older Scots; b) the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots; c) the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts; and d) the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English (sampler). Brinton, L. (1988). The Development of English Aspectual Systems: Aspectualizers and

Post-verbal Particles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Devitt, A. J. (1989). Standardizing Written English: Diffusion in the Case of Scotland

1520-1659. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Görlach, M. (2002). A Textual History of Scots. Heidelberg: Winter. King, A. (1997). ‘The inflectional morphology of Older Scots’ in C. Jones (ed.). The

Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Macafee, C. (1992-93). A Short Grammar of Older Scots. Scottish Language, 11-12,

10-36. Moessner, L. (1997). ‘The Syntax of Older Scots’ in C. Jones (ed.). The Edinburgh

History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

85

Towards the digitisation of the Lady Mary Hamilton archive (letters and diaries)

Anne Gardner, Marianne Hundt & Moira Kindlimann

University of Zurich Keywords: Late Modern English, XML annotation and digital editing, corpus compilation Held at The John Rylands University Library, Manchester, the Lady Mary Hamilton Archive is a valuable, but still largely untapped resource for linguistic, cultural and literary studies focussing on the late eighteenth century. Lady Mary Hamilton (1756–1816) has been called the ‘female Pepys’: her diaries, mostly written between 1782 and 1785, document her daily life and her meetings with intellectual figures of the time which she counted among her friends and acquaintances, for instance Sir Joshua Reynolds, Horace Walpole, as well as members of the Bluestocking circle which included Francis Burney, Mary Delaney, Eva Maria Garrick, Elizabeth Montague and Elizabeth Vesey. The Archive also contains letters written to Lady Mary Hamilton by her family and other members of her social network.

With the exception of extracts from selected diaries and letters which appear in Anson and Anson (1925), the material has not yet been edited. The aim of this project is to prepare a digital edition of materials from the Lady Mary Hamilton Archive with TEI-conformant XML mark-up in which both a facsimile of the manuscripts and their transliterations (preserving the original spelling, punctuation and layout) will be displayed. The corpus will be annotated to facilitate searches for places, persons and literary works, which will be of interest to literary and cultural-historical studies; it will also assist searches for linguistic features which differ from Present-Day English usage by providing normalised spellings in the annotation as, for instance, in the case of the (non-)capitalisation of words such as english, Breakfast and Garden, the occurrence of an apostrophe in the past tense or past participle of regular verbs (e.g. dress’d, join’d, walk’d), the non-use of apostrophes in genitive constructions as in a great favourite of her fathers, or the missing genitive in Mrs. W. Maid.

Drawing on corpora such as ARCHER 3.2 and CLMET3.0 and letters written to Lady Mary Hamilton by members of her social network, we will provide case studies to illustrate the usefulness of the Lady Mary Hamilton materials for the study of language change in the Late Modern Period.

86

Anson, Elizabeth, and Anson, Florence, eds. 1925. Mary Hamilton, Afterwards Mrs. John Dickenson, at Court and At Home. From Letters and Diaries, 1756 to 1816. London: John Murray.

ARCHER 3.2 = A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers. 2013. 1990–1993/2002/2007/2010/2013. Originally compiled under the supervision of Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan at Northern Arizona University and University of Southern California; modified and expanded by subsequent members of a consortium of universities. Current member universities are Bamberg, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Helsinki, Lancaster, Leicester, Manchester, Michigan, Northern Arizona, Santiago de Compostela, Southern California, Trier, Uppsala, and Zurich.

CLMET3.0 = The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, version 3.0. 2011. Compiled by Hendrik De Smet, Hans-Jürgen Diller and Jukka Tyrkkö.

Subordinate clauses in selected Old English translations

Jerzy Gaszewski & Anna Cichosz University of Lodz

Keywords: Old English syntax, subordinate clauses, verb-final order, translated texts Placing finite verbs in the clause-final position in subordinate clauses is one of the basic and characteristic features of OE syntax (e.g. Mitchell 1985: II, 967). This is, however, no rigid rule but a tendency and other orders can be found in the same general category of clauses (Traugott 1992: 170). Still, verb-final order is seen as one of the signals of subordination in OE (Fischer et al. 2000: 57).

Our paper investigates to what extent this general rule is followed by selected OE texts which are translations. Firstly, are subordinate clauses indeed predominantly verb-final in this somewhat problematic text type? Furthermore, we check what other orders are used and how frequently. We also pay attention to the properties of constituents following the finite verb in the clauses not abiding by the verb-final rule. Syntactic variation in the analysed material also stems from differences in the behaviour of particular subtypes of subordinate clauses (cf. Suárez-Gómez 2008 and Fischer et al. 2000: 61) and differences between individual OE texts, which is also investigated thoroughly. Last but not least, we analyse whether the observed differences and peculiarities in our data are attributable to the influence of the original Latin versions (cf. also criteria for “proper analysis of word order” suggested by Liggins 1970, after Mitchell 1985: II, 959).

87

The results of our research will show how the abovementioned factors influence element order in the analysed clauses, which of them are decisive and under what circumstances. We analyse the material statistically, taking into consideration the possible variables increasing or decreasing the frequency of the verb-final order, including the element order of the original Latin texts. In particular, patterns modelled on the original version (potential calques) will be consistently differentiated from those that show no such influence.

The analysed material comprises substantial portions of Ælfric’s translation of the Book of Genesis, the Gospel of Luke from West Saxon Gospels and Bede’s History. The texts have the form of a syntactically annotated parallel corpus.

Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman and Wim van der Wurff. 2000.

The Syntax of Early English. Cambridge: CUP. Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax. Vol. II Subordination, independent

elements and element order. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Suárez-Gómez, Cristina. 2008. “Do relative clauses in early English have their own

word order patterns?” Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 16. 15-29.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1992. “Syntax” In: Richard M. Hogg (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. I The beginnings to 1066. Cambridge: CUP. 168-289.

Syntactic dislocation in English congregational song between 1500 and 1900: A corpus-based study

Kirsten Gather

University of Cologne

Keywords: syntax, dislocation, corpus, diachronic, genre

(1) O all you landes, the treasures of your joy, In merry shout upon the Lord bestow: Your service cheerfully on him imploy, With triumph song into his presence goe. (Mary Sidney Herbert 1599)

Already at first sight, this text looks like an English hymn. Why is that so? Apart from the biblical topic and the regular metre, the rather

unexpected order of clause constituents also seems to be a significant

88

characteristic here. The verbs, for instance, are situated in clause-final position (1a) where we would expect objects or adverbials (1b):

(1a) O all you landes, the treasures of your joy, In merry shout upon the Lord bestow: Your service cheerfully on him imploy, With triumph song into his presence goe.

(1b) O all you landes, bestow the treasures of your joy upon the Lord in merry shout: Imploy your service cheerfully on him, goe into his presence with triumph song. In my corpus-based study, I look at these kinds of syntactic dislocation, i.e. the deviation of obligatory clause constituents from their unmarked positions in relation to subject and verb, in English congregational song from the 16

th to the 19

th century. Congregational song comprises all kinds

of metrical and rhymed poetry meant to be sung in church by a congregation, usually as part of liturgical service. The most important subgenres are metrical psalmody (16

th and 17

th centuries) and hymnody

(18th

and 19th

centuries). Hymns, as opposed to metrical psalms, are freely authored poetry without any biblical model texts.

I will show that syntactic dislocation is indeed a significant feature of congregational song. Apparently, the dislocation of clause constituents depends essentially on constraints of metre and rhyme. In turn, these constraints correlate with several syntactic factors, such as the position and internal phrase structure of the dislocated constituent, so that two distinct dislocation patterns emerge. The first pattern occurs predominantly in metrical psalmody while the second pattern is mainly found in hymns.

Of course, the question arises whether syntactic dislocation is only typical of congregational song. So in a final step, I will compare the results obtained to secular poetry to show that the high dislocation frequencies and the characteristic distribution of the two dislocation patterns are indeed a unique feature of congregational song. Moreover, I will illustrate why syntactic dislocation underlines the conservative nature of the genre also in relation to religious prose (see Kohnen 2011, Kohnen et al. 2011). Kohnen, Thomas. 2011. “Religious language in 17th-century England: progressive or

archaic?”. In: Frenk, Joachim und Lena Steveker (eds.). Anglistentag 2010. Proceedings. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 279-287.

89

Kohnen, Thomas, Tanja Rütten and Ingvilt Marcoe. 2011. “Early Modern English religious prose – a conservative register?”. In: Rayson, Paul, Sebastian Hoffmann und Geoffrey Leech (eds.). Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 6: Methodological and Historical Dimensions of Corpus Linguistics. VARIENG website: http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/06/kohnen_et_al/.

Sidney Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and Sir Philip Sidney. 1599. The Psalmes of David translated into divers and sundry kinds of verse, more rare and excellent for the Method and Varietie than ever hath been done in English. Begun by the noble and learned Gent. Sir Philip Sidney, Knt. and finished by the right honourable The Countess of Pembroke, his sister. London 1599.

On the relation between degree modifying and focusing adjective uses: The case of sure and true

Lobke Ghesquière

KU Leuven In recent years, quite a lot of research has been carried out into the emphasizing uses of adjectives (Bolinger 1972), as in (1) and (2). Emphasizers are characterized grammatically by their inability to be used in predicative position or to be graded (e.g. *a favourite that is sure, *a very sure favourite). Semantically, emphasizers do not describe distinct properties of entities but convey speaker stance towards the referents.

(1) Sun Valley Golden moments Chicken Kiev is now available in a handy 4-pack: just right for storing in your freezer and a sure family favourite. (WB)

(2) ‘He was a lovely man,’ Nancy recalls warmly, ‘a true gentleman.’ (WB)

A prenominal adjectival use that is only recently drawing linguistic attention is the focusing use, as in (3) and (4) (Vandewinkel 2005, Vandewinkel & Davidse 2008). Focusing adjectives do not reinforce semantic specifications of the nominal description they are used with, but they delineate a specific focus value in relation to alternative values.

(3) The on-going recognition is the true reward for winning, not just the golden gong I keep in a bank vault. (WB)

(4) The true way and the sure way to friendship is through humility-being open to each other, accepting each other just as we are, knowing each other. (WB)

90

Intriguingly, the few studies that mention focusing adjectives do not agree on their function, classifying them either as a type of determining element (Bolinger 1967, Adamson 2000) or degree modifier (Quirk et al. 1985, Vandewinkel & Davidse 2008), and hypothesize they result from different paths of change accordingly.

For this paper, I will carry out a diachronic and synchronic corpus study of the prenominal adjectives true and sure, investigating the development of their focusing uses in relation to descriptive and degree modifier uses and secondary determiner uses. Descriptively, attention will go the finer grammatical, collocational and semantic-pragmatic distinguishing features of the different uses. The aim is to show that focusing adjectives serve a function in their own right which has to be built into our understanding of the English NP. Theoretically, the corpus study will allow reflection on the functional structure of English NP, more specifically the status of (inter)subjective meanings and scalarity across functional zones. Adamson, S. 2000. A lovely little example: word order options and category shift in

the premodifying string. In Fischer et al. (eds.). Pathways of Change: Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 39-66.

Bolinger, D. 1967. Adjectives in English: Attribution and predication. Lingua 18: 1-34. Bolinger, D. 1972. Degree words. The Hague: Mouton. Quirk, R.; S. Greenbaum, G. Leech & J. Svartvik. 1985. A Grammar of Contemporary

English. London: Longman. Vandewinkel, S. 2005. Attitudinal Adjectives and Category Shift in the Nominal

Group. MA Thesis. Linguistics Department. University of Leuven. Vandewinkel, S. & K. Davidse. 2008. The interlocking paths of development to

emphasizer adjective pure. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 9. 255-287.

Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (2nd edn.) Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (extended version) WordbanksOnline Corpus

91

Dyvers heynous sedicious and sclanderous Writinges: Adjective stacking in the English NP

Victorina Gonzalez-Diaz University of Liverpool

The combination of two or more adjectives in the NP premodifying string is not uncommon in Present-day English (e.g. a nice new car, fat black cat). However, adjective stacking does not seem to have been (fully) operative in earlier stages of the language. Straddled modification (*golden vineyard durable and firm), co-ordination (calm and blue sea) and postmodification (*wife full true) were (more) frequent options until at least the end of the ME period (Fischer 2000).

A number of concomitant morphosyntactic changes (e.g. loss of inflections, increasingly fixed word order, development of a new determiner system) have been mentioned in previous literature as key factors in the change towards adjectival premodification, and suggestions have also been put forward as to how these changes may have influenced the rise of adjective stacking (Fischer 2006 Fischer and Van der Wurff 2006; see also Raumolin-Brunberg 1991, 1993). Yet detailed quantitative and qualitative information about how stacked modification developed in English is needed.

Through a corpus-based study of NPs in the history of English (1400-1700), this paper begins to explore the issue. Preliminary analyses of the PPCME2 and PPCME data: (a) confirm the role of adverbial submodification (i.e. [[intensifier + adj] N]) in the analogical development of stacked adjective combinations (Fischer 2006), and (b) suggest that the spread of stacking at the expense of adjective co-ordination in the premodifying NP string is influenced by a process of stylistic competition between the two strategies. The data reflects a diachronic semantic narrowing of co-ordinated adjectives that makes them pragmatically similar to what Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 561) define as ‘intensificatory tautology’ constructions (vid. examples from the corpus such as debauched and dissolute son, true and lawful queen, principal and chief thing). This is mirrored by a parallel increase in adjectives that enter stacked modification at type (i.e. evaluative and descriptive) and token level.

More generally, the study contributes to a better understanding of the diachronic ‘unfolding’ of the English NP structure (see Van de Velde 2009, 2011) and points at the importance of register and stylistic factors in the process.

92

Fischer, O. (2000) “The position of the adjective in Old English”, in Bermúdez-Otero et al. (eds.) Generative theory and corpus studies: A dialogue from 10 ICEHL, Berlin: Mouton, pp. 153-181.

Fischer, O. (2006) “On the position of adjectives in Middle English”, English Language and Linguistics, 10 (2), pp. 253-288.

Fischer, O. and W. Van der Wurff (2006) “Syntax”, in Hogg, R. and D. Denison (eds.) A history of the English language, Cambridge: CUP, pp. 109-198.

Huddleston, R. and G. Pullum (2002) The Cambridge grammar of the English language, Cambridge: CUP.

Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (1991) “The position of adjectival modifiers in Late Middle English noun phrases”, in Fries, U. et al. (eds.) Creating and using English language corpora, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 159-168.

Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (1993) “From Thomas More to present-day English: Noun phrase stability and variability”, in Jucker, A. (ed.) The noun phrase in English. Its structure and variability (Anglistik & Englishunterricht 49), Heidelberg: C. Winter.

Van de Velde, F. (2009) “The emergence of modification patterns in the Dutch noun phrase”, Linguistics 47(4), pp. 1021-1049.

Van de Velde, F. (2011)”Left-peripheral expansion of the English NP”, English Language and Linguistics 15(2), pp. 387-415.

Late Modern English grammar writing and the aspectual restriction on the

progressive

Mariko Goto Kyushu Institute of Technology, Iizuka

Keywords: progressive, aspectual restriction, standardization of English, Late Modern English grammars, prescriptive grammars. This paper explores why the progressive is aspectually restricted in present-day standard English, while it seems to have been aspect-neutral in earlier English and still is in some present-day dialects. The paper first examines grammars of the Late Modern period, focusing on Pickborn (1789) because the restrictions on examples such as I am loving are not found in earlier major grammars. In fact, the very sentence, I am loving, appears as an illustration of the progressive in grammars in the period (e.g. Lowth: 1762: 56). Pickbourn mentions that Lowth’s use of the verb love for the form is inappropriate and states that “we do not say, I am loving, I am fearing, I am hating, I am approving, I am knowing; but we say, I love, I fear, I hate, I approve, I know &c.”(Pickbourn: 1789: 81-82). The preface of Pickbourn’s treatise suggests that the prescription was discerned and conceptualized

93

through his own research. Moreover, the prescriptive rule is elaborated on the basis of his detailed description of the simple and progressive forms. No earlier grammars elucidated them to the extent that Pickbourn did, but later grammars, including Knowles (1796: 22, 59) and Angus (1839: 38, 150), evidently followed Pickbourn’s treatment of the two forms as well as the restriction. According to Auer (2008: 59), Pickbourn was one of the specialists on the English verb, and his treatise was highly evaluated by reviewers. As many grammarians regarded the progressive and the simple forms largely as vague variants until the early 19

th century, Pickbourn’s

studies on the two forms were seminal in nature. In the second half of the paper, I discuss the relationship between the

standardization process of English and the restriction, taking into account the social background behind grammar writing in the late modern English period when the construction gained widespread currency in the written record. In this period, the publication of grammars exploded to meet the demands of social climbers who craved for linguistic norms, rules of syntax and logical reasoning. The prescriptive rule was perfectly suited for the purpose of using the simple and progressive forms, the most foundational verbal structures of English, ‘correctly.’ Considering how grammar was taught, the concomitant regulation and infiltration of the restriction in English may not necessarily be the result of mere coincidence.

Angus, William (1839) English Grammar, Fifth Edition (First Published in 1825),

Glasgow: (Printed for) the Author. Knowles, John (1796) The Principles of English Grammar with Critical Remarks and

Exercise of False Construction, London: (Printed for) the Author. Lowth, Robert (1762) A Short Introduction to English Grammar; rpt. Menston: Scolar

Press. (1967) Pickbourn, James (1789) A Dissertation on the English Verb; rpt. Menston: Scolar

Press. (1968) Auer, Anita (2008) “Eighteenth-Century Grammars and Book Catalogues,” Grammars,

Grammarians and Grammar-Writing in Eighteenth-Century England,” ed. by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 57-100.

94

Strong Class III verbs in time and space

Katrin Goundry University of Glasgow

Keywords: strong verbs, strong-to-weak shift, dialectology, Middle English, Late Modern English Old English Class III verbs are often divided into two main sub-types, depending on their ablaut pattern and stem structure (see Krygier 1994: 32-33, 43-49). Type A includes stems ending in a nasal plus consonant (e.g. drincan), while type B contains stems ending in a liquid-consonant cluster (e.g. helpan). Their inflectional outcomes in the present-day English standard are markedly different: most type-A verbs have remained strong (e.g. drink/drank/drunk), whereas most type-B verbs have become weak (e.g. help/helped). However, regional variants such as drinked and olp in the English Dialect Dictionary indicate that their history is possibly more variable and complex than their standard outcomes suggest.

Over the last decades, many scholars have examined the history of Class III and other strong verb classes and accounted for the preservation/loss of the strong inflection with factors such as the functionality of the ablaut pattern, word structure, token/type frequency and external contact (e.g. Wełna 1991; Krygier 1994; Branchaw 2010a-b). However, except for the limited studies by Taylor (1994) and Görlach (1994), their focus has been primarily on those forms contributing to the Modern English standard.

By contrast, my paper investigates the strong/weak forms of historically strong Class III verbs recorded in Middle English regional dialects. More specifically, my aim is to shed light on the following questions:

1) To what extent do forms and developments vary in Middle English dialects? Are the Middle English developments reflected in Late Modern English dialects? 2) Is regional variation more pronounced in the paradigms of particular verbs or sub-types? 3) What effect do the above factors (e.g. token/type frequency) have on regional variation? 4) What evidence does the variation in regional dialects provide for the origins and diffusion of the strong-to-weak shift?

95

My study offers both quantitative and qualitative analyses, drawing data from three Middle English text corpora (A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English and The Middle English Grammar Corpus) and, as a reference point, The English Dialect Dictionary.

I expect high-frequency verbs and sub-types to show less regional variation than low-frequency ones. Moreover, I will use my findings to reconsider Taylor’s suggestion that the strong-to-weak shift is more advanced in the Northern and Eastern dialects of Middle English due to the Scandinavian-English contact situation (1994: 149-56).

Branchaw, Sherrylyn E. 2010a. ‘Survival of the Strongest: Strong Verb Inflection from

Old to Modern English.’ In: Robert A. Cloutier, Anne Hamilton-Brehm and William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. (eds.) Studies in the History of the English Language V: Variation and Change in English Grammar and Lexicon: Contemporary Approaches. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 87-109.

Branchaw, Sherrylyn E. 2010b. Survival of the Strongest: Strong Verbs in the History of English. Unpublished thesis. Los Angeles: University of California. [available at http://www.sbranchaw.com/home.html]

Bülbring, Karl D. 1889. Geschichte des Ablauts der starken Zeitwörter innerhalb des Südenglischen. Strassburg: Trübner.

Görlach, Manfred. 1995 [1994]. ‘Morphological Standardization: the Strong Verbs in Scots.’ In: New Studies in the History of English. Anglistische Forschungen (232). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, pp. 51-81.

Hanssen, Heinrich. 1906. Die Geschichte der starken eitw rter im Nordenglischen. Kiel: L dtke & Martens.

Knopff, Paul. 1904. Darstellung der Ablautverhältnisse in der schottischen Schriftsprache: mit Vergleichungen in bezug auf Abweichungen der anderen mi elenglischen Dialekte. W rzburg: Memminger.

Krygier, Marcin. 1994. The Disintegration of the English Strong Verb System. Bamberger Beiträge zur englischen Sprachwissenschaft (34). Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang.

Long, Mary M. 1944. The English Strong Verb from Chaucer to Caxton. Menasha, Wisconsin: George Banta Publishing Company.

Michelau, Erich. 1910. Der bertri starker Verba in die schwache Coniuga on im Englischen. K nigsberg i. Pr.: Karg & Manneck.

Öfverberg, William. 1924. The Verbal Inflections of the East Midland Dialects in Early Middle English. Lund: Håkan Ohlsson.

Price, Hereward T. 1910. A History of Ablaut in the Strong Verbs from Caxton to the End of the Elizabethan Period. Bonn: Peter Hanstein.

Rettger, James F. 1934. The Development of Ablaut in the Strong Verbs of the East Midland Dialects of Middle English. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America.

Studer-Joho, Nicole. 2012. Diffusion and Change in Early Middle English. Methodological and Theoretical Implications from the LAEME Corpus of Tagged Texts. Unpublished thesis. Zurich: University of Zurich.

96

Taylor, Ann. 1994. ‘Variation in Past Tense Formation in the History of English.’ In: University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. Philadelphia: Penn Working papers in Linguistics, pp. 143-158.

Trudgill, Peter. 2010. ‘What really happened to Old English?’ In: Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics: Stories of Colonisation and Contact. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-35.

Wackerzapp, Adolph. 1890. Geschichte der Ablaute der starken Zeitwörter innerhalb des Nordenglischen. Teil 1: Die Ablaute in den einzelnen Denkmälern. Münster: E. C. Brunn.

Wełna, Jerzny. 1991. ‘The Strong-to-Weak Shift in English Verbs: A Reassessment.’ Kalbotyra, 42 (3), pp. 129-139.

A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150-1325. Compiled by Margaret Laing.

Electronic text corpus with accompanying software, index of sources and theoretical introduction (with Roger Lass). [http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html] (Edinburgh: © 2008- The University of Edinburgh)

Kroch, Anthony and Ann Taylor. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-3/index.html]

“MEG-C” = The Middle English Grammar Corpus, version 2011.1, compiled by Merja Stenroos, Martti Mäkinen, Simon Horobin and Jeremy Smith, March 2011, University of Stavanger. <http://www.uis.no/research/culture/ the_middle_english_grammar_project/>. Accessed: 1 April 2011.

Wright, Joseph. 1898-1905. The English Dialect Dictionary. Being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years. London: Frowde.

The choice of relative pronouns in the writings of Jonathan Edwards

Maciej Grabski

University of Lodz Keywords: Early American English, Edwards, relative clauses The strategies of relativization in English have attracted considerable interest from a diachronic perspective. For instance, Romaine (1982) and Devitt (1989) analyzed the distributional patterns of relativizers across different genres and registers of Middle Scotts. In a similar vein, Rissanen (1984) gave an orderly account of the behavior of relative pronouns in early American English. Working on a multigenre corpus of mid and late 17

th

97

century, New England-based texts, he observed that the following factors, among others, informed the choice of the relativizer: the tightness of the link between the relative pronoun and its antecedent, the antecedent’s type, and, superimposing on these, different degrees of formality and relation to spoken idiom of the texts analyzed. In short, Rissanen’s data suggest that toward the end of the 17

th century, the gradual disfavoring of

which in formal style restrictive relative clauses took place, resulting in the rise of that and who in the aforementioned context, while the more informal texts appear to have retained a rather stable and higher rate of which.

This paper draws on, and is intended to complement, Rissanen’s findings, analyzing the selected writings of Jonathan Edwards, a prominent figure of the American Puritan movement of the first half of the 18

th

century. The study is limited to restrictive clauses and aims at checking if the distribution of realativizers in Edwards is genre-sensitive. Therefore, the selection of texts under scrutiny encompasses private letters, philosophical essays, and sermons (later delivered to the public). Also, the morpho-syntactic constraints brought up by Rissanen will be considered as factors influencing the choice of a relative pronoun, but due attention will also be given to discourse constraints. In keeping with Bell’s (1984) observations, the paper explores the possibility that Edward’s choice of a relativizer might have been sensitive to such factors as recipients and topics, and to how he intended to pass himself to different audiences on the receiving end of his messages. The study will then also address the question as to whether Edward’s idiolect is consistent with the dynamics of the change of the relative pronouns distribution observed by Rissanen, who scrutinized the material produced by Edward’s likes, i.e. the refined Puritan New Englanders, in the decades directly preceding the eminent preacher’s activity. Further regularization of that and who in “formal” restrictive clauses is expected to be found, with the relatively higher frequency of restrictive which persisting in less formal styles. Bell, Allan. 1984. “Language style as audience design.” In Language in society, 13:

145-204 Devitt, Amy. 1989. Standardizing written English: Diffusion in the case of Scotland

1520-1659. Cambridge University Press. Rissanen, Matti. 1984. “The choice of relative pronouns in 17th century American

English.” In J. Fisiak, Historical syntax, 417-434. Berlin: Mouton. Romaine, Suzanne. 1982. Socio-historical linguistics: its status and methodology.

Cambridge University Press.

98

The history of English auxiliaries: Evidence from adverb placement

Eric Haeberli & Tabea Ihsane University of Geneva

Keywords: auxiliaries, adverb placement, Middle English, Early Modern English, Late Modern English The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the history of English auxiliaries by examining an empirical domain that has not been explored in much detail yet, namely the distribution of auxiliaries with respect to adverbs (but cf. Jacobson 1981 for an earlier study of this topic, based, however, on a very small amount of sources). Throughout the history of English, there has been variation in this area of the grammar as certain adverbs can occur both before and after an auxiliary (1), a variation already found in early English, as illustrated in (2) with Middle English.

(1) a. They had probably seen her. b. They probably had seen her. (2) a. And I always schall be yowre herault ‘And I shall always be your herald’ (PL 48.30; 1465-1484; from Jacobson 1981:68) b. to thende that they may alwey perseuere ‘so that they may always persevere’ (CPE 86; 1475-1490; from Jacobson 1981:70))

This word order variation is a topic of interest for two main reasons: First, it has been maintained for centuries and continues to exist in Present-Day English (PDE) (cf. e.g. Waters 2013). Thus, the interaction of adverbs and auxiliaries provides an interesting case study on syntactic variation and change or the absence of change. Secondly, adverb placement is one of the diagnostic tests to distinguish auxiliaries from lexical verbs, as finite auxiliaries can precede adverbs like probably (1a) whereas finite lexical verbs cannot (*They saw probably her). The emergence of this diagnostic may therefore shed some light on the general diachronic development towards the modern auxiliary system that characterizes PDE.

In this paper, we will examine four parsed corpora (PPCME2, PPCEME, PCEEC and PPCMBE) covering nearly 800 years of linguistic history in order to provide an overview of the development of the placement of auxiliaries with respect to adverbs from Middle English to Late Modern English. We will also consider this development against the background of the changes

99

affecting lexical verbs in their placement with respect to adverbs. On the basis of these data, we will then explore some implications our data have for the question of the categorial status of auxiliaries in the history of English.

Jacobson, S. 1981. Preverbal Adverbs and Auxiliaries; a Study of Word Order Change.

Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Waters, C. 2013. Transatlantic variation in English adverb placement. Language

Variation and Change, 25:179-200.

The rise of epistemic meaning: A corpus-based perspective on subjectification

Stefan Hartmann & Susanne Flach

University of Mainz - FU Berlin

Keywords: Grammaticalization, Semantic Change, Epistemic Stance, Corpus Linguistics The diachronic process of subjectification has played a key role both in Langacker’s (e.g. 2008) Cognitive Grammar and in Traugott’s (e.g. 1989, 1995, 1997) investigations of grammaticalization phenomena. In Traugott’s (1997) definition, subjectification is the process “whereby meanings become increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective belief state, or attitude toward what is said”. For Langacker (1985, 1990), subjectification pertains to the degree to which a conceptualizer is construed as “offstage”. For example, a sentence such as He promised to be stout when grown up (Daniel Defoe, 1722, OED) does not refer to a commissive speech act uttered by the person referred to, but rather expresses the speaker’s belief how this person will look like in the future. In contrast to a sentence like I believe he’ll be stout when grown up, however, the speaker is not overtly mentioned, i.e., in Langacker’s terms, not “onstage”.

This paper complements previous theoretical and corpus-illustrated studies with a decidedly corpus-based, quantitative investigation of the verbs promise and threaten (cf. Traugott 1997), which are often mentioned as paragon examples of verbs with “subjectified” meaning variants. Drawing on data from the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC, Taylor et al. 2006), the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPEME, Kroch et al. 2004), and the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE, Kroch et al. 2010), we investigate the

100

development of both verbs with regard to variables such as subject animacy (She promised me vs. The weather promised to be great) and the nature of the complement (intentional actions, e.g. She promised to come, vs. non-intentional states and events), but also with regard to the constructions in which they occur and their collocational preferences. Our study may thus provide a solid empirical basis to a theory of subjectification. In particular, it can help answer the question whether different instances of subjectification follow a similar pattern or if epistemic meaning variants arise in fundamentally different ways. In addition, the question of the gradualness of subjectification can be addressed in an empirical fashion: Can epistemic meanings arise in one fell swoop by means of metaphoric transfer, or do they evolve gradually, as Traugott (1997) assumes? Examining these questions in a bottom-up, corpus-driven way promises new insights as to the nature of subjectification and the cognitive underpinnings of language change in general.

Kroch, A., B. Santorini, and L. Delfs (2004): Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early

Modern English. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-1/. Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini, and Ariel Diertani (2010): Penn Parsed Corpus of

Modern British English. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCMBE-RELEASE-1/index.html

Langacker, Ronald W. (1985): Observations and Speculations on Subjectivity. In: Haiman, John (ed.): Iconicity in Syntax. Prodeedings of a Symposium on Iconicity in Syntax, Stanford, June 24-6, 1983. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins (Typological Studies in Language, 6), 109–150.

Langacker, Ronald W. (1990): Subjectification. In: Cognitive Linguistics 1, 5–38. Langacker, Ronald W. (2008): Cognitive Grammar. A Basic Introduction. Oxford:

Oxford University Press. Taylor, Ann, Arja Nurmi, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Terttu Nevalainen

(2006): Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/PCEEC-manual/

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1989): On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English. An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change. In: Language 65, 31–55.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1995): Subjectification in Grammaticalisation. In: Stein, Dieter; Wright, Susan (eds.): Subjectivity and Subjectivisation. Linguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 31–54.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1997): Subjectification and the Development of Epistemic Meaning. The Case of promise and threaten. In: Swan, Toril; Westvik, Olaf Jansen (eds.): Modality in Germanic Languages. Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 99), 185–210.

101

Velarisation of /l/ in the history of English

Raymond Hickey University of Duisburg-Essen

In the history of English there is evidence for at least two major realisations of /l/: an unmarked alveolar one [l] and a marked velarised realisation [1]. The presence of the latter in Old English is indicated by the breaking of preceding vowels, an effect which it shares with /x/ and /r/ (Jones 1989: 33-57; Smith 2007: 98-100). For Middle English there is renewed evidence of velarisation in words like talk, walk, holm, etc. Here the velarisation has been carried further, resulting in vocalisation. Whether this is a continuation of Old English velarisation is uncertain, in the case of walk (cf. OE wealcan) this may be the case, but holm belongs to the set of Old Norse loans in late Old English. Velarisation may have advanced to vocalisation before borrowing as is seen in Middle English French borrowings such as faute ‘fault’, cf. Latin fallitus.

In the Early Modern period there is further evidence of velarisation in the occurrence of the diphthong /au/ before /l/ in the codas of syllables with low or back vowels, e.g. cold, old, bold, hold, soul, etc. This diphthongisation is already recorded in Ray (1674) and continued in many non-standard varieties of English, but not in Received Pronunciation which does not show any more l-vocalisations than those attested from Middle English. Nonetheless RP does show velarisation of coda-l (Cruttenden 2008, Wells 1982) and more vernacular London varieties show vocalisation as a further stage.

The present paper will attempt to account for the rise of velarised [1] in the history of English and to trace its diacrhonic development paying special attention to the situation with non-standard varieties both in the past and the present. The effects of velarisation on vocalic nuclei will also form an important focus. Cruttenden, Alan 2008. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. Seventh edition. London:

Arnold. Jones, Charles 1989. A History of English Phonology. London: Longman. Lass, Roger 2006. ‘Phonology and morphology’, in: Hogg and Denison (eds), pp. 43-

108. Lutz,Angelika 1991. Phonotaktisch gesteuerte Konsonantenverbindungen. Tübingen:

Max Niemeyer. Minkova, Donka 2013. A Historical Phonology of English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press.

102

Ray, John 1674. A collection of English words not generally used with their significations and original in two alphabetical catalogues. London: C. Wilkinson.

Smith, Jeremy 2007. Sound Change and the History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wells, John C. 1982. Accents of English. 3 Vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Relating language change to language processing: A second look at asymmetric priming

Martin Hilpert

University of Neuchâtel Why is meaning change in grammatical forms highly regular? Studies of grammaticalizing forms show that their semantic trajectories instantiate cross-linguistically similar pathways (Heine and Kuteva 2002). In a programmatic paper, Jäger and Rosenbach (2008) relate this observation about language change to a principle of language processing, namely asymmetric priming. This paper presents work in progress that aims to evaluate this proposal on the basis of experimental evidence.

Asymmetric priming is a pattern of cognitive association in which one idea strongly evokes another, while that second idea does not evoke the first one with the same force. For instance, given the word ‘rowing’, many speakers associate ‘water’. The reverse is not true: given ‘water’, few speakers associate ‘rowing’. Asymmetric priming would elegantly explain why many semantic changes in grammar are unidirectional: for instance, expressions of spatial relations evolve into temporal markers (English be going to), and expressions of possession evolve into markers of completion (the English have‐perfect); the inverse processes are unattested. The asymmetric priming hypothesis has attracted considerable attention (Chang 2008, Eckardt 2008, Traugott 2008), but as yet, empirical engagement with it has been limited.

Methodologically, this paper relies on reaction time measurements from self-paced reading. The experiments test whether asymmetric priming obtains between lexical forms and their grammaticalized counterparts, i.e. pairs such as ‘keep the light on’ (lexical keep) and ‘keep reading’ (grammatical keep). On the asymmetric priming hypothesis, the former should prime the latter, but not vice versa. The stimuli that are presented to readers are sentences such as the following:

103

(1) The student keptlexical the light on to keepgrammatical reading. (2) The student turnedunrelated the light on to keepgrammatical reading. (3) The student keptgrammatical checking facebook to keeplexical up to date. (4) The student wasunrelated checking facebook to keeplexical up to date.

The asymmetric priming hypothesis predicts that grammatical keep

should be processed faster in (1) than in (2). Crucially, however, no difference is expected between (3) and (4), since grammatical keep should not facilitate the subsequent processing of lexical keep. The full experiment will test a group of 40 native speakers of English across a set of 50 pairs of grammatical forms and their lexical counterparts. The results will allow us to assess whether Jäger and Rosenbach’s hypothesis makes the right predictions with regard to speaker behavior, and whether it seems feasible to relate language change and language processing in this way. Chang, Franklin. 2008. Implicit learning as a mechanism of language change.

Theoretical Linguistics 34/2, 115-123. Eckardt, Regine. 2008. Concept Priming in Language Change. Theoretical Linguistics

34/2, 123-133. Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva. 2002. World lexicon of grammaticalization.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Jäger, Gerhard and Anette Rosenbach. 2008. Priming and unidirectional language

change. Theoretical Linguistics, 34/2, 85-113. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2008. Testing the hypothesis that priming is a motivation

for change. Theoretical Linguistics, 34/2, 135-142.

“Where did these Midland forms come from?”: A dialectological study of

the Voigts-Sloane Group of Middle English medical and alchemical manuscripts

Alpo Honkapohja

University of Zurich Keywords: Middle English, historical dialectology, medical and scientific writing, codicology This paper contains an analysis of the dialect of the Sloane Group, eleven multilingual manuscripts, containing medical and alchemical texts. The Group, originally described by Voigts (1990), can be further divided into the Core Group, which have a very uniform mise-en-page, and the Sibling Group, which share an anthology of twelve medical texts. Both groups can

104

be dated between 1450-1490 and were, most likely, connected to commercial book trade in London based on codicological and textual features. However, possibly because of the late date and the expected southern provenance, the dialect of the Sloane Group has not been subjected to a comprehensive analysis before.

The methodology used in the study consisted of using the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (Benskin et. 2013) and applying the ‘fit’ technique to XML-transcriptions of the Middle English texts in the Sibling Group (14,331 words) and the Core Group (17,879 words) manuscripts. The aim was (1) to find out how their language compares to the incipient standardisation of late 15

th century, (2) whether some of the scribal dialects

can still be localised to area other than London, and (3) how close the Core Group and Sibling Group are to each other dialectally. Because all of the manuscripts date after 1450, the end point of LALME, I performed separate analyses on features which are characteristic of incipient London standard(s) and ones which may display local ‘colouring’. To determine the spread of London or standard English forms, I compared the forms to a checklist based on Samuels (1989 [1963]) and applied the fit technique on features which are not part of the types of London English described by Samuels.

The results show a mixture of forms which are part of the emergent London standards (Types III and IV, cf. Samuels 1989 [1963]) and various Midland forms. Most interestingly, despite of being copied by several different scribes, all Core Group manuscripts are written in the same dialect, which is a mixture of London forms and ones which can be localised to four Central-Midland counties, Rutland, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire, (Honkapohja forthcoming), but is not the same as Type I Central Midlands standard (cf. Samuels 1963 [1989], Taavitsainen 2000) or the Chauliac/Rosarium Type, commonly found in surgical manuscripts (cf. McIntosh 1983 [1989], Taavitsainen 2004). This is either related to register variation within medical and scientific writing or points to an origin in these counties.

Benskin, Michael, Margaret Laing, Vasilis Karaiskos and Keith Williamson. An

Electronic Version of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. 2013. Edinburgh: © 2013 The Authors and The University of Edinburgh. 10 July 2013 <http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html>. (Accessed on 22 November 2013)

Honkapohja, Alpo. Forthcoming. A Linguistic and Codicological Study of the Sloane Group of Middle English Manuscripts. [A PhD thesis, accepted at the University of Zurich, 3 October 2013]

105

McIntosh, Angus. “Present Indicative Plural Forms in the Later Middle English of the North Midlands.” Middle English Dialectology: essays on some principles and problems. Eds. Angus McIntosh, M. L. Samuels and Margaret Laing. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1989 [1983]. 116-22.

Samuels, M. L. “Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology.” Middle English Dialectology: essays on some principles and problems. Eds. Angus McIntosh, M. L. Samuels and Margaret Laing. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1989 [1963]. 64-80.

Taavitsainen, Irma. “Scientific language and spelling standardisation.” The Development of Standard English 1300-1800. Ed. Laura Wright. Studies in English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 131-54.

Taavitsainen, Irma. “Scriptorial ‘House-styles’ and Discourse Communities.” Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English. Eds. Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta. Cambridge: CUP, 2004. 209-40.

Voigts, Linda Ehrsam. “The ‘Sloane Group’: Related Scientific and Medical Manuscripts from the Fifteenth Century in the Sloane Collection.” The British Library Journal 16 (1990): 26-57.

British Library, Add. 19674; Sloane 1118; Sloane 1313; Sloane 2320; Sloane 2567, and

Sloane 2948. British Library, Sloane 3566; Cambridge, Trinity College O.1.77, Gonville and Caius

336/725; Boston, Countway Library of Medicine, MS 19, and Tokyo, Takamiya 33.

The ebb and flow of historical variants of betwixt and between

Ryuichi Hotta Chuo University

Keywords: analogy, corpus, paragoge, preposition The prescriptive tradition of English as to the correct usage of between and among has familiarised us with the etymological analysis of the former as “by” and “two.” Curiosity has hardly extended, however, to the question of what is represented by -n in between or by -xt in betwixt. Even less investigated is the way that between, and to a lesser extent betwixt, have become predominant types over several earlier variants such as betweenen and betwix.

The present paper has two aims. The first is to describe the historical ebb and flow of variants from OE to PDE by means of historical corpora including LAEME, Helsinki Corpus, and CLMET. In OE there were several variants available that differed in the inflectional or derivational suffixes to

106

the second element “two.” ME was a period of great variation diachronically as well as diatopically. From OE to ME, however, dominance was maintained, broadly speaking, by the x-, nen-, ne-, and n-types. ModE then saw the continued popularity of the n-type, but also began to see a remarkable growth of the xt-type, which has survived to this day.

The second aim of the paper is to address the birth and growth of the betwixt-type, in particular the question as to how paragogic t was appended to its earlier betwix-type. I revisit two accounts previously proposed in OED and Dobson (Section 437), one phonetic/morphological and the other semantic/lexical, and enlarge on the argument with evidence. My view is that the phonetic/morphological factor served as a trigger of the xt-subtype in OE and ME, while the semantic/lexical factor served as its stabiliser in ModE. On the one hand, the statistics indicates that the phonetic sequence of the dentals around word boundaries likely induced morphological reanalysis by which the dental was attracted to the word on the left, resulting in the xt-type. On the other hand, I propose three associations concerning the phonetic sequence -Cst and words that have it like whilst, amongst, and amidst: semantic intensification as assumed by the superlative of adjectives, the common semantic feature of middle-ness, and attribution to functional class of words. These associations remained weak for a while after the first occurrences of the xt-subtype in OE and ME, but they grew stronger towards LME such that they involved an increasing number of newborn -Cst words.

CLMET = De Smet, Hendrik, Hans-Jürgen Diller, and Jukka Tyrkkö, comps. The Corpus

of Late Modern English Texts, Version 3.0. 2013. Dobson, E. J. English Pronunciation 1500–1700. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Oxford: OUP, 1968. Helsinki Corpus = Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kytö; Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Matti Kilpiö;

Saara Nevanlinna, Irma Taavitsainen; Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, comps. The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages, U of Helsinki, 1991.

LAEME = Laing, Margaret and Roger Lass, eds. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325. Available online at http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html. Edinburgh: U of Edinburgh, 2007.

107

Non-motion verbs in the intransitive motion construction in the history of English

Judith Huber

LMU München

In the past few decades, linguistics has seen a proliferation of cognitive research on motion, particularly in studies on motion expression inspired by Talmy (e.g. 1985, 2000) and Slobin (e.g. 2004), but also in constructional perspectives (e.g. Berthele 2007, Croft et al. 2010). However, research on historical data in this area is as yet still scarce (notable exceptions are Fanego 2012, Kopecka 2008, Mosca 2012). The present paper summarizes the findings of an analysis of 188 Old English and 433 Middle English verbs attested in intransitive motion uses. They range from highly frequent general motion verbs such as OE faran ‘go’, cuman ‘come’ to verbs such as OE feohtan ‘fight’ in (1) or ME winnen ‘to struggle’ in (2), i.e., verbs which on their own do not evoke an intransitive motion frame, but are nevertheless sporadically attested in motion uses:

(1) þa gecwædon hie þæt [...] sume þurh ealle þa truman ut afuhten, gif hie mehten (Or 5 7.121.27, DOE s.v. afeohtan, sense 2) ‘Then they said that some [...] would fight [their way] out through all the troops, if they could.’

(2) Helle [...] mai neveremor be full [...] what as evere comth therinne, Awey ne may it nevere winne. ((a1393) Gower CA (Frf 3) 5.352, MED s.v. winnen, sense 11.a.d) ‘Hell can never be full - what once has come into it can never get away.’

The focus of the present paper will be on these uses, i.e., non-motion verbs used in motion contexts such as (1) and (2). Among other things, it will be shown that in a diachronic perspective, the arguments for a constructional rather than a lexicalist approach to motion expression become more compelling: motion meaning should thus not be seen as necessarily carried by the verb alone, but is often brought about by the interaction of the verb with the semantics of the intransitive motion construction. More specifically, the non-motion verbs attested in motion uses will also be discussed with regard to the question whether new extensions of a construction should rather be seen as licensed through abstract r-relations, or through item-based analogy (cf. Bybee 2013: 58).

108

Berthele, Raphael. 2007. “Sein+Direktionalergänzung: Bewegung ohne Bewegungsverb”. Kopulaverben und Kopulasätze: Intersprachliche und intrasprachliche Aspekte. Ed. Ljudmila Geist and Björn Rothstein. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 229–252.

Bybee, Joan L. 2013. “Usage-based Theory and Exemplar Representations of Constructions”. The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. Ed. Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 49–69.

Croft, William, Jóhanna Barðdal, Willem Hollmann, Violeta Sotirova and Chiaki Taoka. 2010. “Revising Talmy’s Typological Classification of Complex Event Constructions”. Contrastive Construction Grammar. Ed. Hans C. Boas. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 201–235.

Fanego, Teresa. 2012. “Motion Events in English: The Emergence and Diachrony of Manner Salience from Old English to Late Modern English”. Folia Linguistica Historica 33: 29–85.

Kopecka, Anetta. 2008. “Continuity and Change in the Representation of Motion Events in French”. Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language. Research in the Tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin. Ed. Jiansheng Guo et al. New York: Psychology Press. 415–426.

Mosca, Monica. 2012. “Italian Motion Constructions: Different Functions of ‘Particles’”. Space and Time in Languages and Cultures. Vol. II: Language, Culture, and Cognition. Ed. Luna Filipović and Kasia M. Jaszczolt. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 373–393.

Slobin, Dan I. 2004. “The Many Ways to Search for a Frog: Linguistic Typology and the Expression of Motion Events”. Relating Events in Narrative. Typological and contextual perspectives. Vol. 2. Ed. Sven Strömqvist and Ludo Verhoeven. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 219–257.

Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Vol. II: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT-Press.

Talmy, Leonard. 1985. “Lexicalization Patterns: Semantic Structure in Lexical Forms”. Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Ed. Timothy Shopen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 57–149.

109

Cleft constructions in 18th and 19th century spoken English: A historical sociolinguistic study based on the Old Bailey Corpus

Magnus Huber

University of Giessen

Keywords: cleft sentence, relativizer, pronoun form, historical sociolinguistics, Old Bailey Corpus This paper investigates the forms and development of it + BE + NP + REL cleft sentences in 18th and 19th century spoken English, as in

(1) it was her son who took it (OBC t18261026-212). Clefting is a relatively rare phenomenon and most corpora of earlier

spoken English are too small to study this construction in detail. For instance, in the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 (1.2 million words, cf. Kytö & Walker 2006) there are only about 20 clefts. This is why the social and linguistic variables determining the variation between e.g. subject and object pronoun forms or between the different relativizers have not attracted much attention in the literature so far. This paper aims to redress this situation by documenting the variants, influencing factors and development of clefts in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Because of its sheer size and detail of sociolinguistic utterance-level annotation, the Old Bailey Corpus (OBC, Huber et al. 2012) lends itself ideally to the study of clefts. The corpus spans the years 1720-1913 and contains 14 million words of spoken English. It is based on the Proceedings of the Old Bailey (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org), London’s Central Criminal court.

The OBC contains several hundred clefts, enough for a diachronic sociolinguistic analysis considering speaker gender and social class. A pilot study of relativizer choice indicates a considerable increase of who (from ca. 11% to ca. 45%), a moderate increase of zero (4% to 15%) and a drastic drop of that (86% to 40%) in the period considered here. Social class does not seem to have an effect on the choice of the relativizer but there are indications that gender differences emerge in the 19th century, with women favouring that more, and who less, than men.

Regarding the form of the focussed pronoun in clefts where the relativizer is in subject position, as in

(2) It was not I, (said she) who took his Watch (OBC t17400709-5)

110

(3) it was not me, who took the Man’s Watch (OBC t17400522-5),

there is a complete reversal, with subject forms dominating (65%) during the first century and object forms during the second (65%). Gender has no effect this time, but it appears that in the 19th century higher social classes favour object over subject pronouns (70%:30%), while it is the other way round with the lower classes.

The findings will be compared to ordinary relative clauses in the OBC.

Huber, Magnus; Nissel, Magnus; Maiwald, Patrick; Widlitzki, Bianca. 2012. The Old Bailey Corpus. Spoken English in the 18th and 19th centuries. www.uni-giessen.de/oldbaileycorpus.

Kytö, Merja & Terry Walker. 2006. Guide to A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760. Uppsala: Uppsala University.

How weird are teenagers? Variation and change in the use of noun-name

collocations

Marianne Hundt & John Payne The University of Manchester

Keywords: syntactic change, noun-name collocations, constructionalisation In English, title nouns such as president and professor can be used in noun phrase name apposition constructions (such as the US President, Barak Obama) or in a title construction combining the noun with a proper name but no article (e.g. US President Barak Obama and Professor Noam Chomsky). Other nouns, such as lawyer, headmaster or goalie can also be used in a similar way; these have been referred to as pseudo-titles (e.g. Meyer 2002). Previous research indicates that pseudo-titles are particularly popular in American English (AmE) journalistic writing, but that they have spread to British (BrE) and New Zealand English (NZE) (see e.g. Ryden 1975 and Jucker 1992 for BrE and Bell 1988 for NZE); evidence from the International Corpus of English shows that they are used in contact varieties of English, as well (see Meyer 2002 and Hackert 2012).

In our paper, we trace the historical development of the pseudo-title construction. In particular, we test the hypothesis that the title construction (i.e. the variant without the article) spread from proper titles to function terms, e.g. lawyer, and subsequently to sporting terms (e.g. golfer, goalie, quarter back), then to relation terms like mother, father,

111

sister etc., with age terms like teenager, toddler or baby being among the more recent contexts in which the pseudo-title construction can be used. We also hypothesize that nouns which assign stereotypical properties, e.g. pensioner, are more likely to be used in the pseudo-title construction than very general nouns like boy or man.

We use diachronic data from the Corpus of Historical American English to test our hypotheses about the spread of the pseudo-title construction. In addition, synchronic data from the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary English are used to investigate whether function terms and other additions to the pseudo-title construction are more likely to feature pre- and postmodification, or other kinds of expansion, than prototypical institutional titles. Our study therefore has two aims: first, to investigate when certain types of nouns become attested in the pseudo-title construction in our AmE data (thereby testing for construction-hood of pseudo-title NPs), and second, which factors enhance the acceptability of the construction in two major reference varieties of English. Bell, Allan. 1988. The British base and the American connection in New Zealand

media English. American Speech 63: 326-44. Hackert, Stephanie. 2012. Pseudotitles in Bahamian English: A case of

Americanization? Paper presented at the 33rd ICAME Conference in Leuven (June 3rd 2012).

Jucker, Andreas. 1992. Social Stylistics: Syntactic Variation in British Newspapers. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Meyer, Charles F. 2002. Pseudo-titles in the press genre of various components of the International Corpus of English. In Randi Reppen, Susan M. Fitzmaurice and Douglas Biber. Eds. Using Corpora to Explore Linguistic Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 147-166.

Rydén, Mats. 1975. Noun-name collocations in British English newspaper language. Studia Neophilologica 67: 14-39.

Prosodic movement and emphatic focus in Late Middle English

Richard Ingham Birmingham City University

An analysis of 130 negated manner adjuncts in Late Middle English (LME) prose (Helsinki Corpus, ME Compendium) showed that in almost all cases they were accompanied by not when in clause-final position, e.g.:

(1) For with-oute theire leve I will not go in no manere. Merlin XV

112

(2) They wolden not therof yn no wyse. Shillingford 60 (3) I woll not do hit by no wey. Gesta Rom.XXII Not was typically absent when the negated manner adjunct stood

elsewhere (initial, medial). Negated manner adjuncts in final position thus appear to confer emphatic focus on the polarity of the clause.

LME co-ordinated negative clauses commonly showed atypical positioning before the finite verb of the negator or of a displaced negated object, e.g.:

(4) We are not throw yet, nor noght shal be tille I haue worde from

you (Paston 728, 15) (5) Th. M. paid to þis charge no peny, nor no day will sette to paie.

(Stonor 1, 74) (6) I coulde not answere that mateer without yow nor noght wolde

doo (Stonor 2, 18)

This construction is referred to as Coordinate Neg Vfin. The discourse effect here is to confer emphasis on the finite verb/auxiliary and hence again to emphasise the negative polarity of the clause.

In this paper it is argued that both LME constructions are accounted for by prosodic movement, positioning the emphasised constituent to the right of its unmarked position (Zubizarreta1998). The unmarked position of an adjunct is taken to be left-adjunction to the Verb Phrase, so that in P(rosodic)-movement the adjunct and the Verb Phrase commute, giving the order observed in (1)-(3). The ordinary position of the negator not, and also of a displaced negated object, was after the finite verb, so that P-movement in Coordinate Neg Vfin inverts the auxiliary and the negative constituent, producing the order observed in (4)-(6).

A key role in both developments is played by the presence of a NegP constituent in LME syntax and its loss in Early Modern English (Ingham 2007). LME was a negative concord language in which n-words established a syntactic relationship with NegP (Zeijlstra 2008), whereas in (Standard) Modern English no such syntactic relationship exists, and NegP is absent. In Middle English, emphatic negated manner adjuncts in final position could not by themselves negate a clause: they stood in a negative concord relationship with the negator not in NegP, which did so. Neither can they in modern English (De Clercq, Haegeman & Lohndal 2012), unless they move to clause initial position by Negative Inversion (Nevalainen 1997). In LME Coordinate Neg Vfin, P-movement could commute the finite Verb with its prosodic sister constituent, NegP, as long as the latter was projected. Once

113

not became a clitic this was no longer possible, and in EMnE the construction disappears. Further considerations are discussed as to the status of P-movement in Middle English, and its apparent loss thereafter.

Syntactic variation and change relating to causative make in Early Modern English

Yoko Iyeiri

Kyoto University

Keywords: causative make, complementation, to-infinitive, bare infinitive The present paper discusses the syntactic development of causative make in early Modern English. Exploring some Middle English texts selected from ICAMET (=Innsbruck Computer Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts), Iyeiri (2012) demonstrates that the to-infinitival construction was still common with causative make in the fifteenth century. Hence, the present paper turns to the early Modern English period to see the process of the development of bare infinitives after causative make. The texts analyzed in this research have been selected from the Early English Books Online and compiled in the form of a corpus, i.e. EMEPS (= Early Modern English Prose Selections), whose details are given in Iyeiri (2011). While EMEPS consists of A-texts and B-texts, the present paper focuses upon A-texts only, which in total amount to some four million words.

The analysis reveals that the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries are a key period in the development of causative make. The use of bare infinitives has not yet been established in the first half of the sixteenth century, whereas the overall tendency has been reversed by the second half of the seventeenth century, when more than 80% of the examples in the active voice display the employment of bare infinitives. The fact that causative make in the passive voice is irregularly followed by to-infinitives and bare infinitives is also relevant, as this shows that the distinction between the active and passive voices has not been clearly made at this stage of development. Furthermore, the choice of the complement seems to be conditioned by various syntactic features. When the object of make is a personal pronoun, for example, there is a fairly clear tendency for bare infinitives (rather than to-infinitives) to be selected. Other factors investigated in the present study include the type of verbs involved in the infinitive and the occurrence of some infinitives in coordination. The results are more or less consistent with the contentions adduced by Iyeiri (2012),

114

and the present study clearly demonstrates the declining phase of to-infinitives as a complement of causative make in the history of English. Iyeiri, Yoko. 2011. “Early Modern English Prose Selections: Directions in Historical

Corpus Linguistics”. Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University 50: 133-199.

Iyeiri, Yoko. 2012. “The Complements of Causative make in Late Middle English”, in Middle and Modern English Corpus Linguistics: A Multi-dimensional Approach, ed. Manfred Markus, Yoko Iyeiri, Reinhard Heuberger, & Emil Chamson, pp. 59-73. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

The function(s) of the have-perfect in Old English

Berit Johannsen Freie Universität Berlin

Keywords: Grammaticalization, Old English, Perfect, Analytic Constructions The function(s) of the periphrastic perfect in Old English texts are still a matter of dispute. This study seeks to shed light on these functions and a possible rise in obligatoriness of the periphrastic perfect within the Old English period. It is generally assumed that the English perfect developed from adjectival constructions with be and have as copula/lexical verbs and a past participle functioning as an adjective that modifies the subject (intransitives with be) or the object (transitives with have) (e.g. Traugott 1972). Later, have gradually replaced be as an auxiliary in all contexts, so that by the end of the 19th century be had disappeared in periphrastic perfects (McFadden & Alexiadou 2010). That the have-periphrasis was grammaticalized to some extent, i.e. cannot be interpreted as a possessive construction (lexical have + object + adjective participle) in the earliest records of Old English has been claimed by Brinton 1988 and Wischer 2004. Wischer (2008) further assumes consecutive developments of a) the grammaticalization of have as an auxiliary and b) the functionaliza-tion/specialization of the whole construction, leading to a new semantic distinction and finally a new grammatical category. The use of the perfect in comparison to the preterite has risen since the Old English period (Elsness 1997), which indicates an increasing functionalization. Wischer (2008) makes an attempt to capture the functional variation of the perfect construction throughout the Old English period, but remains rather superficial. She distinguishes resultative, anterior, past and perfective uses for the perfect and pluperfect. The primary aim of the present study is to

115

reassess Wischer’s analysis and test whether variant uses of the perfect can be detected in Old English texts. Further attention will be paid to ambiguous cases, which can be indicative of bridging contexts (Heine 2002). Have-perfects will be considered only. The pluperfect will be excluded. Data (all instances of have + past participle) from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE) will be categorized according to the function of the construction and relevant contextual factors. The expected result is that anterior uses of the have-perfect prevail, but that ambiguous uses will show bridging contexts. Brinton, Laurel J. (1988). The development of English aspectual systems. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press. Elsness, Johan. (1997). The perfect and the preterite in contemporary and earlier

English. Berlin: De Gruyter. Heine, Bernd. 2002. “On the role of context in grammaticalization”. In: Ilse Wischer

and Gabriele Diewald (eds.). New reflections on grammaticalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 83-101.

McFadden, Thomas and Artemis Alexiadou. (2010). “Perfects, resultatives and auxiliaries in earlier English”. In: Linguistic Inquiry 41 (3), 389-425.

Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Frank Beths. (2003). The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). Department of Linguistics, University of York. Oxford Text Archive, first edition, (http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YcoeHome1.htm).

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. (1972). A history of English syntax: A transformational approach to the history of English sentence structure. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Wischer, Ilse. (2004). “The ‘have’-perfect in Old English”. In: Christian Kay, Simon Horobin, and Jeremy Smith (eds.). New perspectives on English historical linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 243–255.

Wischer, Ilse. (2008). “Grammaticalization of periphrastic constructions”. In: Elisabeth Verhoeven, Stavros Skopeteas, Yong-Min Shin, Yoko Nishina, and Johannes Helmbrecht (eds.). Studies on grammaticalization. Berlin: De Gruyter. 241-250.

116

Code-switching and script-switching in Early Modern English letters

Samuli Kaislaniemi

University of Helsinki

Keywords: Code-switching, manuscripts, Early Modern English, scribal practice, palaeography

Code-switching in historical texts has been gaining attention from scholars over the last few years (e.g. Schendl & Wright 2011). At the same time, researchers working on code-switching in contemporary texts have started to investigate the visual and multimodal aspects involved (e.g. Sebba 2013). This turn to the visual has also been seen in work on historical texts (e.g. Kendall et al. 2013), but research on visual aspects of code-switching in historical texts remains in its infancy.

That said, there has been little work even on such common contemporary conventions as typographic flagging (cf. Grant-Russell 1998: 479-480) – for instance, the practice of using italics or quotation marks to indicate foreign elements. These conventions derive from historical typographical practices for textual emphasis, which in turn were inherited from conventions of matching typefaces with languages (indeed, the Northern European practice of printing vernacular texts in blackletter and Latin texts in roman typeface is not yet quite dead). These practices in printed texts ultimately stem from medieval scribal traditions of associating scripts with languages. Just as Tudor books printed in blackletter use roman typeface to emphasise or flag words and phrases, in manuscripts of the period written in Secretary script emphasis is similarly achieved by using roman or italic script.

In analogy of the term code-switching, I call this practice script-switching. The practice of script-switching correlating with code-switching has not gone completely unnoticed (see esp. Machan 2011). But we have yet to see even pilot studies of script-switching in Early Modern English, and its linguistic aspects remain uninvestigated. For instance, script-switching can be used to determine code boundaries: the level of integration of borrowings may be reflected by how or indeed whether borrowings or code-switches are indicated by script-switches. Script-switching also reveals information about scribal practices and linguistic competence: being able to write a ‘foreign’ script implies knowledge of the language it indicates (roman was a generic script, but there were distinct ‘national’ scripts, such as French Secretary or Spanish italic).

117

In this paper I will chart and analyse the use of script-switching and code-switching in a corpus of about one hundred letters written by an English merchant living in France 1603-1608. The discussion of results will focus on the correlation of script- and code-switching and its implications, both from a linguistic and a palaeographical perspective.

Grant-Russell, Pamela. 1998. “The influence of French on Quebec English: Motivation

for lexical borrowing and integration of loanwords”. LACUS Forum 25: 473-486. Kendall, Judy, Manuel Portela & Glyn White (eds.). 2013. European Journal of English

Studies 17(1), special issue on Visual Text. Machan, Tim William. 2011. “The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle

English literature”. In Schendl, Herbert & Laura Wright (eds.), 303-333. Schendl, Herbert & Laura Wright (eds.). 2011. Code-Switching in Early English.

Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Sebba, Mark. 2013. “Multilingualism in written discourse. An approach to the

analysis of multilingual texts”. International Journal of Bilingualism 17(1): 97-118.

A study on Old English dugan: Its potential for auxiliation

Kousuke Kaita Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Keywords: formula, auxiliation, syntax, modality, ability This paper will discuss what potential Old English (OE) dugan ‘to avail, be useful’ has for becoming the modal auxiliary ‘to be able to’ in Middle English (ME). OE dugan is sometimes found in formulaic expressions in poems (Chadwick 1912: 78 and Cavill 1999: 144-145), as in:

(1) Beowulf 573

þonne his ellen deah ‘when his courage is useful’

Syntactically, some occurrences of dugan show collocation with a dative object denoting for whom the subject is useful. Dugan is one of the twelve preterite-present verbs in OE. While half of them have developed into the modal auxiliaries of Modern English (MnE) (e.g. OE magan ‘can’ > MnE may), dugan fell into disuse. The OED (s.v. dow, 5), however, lists it as a modal: “To have the strength or ability, to be able (to do something)” (the first example: ME Cursor Mundi (a1300)).

118

My approach entails the analysis of the dative and infinitival collocations and formulaic aspects of OE dugan in DOE Corpus. Its similarity to the other modal auxiliaries will also be examined in some Early ME examples. The data from OE exhibit both formulaic and non-formulaic expressions with or without dative objects. The collocation with to-infinitive is more frequently found in Early ME, as in (2):

(2) St. Juliana 487 (MS. Bodley 34, Oxford)

as meiden deh to beonne ‘as it is proper for a maiden to be’

Deh in this example corresponds to ah (OE āgan, MnE ought (to)) in MS. Royal 17A xxvii, British Museum, which means ‘as a maiden ought to be’. The noun meiden can be nominative or dative. Another text, Cursor Mundi, illustrates the synonymous relation between dught and moght (< OE magan) as in:

(3) Cursor Mundi 23771-23772

Fight he aght ai quils he dught, And fle quen he langer ne moght ‘He ought to have always fought while he was able to, and fled when he could no longer (fight)’

This paper will provide the following insights: (i) the subject of OE

dugan is assigned positive meanings like ‘valiant’, ‘valid’, or ‘proper’ (see OED s.v. dow, 1-4) according to context; (ii) in Early ME, the noun in the dative case is reanalysed as the subject noun, and has the meaning ‘to be able (to do something)’; (iii) dugan loses to in the infinitival complement probably through the semantic analogy with magan, which expresses ability with the bare infinitive. Cavill, Paul. 1999. Maxims in Old English poetry. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Chadwick, H. Munro. 1912 [rpt. 1967]. The Heroic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. D’Ardenne, S.R.T.O., ed. 1961. Þe liflade ant te passiun of Seinte Iuliene. EETS, o.s.

248. London: Oxford University Press. DOE Corpus = The Dictionary of Old English, Web Corpus. Available online:

<http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/> (Last Access: 19/11/2013). Klaeber, Frederick, ed. 1950. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 3rd edition. Boston:

D.C. Heath and Company. Morris, Richard, ed. 1874-1892 [rpt. 1961-1966]. Cursor Mundi. EETS, o.s. 57, 59, 62,

66, 68, 99, & 101. London: Oxford University Press.

119

OED = Oxford English Dictionary: Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0). 2009. Oxford University Press.

Semi-communication and the lexicon: Leipzig-Jakarta lists for Old English and Old Norse

Jonas Keller

University of Zurich Keywords: Semi-Communication, Lexicon, Old English, Old Norse The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the lexicon and the passive mutual under- standing between closely related languages and to present the Leipzig-Jakarta List (LJL), compiled by the Loanword Typology Project, as a tool of measuring mutual intelligibility. Furthermore a comparison of two lists will be performed to test whether the vocabularies may have allowed semi-communication.

It will first establish the role of the lexicon in semi-communication and point to problems earlier research has encountered when compiling samples of vocabulary in the form of word lists or text samples. In a further step it shall be pointed out that previous attempts at creating a list of basic vocabulary have either relied heavily on the author’s intuition or on counts of frequency in a specified corpus. It shall be shown that neither of those approaches are adequate, especially in a historical context.

The paper will then present Old English and Old Norse Leipzig-Jakarta Lists. This is to illustrate the usefulness of the LJL to the research of semi-communication. The items on the lists will be compared with regard to their phonological closeness by applying the grades of transparency (“Durchsichtigkeit”) outlined by BRAUNMÜLLER 1995. They will be rated from 1 (completely transparent) to 6 (completely opaque) whereby the grades are applied corresponding to the number of phonetic differences that exist between the two forms. The first three grades are considered to allow for mutual intelligibility while grades 3-6 are assessed as not permitting semi-communication. If a majority of items are to be considered mutually intelligible, it can be assumed that the vocabularies might not have been a hindrance to semi- communication.

It is expected that the study will reveal a positive result. Especially so since it is the nature of the LJL to include a very high number of erbwörter. It remains, however, to be seen whether the change caused by regular

120

sound change in both languages had a significant influence on mutual understanding and, if this was the case, to what extent.

Braunmüller, Kurt (1995). “Morphologische Undurchsichtigkeit — Ein

Charakteristikum kleiner Sprachen”. In: Beiträge zur Skandinavistischen Linguistik. Ed. by Kurt Braunmüller. Studia Nordica 1. Oslo: Novus, pp. 53–80.

Grant, Anthony P. (2010). “On using qualitative lexicostatistics to illuminate language history. Some technical and case studies”. In: Diachronica 27.2, pp. 277–300.

McCarthy, Michael (1999). “What Constitutes a Basic Vocaublary for Spoken Communication?” In: Studies in English Language and Literature 1, pp. 233–249.

Moulton, William G. (1988). “Mutual Intelligibility among Speakers of Early Germanic Dialects”. In: Germania. Comparative Studies in the Old Germanic Languages and Literatures. Ed. by Daniel G. Calder and Christy T. Craig. Wolfeboro: D. S. Brewer, pp. 9–28.

TadmoR, Uri, Martin Haspelmath, and Bradley Tayor (2010). “Borrowability and the notion of basic vocabulary”. In: Diachronica 27.2, pp. 226–246.

Old English ead in Anglo-Saxon given names: A comparative approach to the Anglo-Saxon anthroponomy

Olga Khallieva Boiché

Sorbonne Paris 4, CEMA Keywords: personal names, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Old Russian, Old Slavic. The Anglo-Saxon name-element ead- was the one of the most common themes used to form dithematic personal names. The paper assesses the reason for this abundance in anthroponyms such as Eadbald, Eadberht, Eadred.

Bosworth and Toller give the meaning of Old English ead as ‘riches, prosperity, happiness, bliss’. Which meaning, wealth and prosperity or happiness and bliss, is present in the personal names? Is there any coded message in these names?

These questions are addressed by following the model of Schramm, according to which dithematic personal names are the expression of poetical speech. The implication is that Germanic dithematic names were originally poetic epithets,

5 both components forming an intelligible syntagm

5 Schramm, G., Namenschatz und Dichtersprache, Studien zu den Zweigliedrigen personennamen der Germanen, Göttingen: Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht,1957, pp. 58-59.

121

that corresponded to the formulaic expression. The paper proceeds along two axes. First, it looks for the archaic

meaning of ead by examining the Old English poetical corpus. Second, it establishes lexical and anthroponomical parallels within continental Germanic and other Indo-European traditions: namely Old Greek and Old Slavic.

The paper is based on the following data:

All the poetical occurrences of ead- and its synonyms are identified with the help of A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records.

6

Anglo-Saxon given names are drawn from the original core of Durham Liber Vitae

7 and from PASE database,

8 taking into account

only persons born before 900.

Germanic onomastic data are based on the list of the persons attested as living before 500, extracted from the work of Reichert.

9

Compilations of Slavic personal names recorded before 900 and Russian personal names recorded before 1400 are used to exemplify the Slavic material.

10 The Greek examples are drawn

from A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names.11

These investigations resulted not only an explanation of the origin of

ead- personal names but also an identification of an onomastic pattern, possibly functioning on an Indo-European level.

Names formed with Germanic *aud- (etymon of OE ead-), Greek plouto-, Slavic zir- referred to riches and abundance and were originally used within the inferior stratum of society. Originally they should have

6 A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records6, ed. Bessinger, J.,Smith, Ph., Cornell University Press, 1978. 7 The Durham Liber vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A.VII: edition and digital facsimile with introduction, codicological, prosopographicaland linguistic commentary, and indexes, éd. David et Lynda Rollason, ElizabethBriggs, J.E. Burton, A.I. Doyle ... [et al.], 3 vols, London: British Library,2007. 8 Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, <http:www.pase.ac.uk>, published 18/09/2010. 9 Reichert, H., Lexikon der altgermanischen Namen, 2 vols, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Wien, 1987. 10 Boiche Khallieva, O., IMJA and NAME: a Comparative Study of Germanic and Slavic Given Names with their oldest manifestations among the Anglo-Saxons and the Russians, PhD dissertation, Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2012. 11 A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, ed. P. M. FRASER and E. MATTHEWS, 4 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987-2010.

122

been monothematic and reflected the parents’ desire that their progeny would have a prosperous life. The Heroic Age gave birth to dithematic anthroponyms containing the ead- element (Eadric, Eadwald, Edmund ‘chief, protector of riches’), which are a later interpretation of ancient poetical epithets describing the lord as a guardian of his people and his land.

The unmarking markers, or variable gender in the Old English gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels revisited

Oxana Kharlamenko

University of Paris Sorbonne Keywords: Old English, gender, gender agreement, gender assignment, Lindisfarne Gospels The question of what are commonly referred to as nouns of more than one gender has previously been discussed in several important case studies. However, in light of the most recent linguistic theories on the subject, the reliability of several previously accepted gender-distinctive markers must be questioned, particularly with respect to the Old English gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels. The present empirical corpus-based study focuses on sixty nouns referring to inanimate entities and assigned to several genders in the Glossary by Cook (1894): Table 1 : Correspondence in gender assignment in Bosworth & Toller’s Old English Dictionary and Albert Cook’s Glossary

B&T / Glossary

mf mn fn mfn f, non-f

m 12 3 f 2 2 18 3 1 n 7 3 mn 1 mf 1 1 fn 3 mfn 2

However, the data show that nouns of more than one gender are far less numerous than attested in the Glossary. The reanalysis of the markedness

123

of some previously gender-sensitive markers has shown the following results that there are only sixteen nouns which are presumably assigned to several genders in the Lindisfarne Gospels.

My argument is that some of the previously gender-distinctive markers had lost, as has been previously claimed by several scholars (Jones 1967, 1988, Millar 2000, 2001), their gender sensitivity at least in the glossator’s dialect. Most of these words can in fact be assigned to one gender only, or have no gender features that are carried by the determiners. As for those words which seem to be assigned to several genders, their semantics is frequently responsible for their distribution. With the chosen set of criteria (eliminating those markers which show no gender sensitivity any longer) applied, the gender system seems to remain more or less intact, contrary to the ‘neutralisation theory’ suggested by Ross (1936). The anaphoric demonstratives seem to be the only more or less reliable source as for the noun gender, despite the accounts of the further development shown in Curzan (2003), while the system of the internal-agreement markers underwent drastic changes, making it more difficult to identify a noun’s gender within the NP/DP. This leads to the conclusion that a further reanalysis of gender agreement – and consequently of gender assignment in Old English is required, together with a reassessment of variable-gender nouns.

Cook, Albert S. 1894. A Glossary of the Old Northumbrian Gospels (Lindisfarne

Gospels or Durham Book). Halle: Max Niemeyer. Corbett, Greville. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corbett, Greville. 2005. Agreement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Curzan, Anne. 2003. Gender Shifts in the History of English. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. von Fleischhacker, Robert. 1888. “On the Old English Nouns of More than One

Gender”. In Transactions of the Philological Society 21. London: Trübner and CO.235—254.

Jones, Charles. 1967. “The Functional Motivation of Linguistic Change: a study in the development of the grammatical category of gender in the late OE period”. English studies 48. 97—111.

Jones, Charles. 1988. Grammatical Gender in English: 950 to 1250. New-York: Croom Helm.

Kemenade van, Ans. 1987. Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

Kitson, Peter. 1990. “On nouns of more than one gender”. English Studies 3. 185—221.

Matasovic, Ranco. 2004. Gender in Indo-European. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.

Millar, Robert McColl. 2000. System collapse, system rebirth, Oxford: Peter Lang.

124

Millar, Robert McColl. 2001. “After Jones: some thoughts on the final collapse of the grammatical gender system in English”. In Jasek Fisiak (ed.). Studies in English historical linguistics and philology. Frankfurt sur Main: Peter Lang. 293—306.

Nesset, Tore. 2006. “Gender meets the Usage-Based Model”. Lingua 116. 369—1393. Rice, Curt. 2006. “Optimizing gender”. Lingua 116.1394—1417. Rodina, Yulia. 2012. “A cue-based approach to the acquisition of grammatical gender

in Russian”. Journal of Child Language 39/05. 1077—1110. Ross Alan S. C. 1936. “Sex and Gender in the Lindisfarne Gospels”. The Journal of

English and Germanic Philology 35. 321—330. Sandström, Caroline. 2000. “The changing system of grammatical gender in the

Swedish dialects of Nyland, Finland”. In Barbara Unterbeck and Matti Rissanen (eds.). Gender in Grammar and Cognition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.793—806.

Schwink, Frederick W. 2004. The Third Gender. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. Siemund, Peter and Florian Dolberg. 2011. “From lexical to referential gender: An

analysis of gender change in Medieval English based on two historical documents”. Folia Linguistica 45/2. 489—534.

Stenroos, Merja. 2008. “Order out of chaos? The English gender change in the Southwest Midlands as a process of semantically based reorganization”. English Language and Linguistics 12.3. 445—473.

Unterbeck, Barbara and Rissanen Matti (eds.). 2000. Gender in Grammar and Cognition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

The wickede secte of Saracenys: Lexico-semantic means of creating religious diversity in texts from the Middle English period

Monika Kirner-Ludwig Augsburg University

In the eyes of medieval Christians, the Saracen gradually became the epitome of the MISBELIEVER and of the OTHER from as early as the 11

th

century. Despite the fact that the English, due to their geographical alter orbis position and their military restraint during most of the Crusades, hardly had any face-to-face contact with the ethnic categories of Turks, Arabs and Saracens at all, texts from the English Middle Ages give a surprisingly emotional and colourful picture of what English Christians perceived as the worst enemy of (what they perceived as) the one true faith.

Most of the conceptual, i.e. stereotypical facets about the Turks and the Saracens seem to have been adopted from the European continent, before they underwent further expansion as well as conceptual blending with general features the English already bore about the category of the MISBELIEVER. The Middle English lexico-semantic inventory in particular

125

gives a remarkable display of the deep impact such superficial ‘shared knowledge’ passed down unquestioned had on the perception and moulding of both the CHRISTIAN SELF and the MISBELIEVING OTHER.

My paper will focus on the conceptual categories TURK, SARACEN and, as Middle English texts frequently put it, ‘the followers of Mahomet’s law’ on the one hand, and the semantic potentials of lexical devices used to refer to them on the other. On the basis of references gathered in the online editions of the Middle English Dictionary (MED) and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as well as in broader contexts provided by the Middle English Corpus of Prose and Verse (MECPV), both the frequency of usage of respective referring expressions as well as the creativeness involved on the word formational and semantic level will be looked into. From a historio-pragmatic perspective it shall additionally be shown that the selected samples present varying strategies of strengthening the image of the Christian SELF by systematically decomposing the image of the ‘misbelieving’ OTHER by means of lexical choice.

DiPaolo Healey, Antonette, ed. 2011. Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus [DOEC; http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/pages/pub/web-corpus.html (last accessed 13 Sept

2013)]. Horstmann, Carl, ed. 1881. Altenglische Legenden. Neue Folge. Mit Einleitung und

Anmerkungen. Heilbronn: Henninger. [Accessed via MECPV: Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Library. 2006.]

McSparran, Frances, Paul Schaffner et al.2006. The Middle English Corpus of Prose and Verse [MECPV; http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/ (last accessed 13 Sept 2013)].

Metlitzki, Dorothee. 1977. The Matter of Araby in Medieval England. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Simpson, John and Edmund Weiner, eds. 1989 (2nd ed.). The Oxford English Dictionary. 20 Volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [http://www.oed.com/ (last accessed 13 Sept 2013)].

Tyerman, Christopher. 1988. England and the Crusades 1095-1588. Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press.

Scarfe Beckett, Katharine. 2003. Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World. (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 33). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sommer, Heinrich Oskar, ed. 1889. Le Morte Darthur by Syr Thomas Malory. The original edition of William Caxton now reprinted and edited with an introduction and glossary. With an essay on Malory’s prose style by Andrew Lang. 3 Volumes. London: Nutt. [Accessed via MECPV: Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative. 1997. URL: http://name.umdl.umich.edu/MaloryWks2 (last accessed 10 March 2013)].

Wheatley, Henry Benjamin, ed.1899.Merlin: or the early History of King Arthur. A prose romance (about 1450 – 1460 A.D.). 2 Volumes. (EETS OS 10, 21, 36, 112).

126

London: Trübner et al. [Accessed via MECPV: Ann Arbor, MI: University of

Michigan Humanities Text Initiative.1997. URL: http://name.umdl.umich.edu/Merlin (last accessed 10 March 2013)].

More on the origin of passive get

Juhani Klemola University of Tampere

Keywords: Early Modern English, passive get, grammaticalization Most discussions on the origin of passive get place the first attestation of the construction in the middle or late seventeenth century. Some frequently cited first attestations are listed in (1–3):

(1) A certain Spanish pretending Alchymist . . . got acquainted with foure rich Spanish merchants. (1652 Gaule, Magastrom. 361) (OED s.v. get, v.34b)

(2) I am resolv’d to get introduced to Mrs Annabella (Powell, A Very Good Wife, 1693. II.i p. 10 from the ARCHER Corpus) (Gronemeyer, 1999: 29)

(3) so you may not only save your life, but get rewarded for your roguery (1731 Fielding, Letter Writers II.ix.20) (Jespersen, 1909–49: IV, 108)

Some scholars (Visser 1963–73: I, 203, Denison 1993: 419) agree with the OED and cite (1) as the first attestation of passive get, some (Denison 1998: 320, Gronemeyer 1999: 29) prefer the slightly later example in (2), while others (Fleischer 2006: 227, Toyota 2008: 150) list all three examples in (1) to (3), while not taking a stand on the issue of which one should considered as the first proper attestation of the construction.

Evidence collected from the prototype version of the 400 million word Early English Books Online (EEBO) corpus (http://corpus2.byu.edu/eebo; not currently publicly available), covering the period of 1470s to 1690s, clearly indicates that passive get was in use significantly earlier than generally assumed. Example (4), from 1606, is the first unambiguous attestation of a get passive in the EEBO corpus, with a verbal passive-participial complement and the agent marked with a by-phrase:

127

(4) Plebiscitum which I call Folkemot (because this word hath beene ancient in * our lawes) was that which the magistrate or mouth of the Commons, vpon motion and suit, as bearing office of their speaker and Tribune did get ratefied by the Romane Consuls and Senators on their behalfe. (Foure bookes of offices enabling privat persons for the speciall seruice of all good princes and policies. Made and deuised by Barnabe Barnes, 1606; from the Early English Books Online corpus)

In this paper, I will discuss the EEBO evidence on passive get, and argue that the earlier than generally assumed appearance of the construction poses a serious challenge for the theories that propose that passive get developed from an earlier inchoative get (see, e.g. Gronemeyer 1999, Fleischer 2006). Denison, David. 1993. English Historical Syntax: Verbal Constructions. London:

Longman. Denison, David. 1998. ‘Syntax.’ In Romaine, S. (ed.), The Cambridge History of the

English Language, vol. IV, 1776–1997. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 92–329.

Fleischer, Nicholas. 2006. ‘The origin of passive get.’ English Language and Linguistics 10.2: 225–252.

Gronemeyer, Claire. 1999. ‘On deriving complex polysemy: the grammaticalization of get.’ English Language and Linguistics 3.1: 1–39.

Jespersen, Otto. 1909–49. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. London and Copenhagen: Allen & Unwin and Ejnar Munksgaard. Reprinted London, 1961.

Toyota, Junichi. 2008. Diachronic Change in the English Passive. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Visser, F. Th. 1963–73. An Historical Syntax of the English Language, 4 vols, Leiden: E.J. Brill.

128

Think in Old and Middle English

Daniela Kolbe-Hanna, Frauke D’hoedt & Hubert Cuyckens Trier University - KU Leuven

Keywords: comment clause, grammaticalization, semantic bleaching English comment clauses, i.e. clauses expressing “speaker attitude or stance” (Brinton 2008: 241), have been the subject of a wealth of research, particularly relating to the grammaticalisation of the comment clause I think (e.g., Brinton 1996: 212-254, 2008; Stenström 1995; Thompson & Mulac 1991a,b; van Bogaert 2011). The purpose of the present paper is to examine comment clause uses involving the verbal predicate THINK. The comment clause function/use of I think is illustrated in examples (2) and (3), ), where think can be paraphrased as “the speaker holding an opinion, judging, considering” (see OED, think v.

2 III) and thus expresses speaker

attitude/stance towards the main proposition. While traditional wisdom has it that this use as a comment clause presupposes semantic bleaching (see, e.g. Brinton 2008: 49-51) of the “original, lexical” meaning ‘to hold in the mind’, the distinction is not straightforward. Indeed, the difference between lexical and comment clause usage of sentence-initial I think as in (1) is discernible at the level of prosody only (see, e.g. Kaltenböck 2008, Dehé & Wichmann 2010). Our claim is thus that think in its comment function is not bleached to such an extent that it differs substantially in meaning from lexical think in a matrix clause.

(1) I think exercise is really beneficial, to anybody. (Thompson & Mulac 1991: 313)

(2) Exercise is, I think, really beneficial to anybody. (3) Exercise is really beneficial, to anybody, I think.

Moreover, considering that think in its comment function can be found from as early as Old English (cf. (4)), it appears that the comment function is a meaning intrinsic to think, both in initial matrix clause position (see (1) above) and in parenthetical position (4).

(4) Rogcer […] gaderade his folc þan cyngce to unþearfe—he þohte—

ac hit wearð heom seolfan to mycclan hearme. (OED, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) ‘Roger gathered his folk to the king’s detriment—he thought—but

it came to be much harm to himself’. ( stance towards the truth

129

value of the proposition: Roger thought/believed he was taking actions to the king’s detriment, but the speaker comments that in fact he didn’t)

Our aim is to present a detailed diachronic study of the uses of THINK expressing speaker stance/opinion and the distribution of these comment uses in the various possible positions in the sentence (initial, medial, final). From the Leuven English Old to New (LEON) corpus, which comprises over three million words from Old to Early Modern English, we have extracted all instances of þencan (and later forms) to investigate this semantic and syntactic development. In this way, we also hope to provide more insight to the role of semantic bleaching in the grammaticalisation of I think. Brinton, Laurel J. (1996) Pragmatic markers in English: Grammaticalization and

discourse function. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Brinton, Laurel J. (2008) The comment clause in English: Syntactic origins and

pragmatic development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dehé, Nicole & Anne Wichmann (2010) Sentence-initial I think (that) and I

believe (that): Prosodic evidence for use as main clause, comment clause and discourse marker. Studies in Language 34(1): 36-74.

Kaltenböck, Gunther (2008) Prosody and function of English comment clauses. Folia Linguistica 42 (1): 83-134.

Stenström, Anna-Brita (1994) Some remarks on comment clauses. In Bas Aarts & Charles F. Meyer (eds.) The verb in contemporary English, 290-299. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, Sandra & Anthony Mulac (1991a) A quantitative perspective on the grammaticization of epistemic parentheticals in English. In Bernd Heine & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds.) Approaches to grammaticalization. Vol 2, 313-329. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Thompson, Sandra & Anthony Mulac (1991b) The discourse conditions for the use of the complementizer that in conversational English. Journal of Pragmatics (16): 237-251.

Van Bogaert, Julie (2011) I think and other complement-taking mental predicates: A case of and for constructional grammaticalization. Linguistics and Philosophy (49): 295-332.

130

Instances of phonological weight-sensitivity in Early Middle English poetry

Marta Kołos Warsaw University

Keywords: Middle English, stress, metre, weight-sensitivity The present paper addresses the issue of the special status manifested by heavy syllables in Early Middle English poetry. The expected pattern of accentuation for native vocabulary is essentially trochaic and left-strong (Campbell 1959: 30), yet numerous non-root-initial heavy syllables appear to receive stress in Middle English poems. A diachronic approach may contribute to an explanation of this apparent anomaly. At the stage of Old English, the language relied on syllabic quantity to a great extent, both for poetic and linguistic accentuation. Hence, it is justified to postulate such weight-sensitive constructs as the Germanic Foot (Dresher — Lahiri 1991) as a means for explaining certain Old English phonological processes. A continued appliance of resolution has already been observed in Poema Morale by Fulk (2002). The question arises whether the apparent potential of heavy syllables for attracting stress in Middle English poetry, might be a further remnant of Old English weight sensitivity. Another issue to be addressed is the possibly different status of heavy syllables in Early Middle English poems as opposed to the later poetic works of the period.

In an attempt to answer the above problems, an analysis of selected early Middle English poems is conducted. The sample is chosen basing on the estimated date of composition as well as on the regularity of metre (only lines with a clear metrical structure are considered). The texts include The Ormulum, The Owl and the Nightingale and Poema Morale. Once a database of items showing anomalies is collected, a more thorough corpus study is conducted (based on Chadwyck-Healey’s English Poetry Full-Text Database and the Humanities Text Initiative’s Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse). The results are then verified in order to estimate the influence of external factors on the stressing patterns as well as the impact of word-formation processes , with emphasis on the possibility of incomplete grammaticalization of certain suffixes (Marchand 1969: 232). Finally the data is compared to patterns of Old English accentuation and to the anomalies attested for later Middle English.

Expected results include a degree of continuity between the status of heavy syllables in Old English and Early Middle English poetry as well as some reduction in the potential of such syllables for attracting poetic stress later within the Middle English period. The impact of external influence as

131

well as that of incomplete grammaticalization is also expected to be of some significance.

Atkins, John W.H. (ed.) 1922 The Owl and the Nightingale. Cambridge: University

Press. Campbell, Alistair 1959 Old English grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dresher, B. Elan — Aditi Lahiri 1991 “The Germanic foot: metrical coherence in Old

English”, Linguistic Inquiry 22: 251-286. Fulk, Robert 2002 “Early Middle English Evidence for Old English Meter: Resolution in

Poema morale”, Journal of Germanic Linguistics 14: 331-355. Hall, Joseph (ed.) 1920 Selections from early Middle English 1130-1250. Oxford:

Clarendon Press. Holt, Robert (ed.) 1878 The Ormulum with the notes and glossary of R.M. White.

Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy 1976 “The linguistic foundations of meter”, Biuletyn Polskiego

Towarzystwa Językoznawczego 34: 63-73. Marchand, Hans 1969 The categories and types of present-day English word-

formation. A synchronic-diachronic approach. 2nd ed. Műnchen: C.H. Beck.

Subject-position alternations in PP-initial main clauses

Erwin R. Komen

Radboud University Nijmegen

Keywords: subject, information structure, prepositional phrases, Old English Main clauses in earlier English introduced by a prepositional phrase show considerably more variation in the relative order of subject and finite verb than other non-subject-initial main clauses. Starting with an almost 50-50 variation between SV and VS word order in Old English (OE), they end up with a strong preference for the SV order in late Modern English. The increase in SV order reflects the overall grammatical change in English, but the variation in OE remains puzzling.

(1) a. Ongemang þisum sende Eufrosina anne cniht, in.the.midstof.this sent Euphrosyne one servant þone þe heo getreowost wiste. [coeuphr:93]

who that she most.faithful knew ‘Meanwhile Euphrosyne sent a servant, one whom she knew to be very faithful.’

132

b. Æfter þisum wordum he eode on đone weg þe after these words he went on the way that him getæht wæs ođ đæt he becom to.him pointed was until that he came

to þare ceastre geate. [coapollo:222] to the city’s gate

‘After these words, he went on the way that was pointed out to him, until he came to the city gate.’

c. On đissere egeslican reownesse Apollonius geferan in this terrible tempest Apollonius’ companions

ealle forwurdon to deađe, [coapollo:191] all became to death

‘In this terrible tempest, the companions of Apollonius all perished.’

The SV/VS alternation in main clauses introduced by adverbials (including PPs) has been explained as (a) reflecting a difference between subject types (Haeberli, 2002, van Kemenade, 2000), (b) as reflecting a topic demarcation by the verb (Hinterhölzl and van Kemenade, 2012), and (c) as depending upon the PP-type (Komen, 2013).

Using corpus based quantitative research methods, I show that (a) accounts for the data in the 10th and 11th centuries, but neither (a) nor (b) can resolve the variation in early OE.

The alternative explanation (c) hinges on the argument/adjunct status of the clause-initial PP. In order to determine the argumenthood of clause-initial PPs, we have started lemmatizing the four historical English corpora, since it is the combination of the preposition and the verb that largely determine the argumenthood of the PP. In my paper, I will present the results of testing explanation (c) by making use of the lemmatization information in the corpora.

Haeberli, Eric. 2002. “Inflectional morphology and the loss of verb-second in English”.

Syntactic effects of morphological change. ed. by David Lightfoot, 88-106. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.

Hinterhölzl, Ronald, and Ans van Kemenade. 2012. “The interaction between syntax, information structure and prosody in word order change”. The Oxford Handbook of the History of English. ed. by Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Terttu Nevalainen, 803-821. New York, Oxford University Press.

Komen, Erwin R. 2013. Finding focus: a study of the historical development of focus in English. PhD dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen

133

van Kemenade, Ans. 2000. “Jespersen’s cycle revisited: formal properties of grammaticalization”. Diachronic syntax. ed. by Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas and Anthony Warner, 51-74. Oxford, Oxford university press.

Binomials or not? A study of double glosses in Farman’s glosses to the Rushworth Gospels

Tadashi Kotake

School of Advanced Study, University of London - Keio University, Tokyo

Keywords: binomials, Old English glosses, the Rushworth Gospels, translation, Latin sources In OE interlinear glosses, we find a substantial number of examples relevant to the discussion of binomials, because a Latin expression is often glossed with a pair of expressions, connected by “ł” (for Latin vel). Such double glosses might be categorized as binomials, given their structure “A or B”. In fact, paired glosses are often of the same grammatical category (e.g. Mt 1.23

12 bereþ ł kenneþ/ pariet), and occasionally alliterate (e.g. Mt 5.22 dysig

ł dole/ fatuae). In some cases, a formulaic expression may underlie a given double gloss, when the identical pairing is found frequently in other texts (e.g. Mt 8.33 sægdun ł cyðdon/ nuntiauerunt; cf. Koskenniemi 1968: 148). There are certainly overlapping features between binomials and double glosses.

However, not all double glosses can be analyzed in the framework of binomials. This paper will analyze examples that may be regarded as binomials in the broad context of double glossing, and consider one of the main questions of our workshop: “to what extent binomials are present” in a given text. The text chosen is Farman’s gloss in the Rushworth Gospels (Oxford, Bod.L., Auct. D.2.19) for its abundant variety of double glosses. When various functions of double glosses are examined, it will become clear that linguistic analysis must involve palaeographical and textual examinations. For example, it is clear, on the one hand, from the linguistic perspective that a double gloss consisting of two different grammatical forms of the same word cannot be regarded as a binomial (e.g. Mt 1.20 onfoh ł onfoiæ/ accipere). On the other, textual examination is necessary when we find that Farman’s gloss not only involves the Latin text in the Rushworth manuscript, but betrays the influence of other variant readings,

12 All the examples are from Farman’s gloss; see below.

134

which may sometimes prompt a second gloss: geotaþ ł gedoaþ/ ponunt (Mt 9.17) appears to be a good example of a binomial, but the slight semantic difference between the two glosses may reflect Farman’s knowledge of the more usual reading mittunt. After reviewing functions of double glosses, Farman’s “binomial glosses” will be examined in detail. It is hoped that the paper will contribute to discussion of the definition of binomials by presenting a case study for one specific genre of texts and by considering the glossator’s motivation in employing double glosses that share some characteristics with binomials. Koskenniemi, Inna. 1968. Repetitive Word Pairs in Old and Early Middle English Prose.

Turku: Turun Yliopisto. Kotake, Tadashi. 2006. “Aldred’s Multiple Glosses: Is the Order Significant?”, in

Michiko Ogura (ed.) Textual and Contextual Studies in Medieval English: Towards the Reunion of Linguistics and Philology. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 35–50.

Kuhn, S. M. 1947. “Synonyms in the Old English Bede”, JEGP 46: 168–176. Ross, A. S. C. 1933. “Notes on the Method of Glossing Employed in the Lindisfarne

Gospels”, Transactions of the Philological Society 1931–2: 108–119. Ross, A. S. C. 1980. “The Multiple, Altered and Alternative Glosses of the Lindisfarne

and the Durham Ritual”, Notes and Queries 225: 489–495.

‘Reported Discourse’ in Old English: An emerging construction?

Ulrike Krischke

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich Keywords: reported discourse, construction grammar, clause fusion, polyphony, mood The present paper aims at exploring the nature of reported discourse in Old English using the approach of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995). It has been shown that Modern English has a Direct Speech Construction (cf. Stefanowitsch 2008), which is set apart from the mono- and the ditransitive constructions by specific characteristics on the semantic and the syntactic level. It allows, e.g., the use of verbs other than those denoting communication, such as (to) shriek ‘to utter a loud, shrill cry’ in [1] and tolerates subjects in post-verbal position and objects in sentence-initial position, as in [2].

135

(1) Mother shrieked at the cook, ‘How can you do this, […]?’ (Martel, Life of Pi, 412)

(2) ‘At least cover his face, […]!’ cried my mother. (ibid., 412) Since reported discourse in the history of English has as yet not been studied in any detail, the present paper will present the findings of a first investigation into the history of this construction in Old English. It will consider the general nature of reported speech/thoughts/attitudes (testing the notion of polyphony as suggested by, e.g., Nølke 2003) and will, in a quantitative study of selected Old English prose works, focus on the semantics of the introductory verbs, the syntactic functions of þæt-clauses in reported discourse (status and function of þæt and a discussion of whether we have co-ordination, hypotaxis or sub-ordination), and the diagnostic value of inflectional marking of mood. According to Hopper/Traugott (2003), the grammaticalisation of OE þæt from a demonstrative to a connective is central to the clause-fusion pathway as illustrated in [3] and [4], the embedding of the second clause in [4] in contrast to [3] being evidenced by the use of the subjunctive.

(3) Þa […] gehierdun þæt þæs cyninges þegnas […] þæt se cyning ofslęgen wæs [IND], […] (ChronA(Bately)B17.1,[0255 (755.24)]).

(4) […] þohte […] þæt se an ne ætburste [S BJ] […] (ÆCHomI,5B1.1.6,[0034(219.72)]).

As Fischer (2008: 214-29) observes, the problems with this analysis include the absence of quantitative evidence for a higher frequency of the ‘double-that’ construction in early vs. late Old English and the general difficulty in discerning ‘usual’ grammaticalisation features such as phonetic reduction or semantic bleaching, since clause fusion involves the development of a macro-construction (cf. Traugott 2008) rather than the grammaticalisation of a lexical item. The study will also touch upon evidential strategies in Old English other than ‘reported discourse’, e.g. the use of evidential *sculan. Fischer, Olga. 2008. Morphosyntactic Change. Functional and Formal Perspectives.

Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to

Argument Structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hopper, Paul J. and Elisabeth Closs Traugott. 2003 [1993]. Grammaticalization. 2nd

ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martel, Yann. 2003 [2001]. Life of Pi. Edinburgh: Canongate.

136

Nølke, Henning. 2003. “Polyphonie linguistique et discours rapporté” in Polyphonie – linguistique et littéraire. Documents de travail/Arbejdspapirer, no. 7. <http://ojs.ruc.dk/index.php/poly/issue/ archive> [last access 16.10.2013]>.

Traugott, Elisabeth Closs. 2008. “Grammatikalisierung, emergente Konstruktionen und der Begriff der ‘Neuheit’” in Anatol Stefanowitsch and Kerstin Fischer (eds.). Konstruktionsgrammatik II. Von der Konstruktion zur Grammatik. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 5-32.

Binomials in Caxton’s Ovid

Elisabeth Kubaschewski Katholische Universität Eichstätt - Ingolstadt

Keywords: William Caxton’s Ovid, Ovide moralisé en prose II, Binomials, Formulaicity William Caxton was one of the most influential characters in English literary history. Besides introducing printing in England, he edited and translated numerous texts, among them the Ovid, i.e. Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Cambridge Magdalene College, Old Library, MS F.4.34; Cambridge Magdalene College, Pepys Library, MS 2124). There are many publications on William Caxton’s life and his work as a printer and editor (e.g. Blake 1991 or Deacon 1976), but there are few publications on the texts he translated and printed. The Ovid in particular has been neglected for a long time. Recently, however, an edition by Richard Moll has been published and some doctoral dissertations have been written on the text, e.g., the proem and book I as well as the French source text were edited by Diana Rumrich (2011) and books II and III by Wolfgang Mager (forthc.). Books IV and V are currently being dealt with by Daniela Rapf and book VI of the Ovid and its French source have been edited by Kubaschewski (forthc.).

The editions by Rumrich, Mager and Kubaschewski are the basis of my study of the use and structure of the binomials in the Ovid. Binomials or twin-formulae are often grouped according to their word-classes, their connecting elements, their semantic structure and, of course, the etymology of their components. Besides this approach, I have carried out an analysis regarding the popularity and formulaicity of certain binomials, such as lady and quene, which alone occurs three times in book VI, consulting the Middle English Dictionary Online.

However, the Ovid is not a direct translation of the Latin Metamorphoses, but rather Caxton’s Middle English version of the 15th-century French prose text Ovide moralisé en prose II. Therefore, it is also of

137

interest to examine the use of binomials in the three existent manuscripts of the French source text and compare them to each other (MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Fr. 137, MS St. Petersburg, Rossijskaua Nacional’naja Biblioteka, F.v.XIV, London British Library, Royal 17 E. IV) as well as to the Middle English text. William Caxton’s Ovid often seems to be a word-by-word translation, but with the binomials he acted more freely: some of them were taken over from the Middle French source text (e.g. lady and quene, p.334, from French dame & royne, e.g. MS Fonds Fr. 137, f.77v), but others were introduced by Caxton himself (e.g. pyte and domage, p.348).

My analysis aims at combining the traditional approaches of grouping (e.g. Leisi 1947, Koskenniemi 1968, and Sauer and Mager 2011) with an examination of the popularity and formulaicity of certain collocations and the influence of the source text on the Ovid. Caxton, William. [1480] 1819. Six Bookes of Metamorphoseos in whyche ben

conteyned the Fables of Ovide. Translated out of Frenche into Englysshe by William Caxton. Printed from Manuscript in the Library of Mr Secretary Pepys. Ed. George Hibbert. London: Roxburghe Club.

Caxton, William. [1480] 1924. Ovyde hys Booke of Metamorphose: Booke x−xv. Translated by William Caxton. Ed. Stephen Gaselee & Herbert F.B. Brett-Smith. Oxford: Shakespeare Head.

Caxton, William. [1480] 1968. The Metamorphoses of Ovid translated by William Caxton 1480. Ed. George Braziller in association with Magdalene College. 2 vols. New York/Cambridge: Jarrold.

[Facsimile-Edition of Caxton’s Ovid.] Caxton, William. [~1460 - ~1490] 1973. Selections with an Introduction, Notes and

Glossary. Ed. Norman F. Blake. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Caxton, William. 2008. “Caxton’s Ovid, books II and III. A Critical Edition of the Second

and Third Book of Caxton’s Middle English Translation, Ovyde Metamorphose Hys Booke (1480), together with its Middle French Source Text, the Ovyde Moralisé en Prose II.” Ed. Wolfgang Mager. Unpublished PhD diss., University of Munich. (forthcoming)

Caxton, William. 2011. The Middle English Text of Caxton’s Ovid: Book I. Ed. Diana Rumrich. Heidelberg: Winter.

Caxton, William. 2013. The Booke of Ovyde Named Metamorphose. Ed. Richard J. Moll. Oxford: Bodleian Library.

Caxton, William (forthc.). An Edition of Caxton’s Ovid: Book VI. Ed. Elisabeth Kubaschewski.

138

The pragmatic functions of I say and I tell (you) in Early Modern English dialogues

Daniela Landert

University of Zurich

Keywords: Early Modern English, pragmatic functions, meta-communication, dialogues Like any type of communication, dialogues consist of more than propositional content. Speakers express attitudes towards what they say, they organise turn-taking, and they use text-structuring devices, to name just a few examples. Meta-communicative expressions are one option for carrying out such pragmatic functions (see, for instance, Boggel 2009; Dossena 2012; Simon-Vandenbergen and Defour 2012; Taavitsainen 2000), and I say and I tell (you) can both be used in this way. (I) say is discussed as a comment clause by Brinton (2008), and it has been identified as one of the most frequent expressions for author-based stance marking meta-discourse in Early Modern English religious texts (Boggel 2009: 183). Furthermore, both say and tell have been shown to fulfil meta-communicative functions in nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants’ letters (Dossena 2012).

The present study investigates the use of I say and I tell (you) – including modified variants like I would say, I can tell you – in Early Modern English dialogues, based on the Corpus of English Dialogues (CED). The speech-relatedness of the data makes the CED particularly suitable for a detailed study of these two constructions, which are both closely associated with speaking. As I will show, I say and I tell (you) can express a range of pragmatic functions. These functions include, for instance, speech reporting, text-structuring in question answer sequences, and expressing emphasis. The aim of this study is to compare the two constructions with respect to their functions and to investigate how these functions depend on the context. In particular, I will discuss the differences in pragmatic functions across the various text types in the CED, which include constructed dialogues, like comedy plays and fiction, and authentic dialogues, like trial proceedings and witness depositions. These text types are related to speech in different ways (Culpeper and Kytö 2010). As a consequence, text type distribution of the functions of I say and I tell (you) will provide further insights into how these meta-communicative expressions relate to spoken language.

139

A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. 2006. Compiled under the supervision of Merja Kytö (Uppsala University) and Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University).

Boggel, Sandra. 2008. Metadiscourse in Middle English and Early Modern English Religious Texts. A Corpus-Based Study. English Corpus Linguistics 10. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Brinton, Laurel. 2008. The Comment Clause in English. Studies in English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Culpeper, Jonathan and Merja Kytö. 2010. Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dossena, Marina. 2012. “‘I Write You These Few Lines’. Metacommunication and Pragmatics in Nineteenth-Century Scottish Emigrants’ Letters”. In Investigations into the Meta-Communicative Lexicon of English. A Contribution to Historical Pragmatics, edited by Ulrich Busse and Axel Hübler, 45–63. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 220. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie, and Tine Defour. 2012. “Verbs of Answering Revisited. A Corpus-Based Study of Their Pragmatic Development”. In Investigations into the Meta-Communicative Lexicon of English. A Contribution to Historical Pragmatics, edited by Ulrich Busse and Axel Hübler, 223–245. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 220. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Taavitsainen, Irma. 2000. “Metadiscursive Practices and the Evolution of Early English Medical Writing 1375-1550”. In Corpora Galore: Analyses and Techniques in Describing English, edited by John M. Kirk, 191–207. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

On Middle English she, sho: A refurbished narrative

Roger Lass & Margaret Laing In memoriam Derek Britton

Keywords: Old English, Middle English, ‘she’, etymology Histories of the English nominative singular third person feminine pronoun have focussed on (a) the initial [ʃ] of Middle English she, sho and (b) the difficulties of the [e:] vocalism. The interest of this pronoun, however, begins in pre-Old English times and is inextricably bound up with the history of the accusative, which by NWGmc had become identical by loss of final nasal. This identity continues into Old English, the phonological developments introducing, however, considerable formal variation, hīo, hīa, hēo and hīe being attested for both nominative and accusative in different dialects. In West Saxon, this variation enables morphosyntactic selection of contrasting variants for each function, respectively hēo and hīe. In Mercian, both forms are found in both functions (Campbell 1959: §703, Hogg & Fulk 2011: §5.17 (2)). The first part of our paper presents the histories, from

140

PGmc to Old English, for both nominative and accusative, created for the Corpus of Narrative Etymologies (CoNE). CoNE interfaces with its accompanying Corpus of Changes (CC), which describes the steps in the historical evolution. (Later syncretism removes the hēo, hīe etc. types from accusative function, which is taken over by the genitive/dative ‘her’ type. For a form that bucks this trend see the related abstract by Rhona Alcorn.)

The early Middle English evidence for the feminine nominative shows that the complexity, already present in Old English, continues in the surviving h- forms. Later developments spawn a different complex of forms that do begin with h-. Our source for the early Middle English data is the LAEME Corpus of Tagged of Texts (CTT). This contains 71 texts that include one or more variants of the nominative singular feminine e.g.: heo, he, ho, hi, hye, ghe, ᵹho, ʒe, scæ, sco, sche. The second part of our paper starts from the Old English forms and narrates the stages that account for all the different variants found in the LAEME CTT (36 in all). Each narrative strand includes the relevant phonetic, orthographic or morphological developments as detailed in the CC, including new interpretations of four changes. Our narrative is complementary to the richly detailed revisions in OED3. It is much indebted to, and celebrates, Derek Britton’s 1991 paper, but adds significant new material and differs in detail on both the initial consonant and the vocalism. It also includes explanations for such oddities as scha, yo and þie, þoe.

Britton, D. 1991. On Middle English she, sho: a Scots solution to an English problem.

Nowele 17: 3–51. Campbell, A. 1959. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. CoNE = Lass, R., Alcorn, R., Laing, M. & Williamson, K. (eds.) 2013–. A Corpus of

Narrative Etymologies from Primitive Old English to Early Middle English and A Corpus of Changes. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/CoNE/CoNE.html. Edinburgh: © The University of Edinburgh.

Hogg, R.M. & Fulk, R.D. A Grammar of Old English Volume 2: Morphology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

LAEME = A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English 1150–1325, version 3.2. 2013– Compiled by Margaret Laing. Electronic text corpus with accompanying software (Keith Williamson) index of sources and theoretical introduction (with Roger Lass). http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme2.html. Edinburgh: ©The University of Edinburgh.

OED3 = OED Online: she, pron.1, n., and adj.; hoo, pron. and n.; † hi, pron.1 Accessed October 2013.

141

Cognate object constructions in Early Modern English: The case of Tyndale’s New Testament

Nikolaos Lavidas

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

The aim of this paper is to investigate the rise of the Cognate Object Constructions (COCs) in Early Modern English (EModE), particularly in the first complete English translation of the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew by William Tyndale (see exx. in 1a-c, 2a). According to Visser (1963–73 [2002]: 415), the COC is a recent development in English. Our corpus study will confirm Visser’s remarks and show that from Middle to Early Modern English, the range of COCs was extended with activity/event nouns (e.g., He smiled a disarming smile).

(1) a. ...but iudge rightewes iudgement. (Tyndale, Jn. 7.24) b. ...the love wher wt thou hast loved me. (Tyndale, Jn. 17.26) c. …synne a synne that is not vnto deeth. (Tyndale, 1 Jn. 5.16)

(2) a. ...they were marvelously glad. (Tyndale, Mt. 2.10) b. ...ekhárēsan kharàn megálēn sphódra. were-glad.3pl joy.acc big.acc exceedingly

(Greek N. T., Mt. 2.10)

Taylor (2008) has shown for Old English translations of Latin texts that the translation effects for biblical translations are direct and different from the ones involved in non-biblical translations (indirect translation effects). We will show that the distribution of COCs with activity/event nouns in the Tyndale’s translation, other non-biblical translations and original texts of the same period can expand Taylor’s distinction (between direct vs. indirect translation effects) to the EModE period. For exx. (1a-c), the Greek New Testament shows a COC, too, and the examples demonstrate a translation effect (the hypothesis on the influence from the Luther’s German New Testament will also be discussed). In contrast to the Greek text, Tyndale’s New Testament does not include a COC in example (2a). We will further examine the hypothesis that the rise of COCs with activity/event nouns is linked to the grammaticalization of the viewpoint (progressive) aspect (be + V-ing), which we will check with data from Tyndale’s New Testament (cf. Nevalainen (1991) on EModE liturgical prose). Finally, we will argue that the transfer of characteristics in the case of direct translation effects follows the syntactic transfer in cases of L2 acquisition. The direct translation effects mainly concern uninterpretable (syntactic) features rather than

142

interpretable features (Interpretability Hypothesis; Tsimpli 2003); a higher frequency of COCs is observed in biblical EModE than in other texts, but the translator also uses other strategies to avoid the transfer of features from the foreign language. Nevalainen, T. 1991. Motivated archaism: The use of affirmative periphrastic do in

Early Modern English liturgical prose. In D. Kastovsky (ed.), Historical English Syntax. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 303-320.

Taylor, A. 2008. Contact effects of translation: Distinguishing two kinds of influence in Old English. Language Variation and Change 20(2): 341-365.

Tsimpli, I.M. 2003. Interrogatives in the Greek/English interlanguage: A minimalist account. In E. Mela-Athanasopoulou (ed.), Selected Papers on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Thessaloniki: Aristotle University, 214-225.

Visser, F. Th. 1963–73. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Vol. 1. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Binomials and multinomials in Early Modern English parliamentary acts

Anu Lehto

University of Helsinki

The paper explores binomials and multinomials in Early Modern English parliamentary acts, focusing especially on the frequencies of these constructions. Binomials and multinomials are common in legal writing, as they increase precision, although they are also used for stylistic reasons (Danet 1980, Kopaczyk 2009: 93). Diachronically, legal writing became more verbose and precise during the Early Modern period (e.g. Hiltunen 1990: 58), and hence the paper sets out to study whether the use of binomials and multinomials also increases during the period.

Binomials are defined as word pairs that are syntactically connected by coordinators and that are semantically related in their meaning, while multinomials consist of longer sequences of related words (Gustafsson 1984: 124; Frade 2005: 134). Further, formulaic binomials are “permanent and fixed combinations in the language”, while unformulaic binomials “are temporary but fill the semantic and syntactic requirements” (Gustafsson 1975, Moon 1998). In addition to surveying the overall diachronic frequencies, the study further examines formulaic constructions by analysing high-frequency binomials and multinomials.

The data of the study are parliamentary acts from my corpus, the Corpus of Early Modern English Statutes (1491–1707). The category of parliamentary acts contains approximately 180,000 words. The instances of

143

binomials are located by lexical searches for coordinators. Further, the corpus is normalised in its spelling variation which enables a more accurate examination of the high-frequency binomials by analysing clusters that involve either the coordinator and or or.

The paper shows that binomials are noticeably common in the Early Modern parliamentary acts and become diachronically more frequent, reflecting the sociohistorical changes of the era. Most binomials and multinomials consist of coordinated nouns but coordinated verbs are also common. Further, formulaic binomials (such as ordered and enacted) appear, for instance, in the enactment clause that is repeated in each act, and other high-frequency word pairs include for example legal actors and legal actions (shall and may). Further, some of the binomials and multinomials remain common throughout the analysed time span, while others are repeated only in individual acts. Danet, Brenda 1980. Language in the legal process. Law and Society Review 14.3,

445–564. Frade, Celina. 2005. Legal Multinomials: Recovering Possible Meanings from Vague

Tags. In Bhatia, Vijay, Jan Engberg, Maurizio Gotti and Dorothee Heller (eds.), Vagueness in Normative Texts. Bern: Peter Lang. 133–156.

Gustafsson, Marita. 1984. The syntactic features of binomial expression in legal English. Text 4.1–3, 123–141.

Gustafsson, Marita. 1975. Binominal Expressions in Present-Day English. A Syntactic and Semantic Study. Turku: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis.

Hiltunen, Risto. 1990. Chapters on Legal English. Aspects Past and Present of the Language of the Law. Jyväskylä: Gummerus.

Kopaczyk, Joanna. 2009. Multi-word Units of Meaning in 16th-century Legal Scots. In McConchie, R. W., Alpo Honkapohja and Jukka Tyrkkö (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 2008 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 88–95.

Moon, Rosamund. 1998. Fixed expressions and idioms in English: A corpus-based approach. London: Clarendon Press.

144

Slander, cursing and verbal aggression in 16th

-/17th

-century Scottish court-records

Magdalena Leitner

University of Glasgow

Keywords: historical impoliteness, Older Scots, court-records Court-records offer invaluable insights into language use in early modern conflict interactions because speech-events in everyday contexts were recorded as legal evidence (see Kytö, Grund and Walker 2011: 1). This paper investigates the variety of verbal offences in Scottish court-records from the 16

th/17

th centuries, a period of radical social change in Scotland.

What are the pragmatic functions of injurious speech-acts in these records? How does the historical legal context shape perceptions of verbal offences?

Early modern court-records, e.g. courtroom discourse (Cecconi 2012) or witness depositions (Kytö, Grund and Walker 2011), have increasingly attracted scholarly attention in historical pragmatics. Leitner’s (2013) analysis of thou/ye in Scottish/Northern English court-records exemplifies how Scottish data complement our knowledge of the development of pragmatic features in English. Moreover, verbal offences such as impoliteness/insults are widely studied in modern pragmatics (e.g. Culpeper 2011, Mateo and Yus 2013). Insults and slander have also been examined in historical texts (Jucker 2000, Jucker and Taavitsainen 2000); however, the focus of historical (im)politeness research is still much more on politeness than on impoliteness (see Culpeper and Kádár 2010, Bax and Kádár 2011).

My case study combines Culpeper’s (2011: 23) perception-based concept of impoliteness with data-sensitive methods from historical (im)politeness research. It offers qualitative analyses of (in)direct renderings of injurious speech-acts and investigates how they were evaluated in the discourse of legal proceedings. Jucker and Taavitsainen’s (2000: 74) “pragmatic space”, a concept derived from semantic field theory, is used to classify verbal offences according to several dimensions, e.g. speaker intention and response. Data are drawn from ecclesiastical and criminal courts, i.e. the St Andrews Kirk Session Register 1559-1600 (Fleming 1889-90) and the Criminal Trials in Scotland 1488-1624 (Pitcairn 1833), to ensure a range of different case-types. Because printed editions of historical texts are not fully reliable for linguistic research, the data are verified against surviving manuscripts (see Kytö, Grund and Walker 2011: 7-8).

145

The paper tests the boundaries between impoliteness and breaches of law: How do we categorise linguistic behaviour which was punishable in the past and today may still be perceived as a verbal offence but without legal consequences? Because of the historical legal context I expect slander, cursing and verbal aggression to be common in the selected texts. Furthermore, I anticipate criminal and ecclesiastical courts to differ in their metalinguistic labels for injurious language.

Fleming, David H. (ed.). 1889-90. Register of the Minister, Elders and Deacons of the

Christian Congregation of St. Andrews: Comprising the Proceedings of the Kirk Session and of the Court of the Superintendent of Fife, Fothrik and Strathearn, 1559-1600. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society.

Pitcairn, Robert (ed.). 1833. Criminal Trials in Scotland from MCCCCLXXXVIII to MDCXXIV Embracing the Entire Reigns of James IV, James V, Mary Queen of Scots and James VI. 3 vols. CD-ROM. Burlington, Canada: TannerRitchie Publishing, 2005.

Bax, Marcel and Dániel Z. Kádár. 2011. The historical understanding of historical (im)politeness. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12 (1-2): 1-24.

Cecconi, Elisabetta. 2012. The Language of Defendants in the 17th-Century English Courtroom: A Socio-Pragmatic Analysis of the Prisoners’ Interactional Role and Representation. Bern: Peter Lang.

Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: CUP.

Culpeper, Jonathan and Dániel Z. Kádár (eds.). 2010. Historical (Im)politeness. Bern: Peter Lang.

Jucker, Andreas H. 2000. Slanders, slurs and insults on the road to Canterbury: Forms of verbal aggression in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In Placing Middle English in Context, ed. by Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.), 369-389. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen. 2000. Diachronic speech act analysis. Insults from flyting to flaming. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1 (1): 67-95.

Kytö, Merja, Peter Grund and Terry Walker (eds.). 2011. Testifying to Language and Life in Early Modern England. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Leitner, Magdalena. 2013. Thou and you in Late Middle Scottish and Early Modern Northern English witness depositions. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 14 (1): 100-129.

Mateo, José and Francisco Yus. 2013. Towards a cross-cultural pragmatic taxonomy of insults. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 1 (1): 87-114.

146

Some notes on Chaucer’s metrics

Xingzhong (Charles) Li Central Washington University

Keywords: final-e, relative stress, trochee, alternating meter, iambic pentameter This paper reconsiders several central aspects of the metrical structures of Chaucer’s octosyllabic and decasyllabic lines, including (1) the debate over the word-medial and word-final –e (Southworth 1947, 1951, 1962, 1964; Robinson 1957; Conner 1974; Kökeritz 1978; Barber and Barber 1990, 1991), (2) elision, resolution, and extrametricality (Halle and Keyser 1965, 1971; Kiparsky 1977, 1989; Hayes 1982; Hanson 1991; Li, 1995, 2004), (3) syllabicity of sonorants (Hascall 1969; Tarlinskaja 1976; Li 1995), (4) absolute versus relative stress (Jespersen 1913; Cable 2008; Minkova 2009), (5) trochees versus iambs (Jespersen 1913; Hayes 1983, 1989; Cable 2008; Li 2008), and (6) alternating meter versus iambic pentameter (Jespersen 1913; Halle and Keyser 1966, 1971, 1999; Kiparsky 1975; Youmans 1983, 1996; Youmans and Li 2002; Cable 2002; Li 2005; Hayes, Wilson, and Shisko 2012).

Using a systematic sample (every tenth line) of Chaucer’s entire verse, including 1,126 lines of iambic tetrameter and 3,020 lines of iambic pentameter, this paper examines the above issues one after another in the format of notes. Each note begins with a summary of arguments and counterarguments concerning a particular issue that researchers have made and then provides evidence to attest or reinterpret them in an attempt to better understand Chaucer’s metrical structure. Results show that overt elisions constitute a new piece of evidence in determining the pronouncability of Chaucer’s word-medial and word-final –e’s and prosodically contribute to Chaucer’s metrified octo- and deca-syllabic lines, that extrametrical syllables can occur line-internally to differentiate resolutions, that syllabicity of sonorants can be determined based on sonorant-sonorant, fricative-sonorant, and stop-sonorant sequences, that stress is relatively and simultaneously constrained by the dichotomy of content and function words and by prosodic contexts, that trochees are formed by an array of internal structures and are thus gradationally defined by that array, and that alternating meter can be distinguished from iambic pentameter by prosodic features of inflection, hovering stress, and other linguistic features.

147

Barber, Charles, and Nicolas Barber. “The Versification of The Canterbury Tales: A Computer-based Statistical Study, Part I.” Leeds Studies in English 21 (1990): 81-103.

Barber, Charles. “The Versification of The Canterbury Tales: A Computer-based Statistical Study, Part II.” Leeds Studies in English 22 (1991): 57-84.

Benson, Larry D., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.

Benson, Larry D. A Glossarial Concordance to The Riverside Chaucer. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993.

Cable, Thomas. “Issues for a new history of English prosody.” Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective. Eds. Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. 125-51.

Cable, Thomas. “The Illusive Progress of Prosodical Study.” Studies in the History of the English Language IV: Empirical and Analytical Advances in the Study of the English Language Change. Eds. Susan M. Fitzmaurice and Donka Minkova. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. 101-18.

Conner, Jack. English Prosody from Chaucer to Wyatt. The Hague: Mouton, 1974. Halle, Morris, and S. J. Keyser. “Chaucer and the Study of Prosody.” College English

28 (1966): 187-219. Conner, Jack, and S. J. Keyser. English Stress: Its Form, Its Growth, and Its Role in

Verse. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Conner, Jack, and S. J. Keyser. “On Meter in General and on Robert Frost’s Iambics in

Particular.” Linguistics: In Search of the Human Mind. Eds. Masatake Muraki and Enoch Iwamoto. Japan: Kaitakusha. 1999. 130-53.

Hanson, Kristin. “Resolution in Modern Meters.” Diss. Stanford University, 1991. Hascall, Dudley L. “Some Contributions to the Halle-Keyser Theory of Prosody.”

College English 30 (1969): 357-65. Hayes, Bruce. “Extrametricality and English Stress.” Linguistic Inquiry 13 (1982): 227-

76. Hayes, Bruce. “The Prosodic Hierarchy in Meter.” Phonetics and Phonology 1:

Rhythm and Meter. Eds. Paul Kiparsky and Gilbert Youmans. San Diego: Academic Press, 1989. 201-60.

Hayes, Colin Wilson, and Anne Shisko. “Maxent Grammars for the Metrics of Shakespeare and Milton.” Language 88.4 (2012): 691-731.

Jespersen, Otto. “Notes on Metre.” Linguistica: Selected Papers in English, French and German. Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1913. 249-74.

Kiparsky, Paul. Stress, Syntax, and Meter. Language 51: 576-616. Kiparsky, Paul. “The Rhythmic Structure of English Verse.” Linguistic Inquiry 8 (1977):

189-247. Kiparsky, Paul. “Sprung Rhythm.” Phonetics and Phonology 1: Rhythm and Meter.

Eds. Paul Kiparsky and Gilbert Youmans. San Diego: Academic Press, 1989. 305-40.

Kökeritz, Helge. A Guide to Chaucer’s Pronunciation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978.

Li, Xingzhong. “Chaucer’s Meters.” Diss. University of Missouri-Columbia, 1995.

148

Li, Xingzhong. “A central metrical prototype for English iambic tetrameter verse: Evidence from Chaucer’s octosyllabic lines.” Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations. Eds. Anne Curzan and Kimberly Emmons. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004. 315-41.

Li, Xingzhong. “Metrical Evidence: Did Chaucer Translate The Romaunce of the Rose?” Studies in the History of the English Language IV: Empirical and Analytical Advances in the Study of the English Language Change. Eds. Susan M. Fitzmaurice and Donka Minkova. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. 155-79.

Minkova, Donka, and Robert Stockwell. “Reading Chaucer Aloud Today: The Quality of the Evidence.” Presented at the Conference of the International Association of University Professors of English at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, Aug. 1-7, 1992.

Minkova, Donka. “The Forms of Verse.” A Companion to Medieval English literature and culture C.1350 – C.1500. Ed. Peter Brown. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009. 176-95.

Robinson, F. N., ed. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 2nd ed. London, 1957. Southworth, James G. “Chaucer’s Final –E in Rhyme.” PMLA 62 (1947): 910-35. Southworth, James G. Verses of Cadence: An Introduction to the Prosody of Chaucer

and his Followers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951. Southworth, James G. The Prosody of Chaucer and his Followers: Supplementary

Chapters to Verses of adence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962. Southworth, James G. “Chaucer’s Prosody: A Plea for a Reliable Text.” College

English 26 (1964): 173-79. Tarlinskaja, Marina. English Verse: Theory and History. The Hague: Mouton, 1976. Weismiller, Edward R. “Triple Threats to Duple Rhythm.” Phonetics and Phonology 1:

Rhythm and Meter. Eds. Paul Kiparsky and Gilbert Youmans, 1989. 261-90. Youmans, Gilbert. “Generative tests for generative meter.” Language 59 (1983): 67 Youmans, Gilbert “Reconsidering Chaucer’s Prosody.” English Historical Metrics.

Eds. C. B. McCully and J. J. Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 341-79.

Youmans, Gilbert, and Xingzhong Li. “Chaucer: Folk Poet and littérateur?” Studies in the History of the English Language: A millennial Perspective. Eds. Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. 153-75.

149

Correlative constructions in earlier English: The þa … þa construction

Meta Links & Ans van Kemenade Radboud University Nijmegen

Keywords: Old English, correlative constructions, syntax, discourse This paper will consider in detail the structural characteristics and the discourse semantic functions of correlative constructions in Old English. An example of a correlative construction with temporal þa is given in (1). Van Kemenade and Los (2006) argue that in (1) the subclause, introduced by the conjunction þa, serves to locate the event in time/discourse, while the second clause, introduced by the resumptive adverb þa, relates the follow-up event. The subclause can also be introduced by þonne or conditional gif.

(1) The discourse properties of these constructions are reflected in their correlative syntactic form in a variety of ways: 1) the use of conjunctions and their specific combinations with resumptive adverbs; 2) the use of the first constituent position in the main clause; and 3) the clause-internal use of þa and þonne, which seems to play a pivotal role in explicitly correlating the modality, truth conditions and illocution of the two clauses. We present two hypotheses: 1) correlative constructions play an important role in establishing temporal/conditional linking in OE discourse; and 2) þa and þonne, which are literally adverbs but enter into grammaticalised discourse functions, are used to “manage” the correlation of modality, truth conditions and illocution between the two clauses.

Using a qualitative and quantitative corpus-based approach, mining the YCOE corpus, we expect to find a correlation between several variables accounting for the characteristics of correlative constructions in Old English. The following features are expected to have an effect: the choice of subordinator and combining adverb (if any), the mood of the clause, optionality/doubling of þa/þonne as particles, negation in the main clause or subclause, and word order. In addition, we also explore to what extent the properties of correlative clauses are related to the division of labour between parataxis and hypotaxis in OE.

þa he þa to him cwom, þa wæs he forht geworden. then he then to him came, then was he fearful become ‘When he then came to him, he had become fearful.’ (Bede_2:9.128.17.1222)

150

Kemenade, A. v., & Los, B. (2006). Discourse adverbs and clausal syntax in Old and Middle English. In A. v. Kemenade & B. Los (Eds.), The handbook of the history of English (pp. 224-248). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Taylor, A., Warner, A., Pintzuk, S., & Beths, F. (2003). The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. Retrieved from the Oxford Text Archive.

“Permissive” English subjects

Bettelou Los, Rosanne Hebing & Erwin Komen University Of Edinburgh - Radboud University Nijmegen

Keywords: subjects, discourse, syntax, coreferentiality, corpora English subjects are extremely “permissive” compared to those in related languages such as Dutch and German. They may express almost any semantic role, even locations as in (1), and time as in (2). Other types of permissive subjects can be ascribed to the extensive possibilities of English to create middles, as in (3), and to changing patterns of valency, which led to many intransitive verbs acquiring transitive counterparts in the history of English (4) (cf. Van Gelderen 2011).

(1) The roof of the tunnel was seeping water. (Hawkins 1986: 58-61, from Rohdenburg 1974)

(2) 2004 saw the advent of routers with turbo modes (www.cnet.com.au/wireless/routers/)

(3) Matching hood converts into collar (Sears & Roebuck Catalogue) (Hundt 2007: 161)

(4) The car nosed into the city traffic/I nosed the car onto the tracks (Francis & Sinclair 1994: 198)

Two further observations are that (i) discourse-coherence in English is primarily achieved by subjects, in contrast to Dutch and German, and that (ii) subjects are affected by a difference in narrative perspective between English and German has been reported in the literature. English speakers tend to encode external forces like the wind in (5) as a subject:

(5) A young man is surfing. The wind is blowing him off the board (Carroll et al. 2004: 190)

151

German informants performing the same linguistic task do not mention the wind at all but employ passives (He is blown off the board) with the effect that the subject in their narratives most frequently express human protagonists, and there is less subject referent switch (Carroll et al 2004). Permissive subjects, then, could be a symptom of the higher functional load of subjects in English. Subjects in a PDE narrative not only encode the human protagonists, but also inanimate referents (discourse-linked locations as the tunnel as in (1) and external forces like the wind in (5)). Frequent referent switches in turn require the human protagonists to be reactivated for the hearer/reader by proper names or other full nominals like his father, his master’s wife, etc., which should result in decreasing ratios of pronominal versus nominal subjects. These hypotheses are tested using samples of the syntactically annotated Helsinki corpora enriched with coreferential information (Komen, Hebing, van Kemenade & Los in press). It is concluded that subject switch increases in the history of English. Carroll, Mary, Christiane von Stutterheim, and Ralph Nuese (2004). The Language

and Thought Debate: A Psycholinguistic Approach. In: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Language Production, ed. by Thomas Pechmann and Christopher Habel, 183–218. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Francis, G. and J.McH. Sinclair (1994). I bet he drinks Carling Black Label: A riposte to Owen on corpus grammar. Applied Linguistics 15: 190-200.

Gelderen, Elly van (2011). Valency changes in the history of English. Journal of Historical Linguistics 1:1, 106-143.

Hawkins, John. (1986). A Comparative Typology of English and German. London: Croom Helm.

Hundt, Marianne (2007). English Mediopassive Constructions: A Cognitive, Corpus-Based Study of Their Origin, Spread, and Current Status. Rodopi.

Komen, Erwin, Rosanne Hebing, Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los (in press). Quantifying information structure change in English. In: Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance Languages, ed. by Kristin Bech and Kristine Gunn Eide. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Rohdenburg, G. (1974). Sekundäre Subjektivierungen im Englischen und Deutschen: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur Verb- und Adjektivsyntax. PAKS-Arbeitsbericht Nr. 8. Bielefeld: Cornelson-Velhagen and Klasing.

152

Finite causative complements in Middle English

Brian Lowrey Universite De Picardie

Keywords: causatives, finite complements, argument structure In this paper, I propose to examine a somewhat marginal but nonetheless interesting feature of Middle English (ME) complementation: the use of finite complements with implicative causative verbs, such as make(n) and do(n), and especially the construction in which the complement consists of both a noun phrase and a finite that- clause, as in the following example:

Myn heed is toty of my swynk to-nyght, / That makes me that I ga nat aright. ‘My head is dizzy from my night’s work, which causes me to lose my way’ Chaucer, Reeves Tale, 4253-4254

Although this construction (V+NP+that-) never becomes frequent, examples are nevertheless found throughout the ME period, both in prose and in poetic texts.

The existence of such examples raises a number of questions. In what kind of contexts, first of all, does causative V+NP+that- occur in ME? Secondly, as Los (2005) points out, finite complements tend to give way to infinitive complements in ME. Should causative V+NP+that- therefore be seen as a kind of relic structure inherited from OE? Finite complements were common in OE with the non-agentive causative (ge)don, but were always of the “simple” V+that- type, with no intervening NP, whereas V+NP+that- was largely restricted to manipulative, non-implicative verbs such as biddan and bebeodan (Lowrey, 2012).

I shall also consider the status of the separate NP. Could its presence be an indication that causatives such as make(n) had begun, as Terasawa (1985) suggests, to acquire a three-place argument structure in ME? A comparison could be made with perception verbs, which appear in an apparently similar construction in ME. Kopytko (1985) takes this as a sign that perception verbs, at least, have always been 3-place predicates. Fischer (1987) disagrees, adopting instead a “topicalisation” analysis of the separate NP. Finally, V+NP+that- could be compared to what Warner (1982) calls “CLAN (‘CLause And Nominal’) sentences,” in which the NP and the clause are in a kind of appositional relationship. To what extent do these

153

hypotheses shed light on causative V+NP+that-? These are the questions that I plan to examine in the light of data from a selection of ME prose and poetic texts, including the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, as well as material from the Innsbruck prose corpus.

Fischer, O. 1987: ‘Some Remarks on the Analysis of Perception Verb Complements in

Middle English: a Reply’ in Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny XXXIV, pp 57-67 Kopytko, R. 1985: ‘Some Observations on the Possible Interrelationship between

Synchronic and Diachronic Data in Syntactic Analysis,’ in Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny XXXII, pp 27-32

Los, B. 2005: The Rise of the to- Infinitive. Oxford: Oxford University Press Lowrey, B. 2012: “Early English Causative Constructions and the Second Agent

Factor” Outposts of Historical Corpus Linguistics: From the Helsinki Corpus to a Proliferation of Resources (Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 10), ed. by Editors: Jukka Tyrkkö, Matti Kilpiö, Terttu Nevalainen & Matti Rissanen. Helsinki: Research Unit for Variation, Contacts, and Change in English. (http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/10/)

Terasawa, J. 1985: “The Historical Development of the Causative Use of the Verb Make with an Infinitive”. Studia Neophilologica 57, pp 133–143

Warner, A. 1982: Complementation in Middle English and the Methodology of Historical Syntax. London & Canberra: Croom Helm.

Profiling stylistic change using instructional writing on horses: The case of reader orientation

Thijs Lubbers

University of Edinburgh Keywords: corpora, instructional prose, textual conventions, dialogic context in writing Fairly recently, the dialogic nature of texts has been highlighted as being relevant in accounting for micro-changes in the history of English, and in understanding motivations for language change (Traugott, 2010). In addition, it has been recognized that conventions about how writers engage their audience is subject to change, just like any other genre feature (Taavitsainen, 2001, 2006). However, unlike variation at other levels (e.g., phonemic, morphological), authors have great leeway in the selection of syntactic structures to express their content matter, which makes it difficult to quantitatively chart changes in conventions of written style. Drawing on a corpus of instructional prose compiled from Late Middle to Present Day English equine manuals, the current study tries to address the above issues

154

by assessing the expression of metatextual functions, such as reader address: Reader is addressed directly (by you, your, etc.)

(1) It is important to check your feed and be sure that all of your horse’s vitamin requirements are being met since vitamin deficiencies can lead to various health problems. (Duberstein & Johnson, 2012, How to Feed a Horse: Understanding Basic Principles of Horse Nutrition)

Reader is addressed indirectly (using generic terms) (2) The subject of food and feeding of horses is necessarily one of

great importance, [...] and constantly presses itself upon the attention of the horse-owner and attendant, the rider or driver. (Fleming, 1886, The Practical Horse Keeper)

Reader is a ‘Suppressed Addressee’ (by the use of non-finite forms with Generic Control, or via passives)

(3) Again in his olde age, he hadde nead to be fedde with soft meate, because his teethe perhaps will fayle him so as he shall not be able to chawe his meate, yf it be ouer harde, (Blundeville, 1565, The foure chiefest offices belonging to Horsemanship)

By comparing styles and conventions of different periods in the history of English, this pilot investigates how the information flow of a text interacts with the expression of metatextual function. Analysing texts from the same genre dealing with the same topics may shed light on the question whether diachronic changes in written texts should be seen as reflecting linguistic change, or rather as changes in (genre-specific) textual conventions. Taavitsainen, I. (2001). Changing Conventions of Writing: The Dynamics of Genres,

Text Types, and Text Traditions. European Journal Of English Studies, 5(2), 139. Taavitsainen, I. (2006). Audience Guidance and Learned Medical Writing in Late

Medieval English. Gotti, M., & Salager-Meyer, F. (Eds.), In: Advances in Medical Discourse Analysis: Oral and Written Contexts. (pp. 431-456). (Linguistic insights). New York: Peter Lang.

Traugott, E. (2010). “Dialogic contexts as motivations for syntactic change”, in Robert A. Cloutier, Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm, and William Kretzschmar, eds., Variation and Change in English Grammar and Lexicon, 11-27. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

155

The survival of Norse loans into Middle English and their infiltration of late medieval London English

Angelika Lutz

University of Erlangen

Keywords: superstrate, substrate, Old Norse, Middle Englisg dialects In Lutz 2012, 2013 it is argued (but challenged in Miller 2012) that the influence of Old Norse on English is very similar to that of Old French and that both influences are clearly superstratal. The most obvious lexical evidence for foreign rule consists of words reflecting legal and administrative power, which were mostly replaced by equivalents from the French superstrate after 1066. This leads to questions with regard to the stratal role of the far more numerous Norse loans that survived this long period of French rule. Why and how did they survive? As part of a mixed Germanic, i.e. Old English and Old Norse, substrate, below the French superstrate? Or was the stratal role of Old Norse in Middle English more complex, namely (1) with regard to the survival of Norse loans in certain Middle English dialects and (2) with regard to the usage expansion of a remarkable number of the loans into late medieval London English and, eventually, into the emerging standard language? This presentation proposes answers that are consistent both with regard to the scanty and complex Middle English data and to the principles of comparative contact linguistics. Bator, Magdalena. 2010. Obsolete Scandinavian Loanwords in English. Studies in

English Medieval Language and Literature 26. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Dance, Richard. 2003. Words Derived from Old Norse in Early Middle English: Studies

in the Vocabulary of the South-West Midland Texts. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Hansen, Bente Hyldegaard. 1984. “The historical implications of the Scandinavian linguistic element in English: A theoretical evaluation”, North-Western European Language Evolution 4: 53-95.

LAEME = Margaret Laing. [in preparation]. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English 1150-1325.

LALME = Angus Macintosh, M. L. Samuels & Michael Benskin. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. 4 vols. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press; An Electronic Version of LALME, revised and supplemented by Michael Benskin.

Lutz, Angelika. 2012. “Norse influence on English in the light of general contact linguistics”. English Historical Linguistics 2010: Selected Papers from the 16th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Pécs, 22-27 August 2010. Ed. Irén Hegedüs & Alexandra Fodor. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 15-41.

156

Lutz, Angelika. 2013. “Language contact and prestige”. Anglia 131: 562-590. Miller, D. Gary. 2012. External Influences on English: From its Beginnings to the

Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pons-Sanz, Sara M. 2013. The Lexical Effects of Anglo-Scandinavian Linguistic Contact

on Old English. Turnhout: Brepols. Poussa, Patricia. 1982. “The evolution of Early Standard English: The creolization

hypothesis”. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 14: 69-85. Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization,

and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Winford, Donald. 2010. “Contact and borrowing”. The Handbook of Language

Contact. Ed. Raymond Hickey. Maldon: Wiley-Blackwell. 170-187. Wright, Laura. 2012. “On variation and change in London medieval mixed-language

business documents”. Language Contact and Development around the North Sea. Ed. Merja Stenroos, Martti Mäkinen & Inge Særheim. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 99-115.

The pragmatic functions of code-switching in Early Modern English school drama

Aleksi Mäkilähde

University of Turku

Keywords: pragmatics, code-switching, multilingualism, drama, Early Modern English During the past couple of decades, code-switching and other multilingual practices have been analysed by historical linguists especially within the context of the English language. Previous studies have focused particularly on the functions of code-switching, and it has been shown that code-switching is often connected to such aspects as identity-construction, power-relations and the negotiation of social roles (e.g. Diller 1997/1998, Davidson 2003, Nurmi & Pahta 2010). The present paper contributes to the discussion by applying a novel methodological framework to a set of previously unanalysed materials from the Early Modern English period in order to find out why code-switching is used in the texts under scrutiny.

The materials to be analysed come from the Orationes manuscript (Canterbury Cathedral Archives Lit. Ms E41, Canterbury Cathedral Library), which contains drama and speeches performed by the students of the King’s School, Canterbury, in the latter half of the 17

th century. These texts

were composed by the headmaster of the school or by the students themselves, and they were performed on four different occasions each

157

year: on Guy Fawkes Day, before Christmas, on Oak Apple day, and at the beginning of Lent. Of these four the plays performed at the Christmas breaking-up of school contain perhaps the most code-switching and are especially fruitful as material. The present paper focuses mostly on the Christmas plays as a subgenre of the Orationes texts.

The methodology chosen for the study can be described as a pragmaphilological approach, which is understood here as a combination of pragmatics and philology (but cf. Jucker 1995). The framework takes as its point of departure Brown & Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory and especially the concept of face. The approach outlined in the paper draws also from several other sources in the fields of pragmatics, sociology and linguistics (e.g. Goffman 1967, Leech 1983, Clark 1996, Itkonen 2003). By combining material-driven and theory-driven approaches we are able to present a coherent classification of the functions of code-switching while taking into account the social, material and historical context of our material.

Brown Penelope & Levinson Stephen C. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in

Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark Herbert H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidson Mary Catherine 2003. Code-switching and authority in late medieval

England. Neophilologus 87: 473-486. Diller Hans-Jürgen 1997/1998. Code-switching in medieval English drama.

Comparative Drama 31 (4): 506-537. Goffman Erving 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Behavior. New York:

Anchor Books. Itkonen Esa 2003. What is Language? A Study in the Philosophy of Linguistics. Turku:

University of Turku. Jucker Andreas H. (ed.) 1995. Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the

History of English. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Leech Geoffrey 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Nurmi Arja & Pahta Päivi 2010. Preacher, scholar, brother, friend: Social roles and

code-switching in the writings of Thomas Twining. In Pahta Päivi, Nevala Minna, Nurmi Arja & Palander-Collin Minna (eds): Social Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern English. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 135-162.

158

Persuasion in early medicine: Ethos, pathos and logos in Early Modern English recipes

Martti Mäkinen

Hanken School of Economics Keywords: Early Modern medicine, recipes, persuasion, genre This paper investigates persuasion in early science, based on the three types of persuasion of classical rhetorics: ethos, pathos, and logos. The material of the study are Early Modern English medical recipes produced and printed between 1500-1700, drawn from the Corpus of Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT, 2010).

The paper sets out to chart the attestation of the persuasion types in medical recipes in circulation in the sixteenth and seventeenth century England. This study aims to provide a description of the types and how they are realised in texts, categorised according to distribution in medical genres/categories and the time of writing. The textual categories studied include Regimens and health guides, Surgical and anatomical treatises, Treatises on specific topics, General treatises or textbooks, and Scientific journals. The category of Recipe collections and materia medica has been excluded intentionally, as that category has been studied earlier (Mäkinen 2011a and b).

An earlier study on persuasion in efficacy phrases in recipe collections in the Early Modern period has revealed that the types of persuasion vary and change according to purpose and time of writing, and intended audience (lay/learned). General trend throughout the period was that recipes moved from ethos towards logos, a development that was seen both in lay and learned texts. Pathos was almost absent in learned, and a constant in lay texts. One possible explanation suggested for the general trend was the paradigm change in medicine, from text-centered science to observation-based science. (Mäkinen 2011b)

It is assumed that also in this study, the contest of new medical disciplines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will become an explaining factor for the longitudinal differences observed; however, as the current paper will study genres the main purpose of which is not to carry recipes, there may arise other factors in addition to the changing scientific and medical ideologies.

As mentioned, the material for the paper will be the Corpus of Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT 2010). The corpus contains c. 2 million words in 450 medical texts from 1500-1700. The exclusion of recipe

159

collections and materia medica texts leaves a corpus of c. 1.6 million words and five medical categories, all of which contain recipes or other instructional passages for the preparation and/or administering of a medicine or a remedy. EMEMT = Corpus of Early Modern English Medical Texts, 2011. Taavitsainen, Irma,

Päivi Pahta, Turo Hiltunen, Ville Marttila, Maura Ratia, Carla Suhr, and Jukka Tyrkkö (eds), with the assistance of Anu Lehto and Alpo Honkapohja. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hunt, Tony 1990. Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England: Introduction and Texts. Cambridge: Brewer.

Jones, Claire 1998. ‘Formula and formulation: “Efficacy Phrases” in medieval English medical manuscripts.’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99:2. 199-210.

Jucker, Andreas H. 1997. “Persuasion by inference: Analysis of a party political broadcast.” In: J Blommaert and C. Bulcaen (eds.), Political Linguistics (Belgian Journal of Linguistics), pp. 121-137.

Kinneavy, James L. 1971. A Theory of Discourse: The Aims of Discourse. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Lehto, Anu, Oinonen, Raisa and Pahta, Päivi 2010. ‘Explorations through Early Modern English Medical Texts.’ In EMEMT.

Marttila, Ville 2011. ‘New arguments for new audiences: a corpus-based analysis of interpersonal strategies in early modern English medical recipes.’ In Medical Writing in Early Modern English, eds. Taavitsainen, Irma and Päivi Pahta. Cambridge: CUP. 135-157.

Mäkinen, Martti 2011a. ‘Efficacy phrases in Early Modern English medical recipes.’ In Medical Writing in Early Modern English, eds. Taavitsainen, Irma and Päivi Pahta. Cambridge: CUP. 158-179.

Mäkinen, Martti 2011b. ‘Swaying the medical audience: persuasion in early English medical instructional passages.’ Poster presented at ICAME 32, June 1-6, 2011, University of Oslo.

Stannard, Jerry 1982. ‘Rezeptliteratur as Fachliteratur.’ In Eamon, William (ed.) Studies on Medieval Fachliteratur. Brussels: Omirel. 59-73.

Taavitsainen, Irma 2004. ‘Genres of Secular Instruction: a linguistic history of useful entertainment.’ Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 29. 75-94.

Taavitsainen, Irma 2009. ‘The pragmatics of knowledge and meaning: Corpus linguistic approaches to changing thought-styles in early modern medical discourse.’ In Andreas H. Jucker, Daniel Schreier and Marianne Hundt (eds.) Corpora: Pragmatics and Discourse, Papers from the 29th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 29). (Language and Computers 68.) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 37-62.

Taavitsainen, Irma, 2001. ‘Middle English recipes: Genre characteristics, text type features and underlying traditions of writing.’ Journal of Historical Pragmatics 2.1: 85-113.

Virtanen, Tuija and Helena Halmari 2004: ‘Persuasion across genres: Emerging perspectives.’ In: Halmari and Virtanen (eds), Persuasion Across Genres. A

160

Linguistic Approach. Amsterdam and New York: John Benjamins. 3- 26. Wear, Andrew, 1998. ‘The Popularization Medicine in Early Modern England.’ In

Andrew Wear, Health and Healing in Early Modern England: Studies in Social and Intellectual History, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 17-41. First published in 1992.

Wear, Andrew, 2000. Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550-1680. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Alternative approaches on productivity for the Old English affixes -isc, -cund, -ful and ful-

13

Raquel Mateo Mendaza Universidad de La Rioja

Keywords: Productivity, word-formation, Old English, hapax legomena, types The aim of this presentation is to measure the productivity of four Old English deadjectival affixes, as well as to assess the accuracy of the different indexes on productivity used for this analysis. Since several indexes on productivity have been proposed in the literature and there is some controversy on the use of a dictionary-based approach and/or a corpus-based approach, this study relies on both lexicographical and textual sources. On the lexicographical side, the lexical database of Old English Nerthus (www.nerthusproject.com) has been checked to retrieve the number of types for each affix. On the textual side, the Dictionary of Old English Corpus (http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus) developed at the University of Toronto serves as the main tool to gather the number of occurrences of the words containing the affixes under investigation. Dealing with the measures on productivity chosen for this study, three indexes have been selected, namely, (i) the classical approach based on type frequency, (ii) Baayen’s (1992, 1993) approaches based on hapax legomena and dislegomena and (iii) Trips’s (2009) criteria on productivity. After the analysis, the diachronic evolution undergone by the affixes is presented in order to assess the accuracy of the results derived from each index. With this background, the conclusion is reached that the suffix -isc is more productive than -cund, whereas -ful is more productive than ful-. At the same time, it is concluded that an index on productivity based on both

13 This research has been funded through the project FFI2011-29532.

161

hapax legomena and type counting would provide the most compatible and accurate results in the study of productivity. Baayen, R. H. 1992. Quantitatie Aspects of Morphological Productivity. In Booij, G. E.

and Van Marle, J. (eds), Yearbook of Morphology 1991. Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 109-149.

Baayen, R. H. 1993. On Frequency, Transparency and Productivity. In Booij, G.E. and Van Marle, J. (eds). Yearbook of Morphology 1992. Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 181-208.

Trips, C. 2009. Lexical Semantics and Diachronic Morphology. The Development of -hood, -dom and -ship in the History of English. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

Near-relative contact: Causes for the development of Middle English

Robert McColl Millar University of Aberdeen

For the last quarter of the twentieth century, the general consensus among historical linguists was that the great changes which affected late Old English and early Middle English had contact between Old English and Old Norse as a central catalyst. Views on the extent of this contact’s influence naturally differed, as a comparison of Dominigue (1977) and Thomason and Kaufman (1988) demonstrated, but its importance was rarely questioned.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, however, a new set of views began to make themselves felt which attributed to the influence of Celtic speakers the great typological changes which affected late Old English. A number of scholars (for instance, Tristram 2007) have suggested that this ‘Celtic Old English’, in which major changes in a ‘simplifying’ direction had taken place, existed for a significant period as the dominated variety until the breakdown in Anglo-Saxon control in the eleventh century, when it made itself known in the new post-conquest society as ‘English’.

Peter Trudgill, whose work originally accepted the Norse contact hypothesis (Trudgill 1986), has, in recent work on Sociolinguistic Typology (Trudgill 2010, 2011), moved towards a qualified acceptance of the Celtic contact hypothesis, basing this view on his understanding of how children in comparison with adults learn second languages, the first being represented by complexification, the second by simplification. Since the changes through which English passed in the late Old English and early Middle English periods involve simplification, it therefore makes sense to see their cause in the issues which adult Celtic learners of English might have had rather than in the near relation close contact, with a degree of

162

mutual intelligibility, between speakers – in particularly child speakers – of Old English and Old Norse.

This paper will question the nature of simplification and complexification, along with what we understand of the nature of koineisation, returning to the linguistic evidence in an attempt to achieve an informed consensus of the effects which language internal, Scandinavian and Celtic inputs had on the development of the inherited noun phrase system during the period. Dominigue, Nicole Z. 1977. ‘Middle English: Another Creole?’ Journal of Creole

Studies 1: 89–100. Higham, Nicholas (ed.) 2007. Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: Boydell

and Brewer. Thomason, Sarah Grey and Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization,

and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tristram, Hildegard. 2007. ‘Why don’t the English speak Welsh?’ In: Higham (2007):

192–214. Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell. Trudgill, Peter. 2010. Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics. Stories of

Colonisation and Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology. Social Determinants of Linguistic

Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

From spatial adjunct to degree modifier: On the development of the intensifier function of out-adverbs

Belén Méndez-Naya

University of Santiago de Compostela

Keywords: intensifiers, maximizers, grammaticalization, Middle English Intensifiers, that is, adverbs and adjectives indicating the degree or the exact value of the quality expressed by the item they modify, have attracted a great deal of scholarly attention since the beginning of the twentieth century, both from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective (see Borst 1902; Bolinger 1972 for two classic references). This interest has been renewed in the last two decades partly due to the popularity of grammaticalization studies, since the emergence of degree words has been regarded as a clear case of grammaticalization (e.g. Lorenz 2002; Nevalainen & Rissanen 2002; Méndez-Naya 2003; Vandewinkel & Davidse 2008). Common lexical sources of intensifiers are manner adverbs, which

163

are used to express the speaker’s evaluation (OE swīþe ‘strongly’; absolutely; Fettig 1934: 60; Lorenz 2002: 149) and modal adverbs conveying the idea of veracity (very, really; Lorenz 2002: 111-2; Heine & Kuteva 2002: 302). Another interesting but less frequent (Fettig 1934: 60) and less explored source for intensifiers is that of spatial expressions (but cf. Méndez-Naya 2008 for downright).

The focus of this presentation is a group of intensifiers emerging from the spatial domain, all of them sharing the basic meaning ‘out’, namely outly, throughout, thwertout, outright and utterly. With the exception of outly, which is already found with a degree function in Old English, these adverbs develop their degree reading in the Middle English period (see OED s.vv.). My paper explores the spatial contexts in which the degree meaning could have emerged and studies ‘out’-intensifiers both from a syntactic and a semantic perspective, paying attention to their syntactic function and to they types of head they modify. I show that the semantic features of ‘out’-intensifiers in terms of boundedness and semantic prosody stem from the conceptualization of ‘out’ and its metaphorical extensions: ‘out’-intensifiers are maximizers and have a marked tendency to collocate with negative heads. Over time, however, some of these ‘out’-intensifiers develop a booster use (see, e.g. Paradis 1997: 81; Méndez-Naya 2012: 371 for utterly), and spread to positive collates, a development which can be explained individually for each specific intensifier.

The present study is qualitative rather than quantitative given the low frequency of these intensifiers in discourse. Therefore, for my study I draw on various data sources, among them Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, the Middle English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, the Linguistic Atlas of Early Mediaeval English and the historical thesauruses.

Bolinger, Dwight. 1972. Degree words. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Borst, Eugen. 1902. Die Gradadverbien im Englischen. Anglistische Forschungen 10.

Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung. BT = Bosworth, Joseph & T. Northcote Toller. 1898. An Anglo-Saxon dictionary.

Oxford: Clarendon Press. Avaliable online at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oe_bosworthtoller_about.html

Fettig, Adolf. 1934. Die Gradadverbien im Mittelenglischen. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung.

Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva. 2002. World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Historical Thesaurus. Available online at http://www.oed.com/thesaurus. Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English,

2nd ed. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-3/index.html.

164

Lorenz, Gunter. 2002. “Really worthwhile or not really significant? A corpus-based approach to the lexicalization and grammaticalisation of intensifiers in Modern English.” In Wischer, Ilse & Gabriele Diewald (eds.) New Reflections on grammaticalization. Amsterdam/Philadelpia: John Benjamins:

MED = Kurath, Hans et al. 1952-2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Available online at http://ets.umdl.mich.edu/m/med/

Méndez-Naya, Belén. 2003. “On intensifiers and grammaticalization: The case of swiþe.” English Studies 84/4: 372-391.

Méndez-Naya, Belén. 2012. “A preliminary study of the history of the intensifier utterly”. In Martín Alegre, Sara, Melissa Moyer, Elisabet Pladevall & Susagna Tubau (eds.) At a time of crisis: English and American studies in Spain. Works from the 35th AEDEAN Conference. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: 368-375

Nevalainen, Terttu & Matti Rissanen. 2002. “Fairly pretty or pretty fair? On the development and grammaticalization of English downtoners”. Language Sciences 24: 359–380.

OED = Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Online version with revisions http://www.oed.com/

Paradis, Carita. 1997. Degree modifiers of adjectives in spoken British English. Lund: Lund University Press.

Thesaurus of Old English. Available online at http://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla. ac.uk/

Vandewinkel, Sigi & Kristin Davidse. 2008. “The interlocking paths of development to emphasizer adjective pure”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 9/ 2: 255-287.

On the history of word clipping: Aphesis, syncope, apocope

Donka Minkova UCLA

Keywords: truncation, backclipping, foreclipping, syncope, prosody, minimal word, onset, coda Word clipping is a truncation process whereby a word (other than a proper noun) develops an alternate form lacking a portion of the input. Clipping can occur at the left edge (emony < anemony; coon < raccoon), it can be medial (OE ancra < Latin *anchorēta ‘anchoress’; dempster < ME dēmestre ‘judge’; launder, n. < lavender, fancy < OF fantasie), or it can affect the right edge of the word (gin < Geneva; hack < hackney). Word truncation patterns in Present Day English have commonly been considered unpredictable (Durkin 2009: 116), yet analyses of the modern data (Lappe 2007, Berg 2011 and references therein), including truncation in child language

165

acquisition (Demuth 1996, 2003), reveal the influence of multiple factors, among them stress contour, number of syllables, the presence of consonants at word-edges, and lexical class.

A striking fact about word clipping in a diachronic perspective is that foreclipping (aphesis) peaks between 1300-1600 and then decreases quite sharply. A search of over 700 aphetic forms in the OED (low ‘allow’, monish ‘admonish’, fy ‘defy’, gypsy ‘Egyptian’) shows that about 96% of them appear before c. 1800. The dominant pattern is loss of an initial unstressed syllable. On the other hand, over 75% of the words identified as ‘shortened’ (=backclipping) (info, mike, rep) have their first entries after 1800, as shown in Fig. 1. Moreover, it has been argued (Lappe 2007: 152, 157-8) that word-clipping in PDE is blind to the prosodic status of the initial syllable.

The asymmetry in Fig.1, implicit, but not quantified in Marchand’s (1969: 448-50) overview, has not been addressed in the literature. The present study has an empirical and a theoretical goal. A systematic coverage of word-clipping in earlier English (as distinct from the PDE material in Lappe 2007, Berg 2011) will produce a new data-base, replacing and expanding the limited collection in Slettengren (1912). The material will then be analyzed with a view to establishing the interaction of morphological and phonological constraints governing the selection of output forms. The results will supply valuable information about the state of the ambient phonology and prosody in Old and Middle English, more specifically the history of the ONSET constraint, the rate of assimilation of the Romance Stress Rule, and the historical role of morphological transparency in native and loan vocabulary clippings.

0

100

200

300

400

Fig. 1: Foreclipping vs. backclipping

Aphetic forms (OED)

Clipping data (Lappe 2007:65)

166

Berg, Thomas. 2011. The clipping of common and proper nouns, Word Structure 4:1, 1-19.

Demuth, Katherine. 2003. Truncation to Subminimal Words in Early French, The Canadian Journal of Linguistics 48 (3/4), pp. 211-241.

Durkin, Philip. 2009. The Oxford Guide to Etymology. Oxford: OUP. Lappe, Sabine. 2007. English Prosodic Morphology Marchand, Hans. 1969. The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-

Formation. München: Verlag C.H.Beck. Slettengren, Emrik. 1912. Contributions to the study of aphæretic words in English.

Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet.

Genre analysis of Old English legal writing: Focus on wills

Lilo Moessner RWTH Aachen University

Keywords: legal language, genre analysis, Old English wills ESP experts agree that legal language is not a homogeneous language variety, but that it manifests itself as a set of different genres. Genre analysis is therefore an indispensible requirement for an accurate description of legal language, from which successful teaching strategies can be derived (Northcott 2013).

In Bhatia’s model (1987, 1993) the genres of legal language are defined with the parameters medium (spoken vs written), settings (academic, juridical, legislative), and degree of formality (frozen vs formal). Genres of legislative settings, especially statutes, have attracted most attention by linguists interested in modern legal English (e.g. Danet 1985, Diani 2001, Williams 2005). Only Trosborg (1995) uses a contrastive approach in her study of directive speech acts in statutes and contracts.

The linguistic and textual properties of Old English (OE) legal language are described in Schwyter’s (1996) monograph and in the first chapter of Hiltunen’s (1990) diachronic study. Hiltunen’s data are law-codes, Schwyter contrasts a corpus of OE law-codes with a smaller corpus of “documents containing lawsuits” (1996: 40). He establishes the following overall linguistic differences between the two genres: law-codes prefer a forward-looking if-then strategy and multiple indefinite reference to the offenders, law-suits a backward-looking narrative strategy and a single definite reference to the offenders. His study is restricted to texts concerned with the offence of theft.

167

In this paper I will focus on wills, more specifically OE wills. So far they have been treated extensively only from a sociohistorical perspective (Tollerton 2011). My corpus will be compiled from edited texts, which are accessible in various collections (e.g. Harmer 1914, Robertson 1956, Whitelock 1930) and on the internet (http://www.esawyer.org.uk). In the analysis of its texts on sentence, clause and phrase level special attention will be given to the if – then pattern, type and position of adverbial clauses, the modifiers of nominal syntagms, and to mood, tense and voice of verbal syntagms. A pilot study on a small set of wills suggests that wills differ from law-codes in their definite reference to the persons involved; it is expressed by proper nouns and personal pronouns. They differ from law-suits by their absence of narrative strategies; their verbal syntagms are either in present tense or they are completely lacking. It is my aim in this paper to establish wills as a separate genre of OE legal writing and to provide a starting-point for future diachronic research of this genre. Bhatia, Vijay K. 1993. Analysing Genre. Language Use in Professional Settings.

Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd. Bhatia, Vijay K. 1987. “Language of the law”. Language Teaching 20/4: 227-234. Danet, Brenda. 1985. “Legal Discourse”. In Teun A van Dijk (ed.): Handbook of

Discourse Analysis, Vol. 1. London: Academic Press, 273-291. Diani, Giuliana. 2001. “Modality and Speech Acts in English Acts of Parliament”. In

Gotti, Maurizio and Marina Dossena (eds.): Modality in Specialized Discourse. Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 175-191.

Harmer, F. E. (ed. and transl.) 1914. Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hiltunen, Risto. 1990. Chapters on Legal English. Aspects Past and Present of the Language of the Law. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

Northcott, Jill. 2013. “Legal English”. In Paltridge, Brian and Sue Starfield (eds.): The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 213-226.

Robertson, A. J. (ed. and transl.) 1956. Anglo-Saxon Charters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schwyter, J. R. 1996. Old English Legal Language. The Lexical Field of Theft. Odense University Press.

Tollerton, Linda. 2011. Wills and Will-Making in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press and Boydell & Brewer Ltd.

Trosborg, Anna. 1995. “Statutes and contracts: An analysis of legal speech acts in the English language of the law”. Journal of Pragmatics 23: 31-53.

Whitelock, D. (ed. and transl.) 1930. Anglo-Saxon Wills. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Williams, Christopher. 2005. Tradition and Change in Legal English. Verbal Constructions in Prescriptive Texts. Bern, etc.: Peter Lang.

http://www.esawyer.org.uk

168

Constructional loss and changes in verbal argument structure: The case of the early English impersonal construction

Ruth Möhlig-Falke

University of Heidelberg

In Old and early Middle English the impersonal construction was a productive syntactic device that was used primarily in the expression of middle events (after Kemmer 1993). The construction was part of the early English system of transitivity and voice, being combined with weakly transitive verbs (Hopper & Thompson 1980) and allowing to view a State of Affairs from the point of view of the Affected or Goal participant. The impersonal construction could be used with verbs belonging to different lexical domains, such as sceamian (emotion), (ge)þyncean (cognition), (ge)limpan (existential experience) and (ge)byrian (ownership/appropriate-ness), which appear in the early English data in a variety of personal and impersonal syntactic uses. In the course of the 15

th century the impersonal

construction became nonfunctional as a result of several grammatical changes that gradually altered the system of transitivity and voice in Middle English, such as the loss of lexically assigned case (Allen 1995), of verb-second and of object-fronting as an information-structural device (Los 2009).

This paper illustrates how the different groups of impersonal verbs compensated for this constructional loss by expanding alternative argument structures in systematic ways, motivated by their inherent lexical semantics and by the relationship between the participants in the respective verbal States of Affairs (Möhlig-Falke 2012). It thus aims to show how changes in a verb’s syntactic transitivity may tie in with general grammatical changes and how lexicon and grammar interact in the creation of sentence meaning. Allen, Cynthia (1995)Case Marking and Reanalysis. Grammatical Relations from Old

to Early Modern English. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson (1980)”Transitivity in grammar and

discourse”.Language 56: 251-299. Kemmer, Suzanne (1993)The Middle Voice. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Los, Bettelou (2009)”The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English:

information structure and syntax in interaction”. English Language and Linguistics 13: 97-125.

Möhlig-Falke, Ruth (2012)The Early English Impersonal Construction. An Analysis of Verbal and Constructional Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.

169

On the relation between verb entrenchment and detransitivization

Britta Mondorf Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz

Assuming with Hopper & Thompson (1980: 251) that transitivity is a graded notion, the present paper investigates whether different degrees of transitivity can be related to different degrees of verb entrenchment. Recent findings on the erosion of causative bring show that this verb has undergone systematic detransitivization during the past 400 years: fully transitive uses of causative bring which were still possible in Early Modern English have come to be hardly acceptable in Present-day English. (cf. Mondorf 2010)

(1) Early Modern English: So that She brought the Old man to allow her fourty Shillings per week to keep the House; (...). [Head & Kirkman. The English Rogue, 1671] Present-day English: *She brought the old man to allow her ….

The only contexts in which causative bring is still acceptable in Present-day English are those in which some degree of detransitivization takes place, i.e. contexts which score low on transitivity parameters such as affirmation (negation rather than affirmation), mode (irrealis rather than realis), participants (one participant rather than two), etc.:

(2) I just can’t bring myself to do it. [COCA] The present paper introduces new corpus-based synchronic and diachronic data (from the British National Corpus, the Early English Prose Fiction Corpus, the Eighteenth Century Fiction Corpus and the Nineteenth Century Fiction Corpus) shedding new light on the question of whether the correlation between verb entrenchment and degree of transitivity can also be extended to other verbs that are in the process of erosion. Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1980) “Transitivity in Grammar and

Discourse”. Language 56: 251-299. Mondorf, Britta (2010) “Causative Verbs in British and American English”. Paper

Presented at the ICAME Conference, Giessen University, Germany, 26-30 May 2010.

170

Rohdenburg, Günter (1996) “Zur Einführung und Behauptung lexikalischer Einheiten durch syntaktische Struktursignale im Englischen”. In: Weigand, E. & Hundsnurscher, F. (eds.) Lexical Structures and Language Use, 105-117. (Beiträge zur Dialogforschung 10). Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Reported speech verbs and semantic/pragmatic change: Quethen, quoth, quote

Colette Moore

University of Washington

Keywords: quotative verbs, grammaticalization, presented speech, semantic/pragmatic change The development and grammaticalization of Middle English quethen into the syntactically narrowed Early Modern English form quoth exemplifies how constructions can be grammaticalized for textual organizational purposes (see also Noël 2007, Trousdale 2012, Traugott 2003). This study examines how quethen grammaticalized into the quotative marker quoth, particularly in literary dialogue, and how it filled an essential quotative role in texts before quotation marks became widespread convention. Once quotation marks assumed the primary role for the marking of reported discourse, however, quoth’s pragmatic function became redundant, and it fell out of use over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – as data from the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and Googlebooks show. At the same time, the verb quote was rising in frequency. This research puts the quantitative results in context by going on to theorize how the dual histories of the two verbs reveal the paradigm shifts in the understanding of reported speech in English.

The words quoth and quote are often connected in the popular imagination – quoth is often mistakenly assumed to be an older form of quote. This folk etymological misprision makes a kind of sense, given all of the earlier third-person verb forms ending in -th (jumpeth, speaketh). Yet these are etymologically unrelated words, and, in fact, they represent alternate perspectives on how to understand the act of presenting another person’s words. The contrast between the histories and functions of quoth and quote occurs at the interface between semantic and pragmatic change and can help us to understand quotation both as a pragmatic inclination and a cultural product.

171

Examining the development of quoth and quote therefore is instructive in several ways; it engages scholarly conversations about presented speech, the grammaticalization of constructions, and the influence of perceived etymological connection between words. Noël, Dirk 2007. “Diachronic construction grammar and grammaticalization theory.”

Functions of Language 14: 177-202. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs 2003. “Constructions in Grammaticalization.” The

Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Brian D Joseph and Richard D. Janda, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 624-647.

Trousdale, Graeme 2012. “Grammaticalization, constructions, and the grammaticalization of constructions.” Grammaticalization and Language Change: New Reflections. Kristin Davidse, Tine Breban, Lieselotte Brems, and Tanja Mortelmans, (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 167-198.

Spatio-temporal systems in Chaucer

Minako Nakayasu Hamamatsu University School of Medicine

Keywords: Spatio-temporal system, Chaucer, historical pragmatics, Middle English The purpose of this paper is to carry out a systematic analysis of the synchronic spatio-temporal systems in Chaucer’s language along the lines of historical pragmatics and discourse analysis (Jucker & Taavitsainen (2010), etc.).

In discourse, the speaker successively employs such elements as pronouns, demonstratives, tenses, modals and adverbials. When they decide to put situations into language, they judge how far these situations are from their ‘here and now’, that is, proximal or distal, and realises the relationship of space and time by these deictic elements. Although these elements are interrelated with each other, surprisingly few studies have been devoted to an integrative analysis of the systems of both space and time in historical data (Traugott (1978), Nagucka (2000), etc.).

The corpus of the present study is based on the Riverside edition (Benson 1987) and the concordance by Oizumi (1991-2012). The data consists of both verse and prose, namely, The Canterbury Tales and A Treatise on the Astrolabe. The direction of mapping assumed here is both form-to-function and function-to-form (Jabobs & Jucker 1995).

172

After establishing a definition of the spatio-temporal systems, I embarked on a quantitative analysis of how frequently the elements of space and time are exploited by the speaker, i.e. pronouns, demonstratives, tenses, modals and adverbials. It is shown that proximal forms are generally employed more often in the scientific prose where the speaker explains an astrolabe to his son.

Qualitative analysis was then conducted regarding how these elements are interrelated with each other in both temporal and spatial domains, and how the elements and the relations among them evolve in discourse. The analysis highlights typical combinations and patterns of the spatio-temporal elements in discourse. For instance, certain spatial and temporal elements tend to combine with other grammatical elements, e.g. imperative mood, and elements regulating discourse such as now, than and foreseide. It is observed in what way proximal and distal elements coordinate with others, and alternate with each other as discourse evolves. Tense use in metadiscourse and so-called ‘historical present’ tense in past story-telling in coordination with spatial domain give an excellent clue to dynamic alternation of proximal and distal perspectives.

This research shows that the speaker played a significant role in choosing spatial and temporal elements, and advances a fresh perspective on the spatio-temporal systems in Middle English. Benson, Larry Dean (ed.). 1987. The Riverside Chaucer. Third edition. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Company. Jacobs, Andreas & Andreas H. Jucker. 1995. “The Historical Perspective of

Pragmatics”. In: Andreas H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company: pp. 1-33.

Jucker, Andreas H. & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.). 2010. Historical Pragmatics. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

Nagucka, Ruta. 2000. “The Spatial and Temporal Meanings of Before in Middle English”. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta & Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in Context. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter: pp. 329-337.

Oizumi, Akio (ed.). 1991-2012. A Complete Concordance to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 21 volumes. Hildesheim, Zürich & New York: Georg Olms Verlag.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1978. “On the Expression of Spatio-temporal Relations in Language”. In: Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of Human Language, Volume 3: Word Structure. Stanford: Stanford University Press: pp. 369-400.

173

Frequency measures and collocations in grammaticalisation

Jakob Neels University of Leipzig

Keywords: grammaticalisation, frequency effects, relative frequencies, collocations In usage-based approaches to grammaticalisation, high frequency of use is widely assumed to be not only an outcome but also a motor of grammaticalisation, as both formal and functional changes in grammaticalising constructions may result from cognitive processes propelled by frequent repetition (e.g., Bybee 2003, 2006; Krug 2000, 2003; Haiman 1994). However, corpus-based reports on the grammaticalisation of low-frequent expressions (e.g., Hoffmann 2004; Brems 2007) as well as on cases of grammaticalisation with delayed increases of discourse frequency (e.g., Hundt 2001; Mair 2004) seem to call into question the pivotal role of frequency, at least of absolute discourse frequency. This study therefore examines possible ways of refining frequency-effect accounts of grammaticalisation, asking what measures of frequency are most relevant to the process. Among the frequency(-related) measures and concepts to be discussed are conceptual frequency (Hoffmann 2004), proportional frequency (cf., e.g., Haspelmath 2004), cotextual entrenchment (Schmid 2010) and critical frequency (Peng 2012) — all of which involve relative frequencies rather than merely absolute discourse frequency. Moreover, a special focus of this study is on the role of collocations (cf. Bybee and Torres Cacoullos 2009; Torres Cacoullos and Walker 2011) and on how their impact on grammaticalisation can be interpreted from a Construction Grammar perspective (e.g., Gisborne and Patten 2011; Trousdale 2010; Traugott 2008). Collocations are, by definition, linked to measures of relative frequency, and the individual collocates of grammaticalising expressions deserve more attention. Particular recurring constructs, i.e. specific (prefabricated) exemplars of a construction, can lead and advance grammaticalisation processes, as the general, more schematic construction instantiated by these exemplars is incited to change in order to accommodate new uses emerging around the exemplars. This hypothesis as well as the relevance of the above-named frequency measures will be tested with the aid of corpus data on grammaticalisation phenomena in English.

174

Brems, Lieselotte (2007). “The Grammaticalization of Small Size Nouns: Reconsidering Frequency and Analogy.” Journal of English Linguistics 35.4: 293-324.

Bybee, Joan (2003). “Mechanisms of Change in Grammaticization: The Role of Frequency.” The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Eds. Brian D. Joseph and Richard D. Janda. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 602-623.

Bybee, Joan (2006). “From Usage to Grammar: The Mind’s Response to Repetition.” Language 82.4: 711-733.

Bybee, Joan, and Rena Torres Cacoullos (2009). “The Role of Prefabs in Grammaticization: How the Particular and the General Interact in Language Change.” Formulaic Language, Vol. 1: Distribution and Historical Change. Eds. Robert Corrigan, Edith A. Moravcsik, Hamid Ouali and Kathleen M. Wheatly. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 187-217.

Gisborne, Nikolas, and Amanda Patten (2011). “Construction Grammar and Grammaticalization.” The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization. Eds. Heiko Narrog and Bernd Heine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 92-104.

Haiman, John (1994). “Ritualization and the Development of Language.” Perspectives on Grammaticalization. Ed. William Pagliuca. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 3-28.

Haspelmath, Martin (2004). “Explaining the Ditransitive Person-Role Constraint: A Usage-Based Approach.” Constructions 2/2004: 1-49.

Hoffmann, Sebastian (2004). “Are Low-Frequency Complex Prepositions Grammaticalized? On the Limits of Corpus Data — and the Importance of Intuition.” Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Eds. Hans Lindquist and Christian Mair. Amsterdam:Benjamins. 171-210.

Hundt, Marianne (2001). “What Corpora Tell Us about the Grammaticalisation of Voice in Get-Constructions.” Studies in Language 25.1: 49-88.

Krug, Manfred (2000). Emerging English Modals: A Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Krug, Manfred (2003). “Frequency as a Determinant in Grammatical Variation and Change.” Determinants in Grammatical Variation in English. Eds. Günter Rohdenburg and Britta Mondorf. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 7-67.

Mair, Christian (2004). “Corpus Linguistics and Grammaticalisation Theory: Statistics, Frequencies, and Beyond.” Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Eds. Hans Lindquist and Christian Mair. Amsterdam: Benjamin. 121-150.

Peng, Rui (2012). “Critical Frequency as an Independent Variable in Grammaticalization.” Studies in Language 36.2: 345-381.

Schmid, Hans-Jörg (2010). “Does Frequency in Text Instantiate Entrenchment in the Cognitive System?” Quantitative Methods in Cognitive Semantics. Eds. Dylan Glynn and Kerstin Fischer. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 101-134.

Torres Cacoullos, Rena, and James Walker (2011). “Collocations in Grammaticalization and Variation.” The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization. Eds. Heiko Narrog and Bernd Heine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 225-238.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (2008). “Grammaticalization, Constructions and the Incremental Development of Language: Suggestions from the Development of Degree Modifiers in English.” Variation, Selection, Development – Probing the

175

Evolutionary Model of Language Change. Eds. Regine Eckardt, Gerhard Jäger and Tonjes Veenstra. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 219-250.

Trousdale, Graeme (2010). “Issues in Constructional Approaches to Grammaticalization in English.” Grammaticalization: Current Views and Issues. Eds. Ekaterini Stathi, Elke Gehweiler and Ekkehard König. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 51-72.

Online collaborative corpus annotation: Extending the Old Bailey Corpus one trial at a time

Magnus Nissel

University of Giessen Keywords: collaboration, annotation, corpus, sociolinguistics, Late Modern English This paper introduces a web-based corpus collaboration system that allows users to contribute additional trials and annotation to the Old Bailey Corpus (OBC, Huber et. al. 2012).

The OBC is a valuable resource for researchers interested in 18th and 19th century spoken English. It consists of a subset of transcribed Proceedings of the Old Bailey (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org), London’s Central Criminal Court from 1720 to 1913. The core corpus contains circa 14 million words of direct speech (about 750,000 words per decade) and an extended version with 19 million words is also available. The OBC has detailed sociolinguistic (gender, class, age), pragmatic (role in the courtroom), and textual annotation and can be searched online or downloaded.

The extended OBC currently contains 489 out of 1885 available proceedings. This means that about 54 million words of transcribed speech could still be added. Opening the OBC for collaborative online corpus annotation will allow the corpus to grow as users annotate individual trials from the remaining proceedings using a simple website interface. On average, a trial contains about 10 utterances and circa 400 words of direct speech. This is a very manageable size for new contributions. A streamlined interface and extensive automatic pre-annotation further reduce the time demand on volunteer contributors. Since the editor is tailor-made to the requirements of the OBC, contributors do not have to deal with the complexity of generic annotation frameworks such as GATE Teamware (Bontcheva et. al. 2013).

176

Once submitted, user-annotated trials are automatically made available via the existing online search interface. They can also be peer-reviewed and amended by other users. At all stages, the integration with the corpus search engine is bidirectional. Researchers can choose to include all user-annotated trials in their concordance searches, to only include reviewed trials, or to limit their results to the traditional corpus versions. Conversely, users can also search all pre-annotated proceedings to select suitable trials for further annotation based on linguistic and extra-linguistic criteria.

The OBC Online Editor is currently being tested internally and will be available to the public by summer 2014. While it was designed for the OBC, the software could later be adapted for the use with different texts, allowing other projects to benefit from a collaborative approach to the annotation of a large collections of (historical) documents. Bontcheva, K; Cunningham, H.; Roberts, I.; Roberts, A.; Tablan, V.; Aswani, N.; Gorrell,

G. 2013. Teamware: A Web-based, Collaborative Text Annotation Framework. Language Resources and Evaluation. In Press.

Huber, M.; Nissel, M.; Maiwald, P.; Widlitzki, B. 2012. The Old Bailey Corpus. Spoken English in the 18th and 19th centuries. www.uni-giessen.de/oldbaileycorpus

The reduced definite article th’ in the sixteenth century and the definiteness cycle

Jerzy Nykiel

University of Silesia

Keywords: definite NP, reduced definite article, antecedent accessibility, definiteness cycle, grammaticalization In the twelfth century the English definite article develops a reduced variant th’ which leans on the following noun, alternatively but much less frequently also on an adjacent adjective which comes before the noun. As argued by Nykiel (forthcoming: 5), the earliest known example of reduced th’ comes from the Peterborough Chronicle:

(1) 7 begæt thare priuileges, an of alle þe lands of þabbotrice

And obtained their privileges one of all the lands of the-abbey 7 oþer of þe lands þe lien to þe circewican and other of the lands that lie to the church-yard (?a1160 Peterb.Chron.(LdMisc 636) an.1137)

177

Reduction of this type continues unabated in English till around the eighteenth century. In time reduced th’ broadens the range of possible hosts as in Middle English it only attaches to a noun or adjective beginning with a vowel or <h>, while in Shakespeare it also appears before consonants as illustrated by van Gelderen (2011: 214).

Due to such behavior, the ME and EME reduced variant of the ranks as a clitic in the sense of Zwicky (1977, 1994), Spencer (1991), Anderson (2005), and others. That is to say, the free form the has a variant th’ which is ‘prosodically deficient’ (Anderson 2005: 13) and attaches itself to some adjacent material. At the same time reduced th’ has been handled by e.g Jones (1999, 2002) as an instance of Definite Article Reduction, i.e. one of the allomorphs of the definite article. In this paper, however, I argue, following van Gelderen (2011), that reduced th’ is part of the development of the definiteness cycle (DP cycle).

Elsewhere (see Nykiel forthcoming), I show that in Caxton’s English, that is in the late fifteenth century, NPs with reduced th’ tend to have different anaphoric and referential functions than those introduced by the full form of the definite article. The data presented there were not conclusive, however. In this study I make use of sixteenth century data to farther my point that th’ NPs are associated with highly accessible antecedents and discourse topics. Ultimately, I aim to show that reduced th’ is no longer compatible with the Determiner slot in the syntactic structure of DP. Instead, it functions as a nominal marker which can itself be preceded by the full form of the article. Anderson, Stephen R. 2005. Aspects of the theory of clitics. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. Jones, Mark J. 1999. The phonology of definite article reduction. Dialectal variation in

English, ed. by Clive Upton, and Katie Wales Leeds Studies in English 30: 103–21. Jones, Mark J. 2002. The origin of Definite Article Reduction in northern English

dialects: evidence from dialect allomorphy. English Language and Linguistics 6. 325-345.

Nykiel, Jerzy. Forthcoming. The reduced definite article th’ in Caxton’s English: an insight from the definiteness cycle. Submitted to Journal of Germanic Linguistics.

Spencer, Andrew 1991. Morphological theory. Oxford: Blackwell. van Gelderen, Elly. 2011. The Linguistic cycle. Language change and the language

faculty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zwicky, Arnold M. 1977. On Clitics. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Zwicky, Arnold M. 1994. What is a clitic? Clitics. A comprehensive bibliography 1892–

1991, ed. by Joel A. Nevis, Brian D. Joseph, Dieter Wanner, and Arnold M. Zwicky, xii-xx. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

178

Variations on Old English diphthongs

Toshihiro Oda

Fukuoka University

Keywords: sequential conditioning, Diphthong Rhyme Harmony, retracting movement, phonetic drift OE Breaking constitutes a theme frequently addressed in the historical literature and has received a wide range of arguments (Botma and Ewen 2009, Davenport 2005, Hogg 1972, 1992, Howell 1991, Lass and Anderson 1975/2010, Stockwell 1996, 2002). The general assumptions on it are that (a) the emergent diphthongs may or may not be equivalent to those with the Germanic root in some regards, that (b) the second elements are in the same height as the first ones and that (c) the derivational processes are to be retracted, and then, to be harmonized. This paper attempts to make further pursuit on the latter two.

Given the sequential conditioning stressed /i, e, æ/ followed by /r, l, x, u/, the diphthongal glides are likely to share the feature that the surface forms vary over [u, o, a]. This means that the second elements undergo the allophonization on the basis of phonetic compatibility. The stressed vowels preceding the singleton /x/ are, for example, shown to be [u] or [o], but not /a/ (dohtor ‘daughter’, ruh ‘rough’). The oral posture of the /x/, relative to that of /k, g/ and /ç/, causes the rounded vowels to concatenate with it. The articulation on it requires that the back of the tongue make a firm contact with soft palate and that the constriction be made stably with the raised posture. When the /x/ follows, therefore, the diphthongal glides are allophonized to the [u] or the [o]. The word neaht ‘night’ is involved in the ones at issue. The second element therein shifts from the /a/ to the [o].

The phonological representation without the allophones as in the previous research is accounted for by the Diphthong Height Harmony (DHH), where after the /u/ was derived by way of the diphthongization, it surfaces in the same height as that of the first element, i.e., eo, æa. This suggestion has long been traditionally accepted in the literature. Taking a different point of view, this paper seeks to take the assumption of the Diphthong Rhyme Harmony (DRH). Overall, the diphthongal glides are affected by both the first elements and the following consonants. The allophonic formations take place by way of the retracting posture since all of the following sounds condition the phonetic restriction on the coooccurrences. The DHH is regarded as the assimilatory process in the

179

phonological level. By contrast, the DRH refers to the phonetic shift, where the coarticulatory postures in each of the cases play an important role. Davenport, Michael (2005) “Old English Breaking and Syllable Structure,” Headhood,

Elements, Specification and Contrastivity: Phonological Papers in Honour of John Anderson, eds. by P. Carr, J. Durand and C. J. Ewen, 63-76,

Benjamins. Hogg, Richard M. (1972) “Gemination, Breaking, and Reordering in the Synchronic

Phonology of Old English,” Lingua 28, 48-69. Howell, Robert B. (1991) Old English Breaking and its Germanic Analogues, Tübingen:

Niemeyer Lass, Roger and John Anderson (1975/2010) Old English Phonology, CUP. Labov, William (1991) “The Three Dialects of English,” New Ways of Analysing Sound

Change, ed. by P. Eckert, 1-40, Academic Press. Stockwell, Robert (1996) “Old English Short Diphthongs and the Theory of Glide

Emergence,” English Historical Linguistics 1994, ed. by D. Britton, 57-72, Benjamins.

Exploring binomials: History, structure, motivation and function

Michiko Ogura Keio University

Keywords: Old English, Poetry, alliteration, formula, word pairs There are not so many books and articles which have been written on word pairs as syntactic-stylistic patterns of binomials in Medieval English texts. Among them Leisi (1947), Koskenniemi (1968) and Oakden (1968) are useful as pioneer researches on this subject. Since Old English has formulaic expressions under the regulations of alliteration, variation and poetic dictions, many word pairs are used repeatedly. Most of them are in half-line length (e.g. Beo 72a geongum ond ealdum), but sometimes too short to fill a half-line (e.g. GenB 507b Ic gehyrde hine þine dæd and word), or sometimes too long to fill up the whole line (e.g. Beo 39 hildewæpnum ond heaðowædum), combining two nouns with prepositions (e.g. Dan 313 to Abrahame and to Isaace) and/or adjectives (e.g. ChristC 1110 þa hwitan honda ond þa halgan fet). Some examples are more complex than a pair of the same part of speech (e.g. GenA 2807a Sweotol is and gesene). The pairs can be semantically repetitive (e.g. GenA 106a idel and unnyt), contrasting (e.g. GenB 480b yfles and godes), explaining in detail (e.g. Beo 972a earm ond eaxle), denoting one object with two words (e.g. Ex 537b þær bið fyr

180

and wyrm (that is, ‘hell’)), etc. The order of the two synonymous words is usually established (e.g. GenA 10b wide and side), but in a few instances changeable if the both words have alliteration (e.g. GenA 118b side and wide). When investigation is to be made on Old English poems, therefore, variations appositions and formulas are to be considered at the same time, for which Paetzel (1913), Robinson (1961), Lord (1964) are old but still useful, as well as new ones like Berger (1993). In this paper I investigate all examples of word pairs in Old English poems and classify them semantically (repetitive, contrastive, etc.), stylistically (exclusively poetic, less poetic, etc.) and syntactically (noun and noun, adjective and adjective, adjective + noun and compound, etc.). Berger, Christiane. 1993. Altenglische Paarformeln und ihre Varianten. Münster

Monographs on English Literature 13. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Bessinger, Jr., J. B. and P. H. Smith, Jr. 1978. A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon poetic

Records. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Koskenniemi, Inna. 1968. Repetitive Word Pairs in Old and Early Middle English Prose.

Turku: Turun Yliopisto. Krapp, G. P. and E. V. K. Dobbie (eds.) 1931-53. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, I-VI.

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York: Columbia University Press. Leisi, Ernst. 1947. Die tautologischen Wortpaare in Caxton’s “Eneydos”. New York:

Hafner. Lord, A. B. 1964. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Oakden, J. P. 1930, 1935. Alliterative Poetry in Middle English. rpt. 1968. Hamden, CT:

Archon Books. Ogura, Michiko. 2004. “Variations and Diachronic Changes of Alliterative Patterns

and Alliterating Elements”, in: Michiko Ogura (ed.), Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Studies (Project Report No. 80, Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Chiba University), 23-49.

Paetzel, Walter. 1913. Die Variationen in der altgermanischen Alliterationspoesie. Berlin: Mayer und Müller.

Robinson, Fred. 1961. “Variation. A Study in the Diction of Beowulf. Diss. University of North Carolina.

Robinson, Fred. 1985. BEOWULF and the Appositive Style. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Robinson, Fred. 1994. The Editing of Old English. Oxford: Cambridge MA. Rosier, J. L. (ed.) 1964, 1966. “Instructions for Christians”. Anglia 82: 4-22 and 84: 74.

181

Lexical diffusion and neogrammarian regularity

Mieko Ogura & William S-Y. Wang Linguistics Laboratory, Tsurumi University, Yokohama - Joint Research

Centre for Language and Human Complexity, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Keywords: lexical diffusion, Neogrammarian regularity, 2-dimensional dffusion, snowball effect, word frequency After a critical survey of the Neogrammarian hypothesis, we propose a chronological profile of lexical diffusion. We define lexical diffusion model along two dimensions: diffusion from word to word in a single speaker, which we call W(ord)-diffusion, and diffusion from speaker to speaker, which we call S(peaker)-diffusion. When W-diffusion is slower than S-diffusion, the difference is greater between words. When W-diffusion is faster than S-diffusion, the difference is greater between speakers. W-diffusion may proceed so fast that it is difficult to observe it. This shows what is called the Neogrammarian regularity. The 2-dimensional diffusion operates in phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic changes. In this study we show that lexical diffusion is the fundamental mechanism of language change.

Based on the development of periphrastic do and –s in the third person singular present indicative, we show that the changes in the different contexts begin at different times, and the later a change begins, the greater the rate of change becomes (“snowball effect”). Within each context, high frequency words change late in the periphrastic do, while high frequency words change first in the third person singular present indicative. We further discuss why some changes start in frequent words, while others in infrequent words.

Labov (1981, 1994, 2012, 2013) considers that the chain shifts and many of the mergers show the regularity of the sound changes and no effect of word frequency. The lexical diffusion model assumes that in these cases W-diffusion proceeds so fast that it is difficult to observe word diffusion and word frequency effect within each individual, but word diffusion can be observed while it is in progress across generations. Actually Labov’s instrumental measurements of spontaneous speech show that the individual vowel systems are quite different, especially along the age dimension, and the pattern shows a continuous linear incrementation.

Santorini (1992), and Pintzuk & Taylor (2006) show that when a new syntactic variant begins to enter the grammar, its use may be more or less

182

favored in different contexts, and it increases in frequency in every context at the same rate over time (“Constant Rate Effect”). Fruehwald et al. (2009) show that the Constant Rate Effect holds in phonology as well. We assume that they show Neogrammarian regularity of change. We may state that the faster the change proceeds within and across the contexts, the less the difference of the rate of change becomes. We further suggest that the stronger functional or social bias becomes, the faster word diffusion proceeds. Our 2-dimensional diffusion model can uniformly explain Neogrammarian regularity.

Fruehwald, Josef, et al. 2009. “Phonological Rule Change: The Constant Rate Effect”.

Paper presented at the 40th annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November 13-15.

Labov, William. 1981. “Resolving the Neogrammarian Controversy”. Language 57, 267-308.

Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change, Volume 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.

Labov, William. 2012. “The Role of the Lexicon in Regular Sound Change”, Paper presented at the 41st Annual Conference of New Ways of Analyzing Variation, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Labov, William. 2013. “One Hundred Years of Sound Change in Philadelphia: Linear Incrementation, reversal, and reanalysis”. Language 89, 30-65.

Ogura, Mieko. 1993. “The Development of Periphrastic Do in English: A case of lexical diffusion in syntax”. Diachronica 10: 51-85.

Ogura, Mieko. 2012. “The Timing of Language Change”. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 427-450.

Ogura, Mieko. (forthcoming). Language Evolution as a Complex Adaptive System: A multidisciplinary approach to the history of English. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ogura, Mieko & William S-Y. Wang. 1996. “Snowball Effect in Lexical Diffusion: The development of -s in the third person singular present indicative in English”. In Derek Britton (ed.), English Historical Linguistics 1994: Papers from the 8th International Congress on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 119-141.

Ogura, Mieko & William S-Y. Wang. 1998. “Evolution Theory and Lexical Diffusion”. In Jacek Fisiak & Marcin Krygier (eds.), Advances in English Historical Linguistics. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 315-344.

Ogura, Mieko & William S-Y. Wang. 2008. “Dynamic Dialectology and Social Networks”. In Marina Dossena et al. (eds.), English Historical Linguistics 2006, Vol. III: Geo-Historical Variation in English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 131-151.

Pintzuk, Suzan & Ann Taylor. 2006. “The Loss of OV Order in the History of English”. In Kemenade, Ans van & Bettelou Los (eds.), The Handbook of the History of English, Oxford: Blackwell, 249-278.

183

Santorini, Beatrice. 1993. “The Rate of Phrase Structure Change in the History of Yiddish”. Language Variation and Change 5, 257-283.

Wang, William S-Y. 1969. “Competing Changes as a Cause of Residue”. Language 45: 9-25.

Multilingual practices in Late Modern English: A frequency-based approach

Päivi Pahta, Arja Nurmi, Jukka Tyrkkö & Anna Petäjäniemi

University of Tampere

Keywords: Late Modern English, multilingual practices, language variation, corpus linguistics, CLMET3 Recent research has established that multilingual practices, evidenced in the alternating use of different languages, are characteristic of language use in various types of English historical writings. The phenomenon, also known as code-switching, has attracted increasing attention in historical-linguistic research (see e.g. Kopaczyk 2013, Nurmi & Pahta 2013, Pahta 2012, and studies in Schendl & Wright 2011). While several single genres and topic domains in different periods have received attention in this body of research, most of the focus has been on relatively small datasets. We are still lacking a credible overview of the frequency and type of switching practices evident on the basis of systematic corpus-based study. With the current availability of large masses of electronic text from historical periods of English, work on this scale is finally possible.

Our paper presents a corpus-study of multilingual practices in the Late Modern period. The data comes from the Corpus of Late Modern English 3.0, comprising 333 texts and 34 million words, where the multilingual passages have been identified using a range of complementary automatic and semi-automatic techniques. The corpus has been enhanced with sociolinguistic background information regarding the authors (e.g. gender, social status, age, and education). We have also expanded the basic text typological data assigned by the corpus compilers with variables such as the suggested audience of each text (e.g. specialist vs. lay readers), and possible triggering elements for multilingual passages, such as co-textual references to foreign locations (e.g. novels taking place in France vs. those confined to England). The enhanced data will allow us to present a fully evidence-based overview of (1) the frequency of foreign-language passages in written English in 1710–1920, (2) the variety of languages used in these

184

texts in addition to English, (3) the connections of multilingual practices and the social variables describing the authors of each text and (4) the further text-typological features associated with the use of multilingual practices.

Kopaczyk, Joanna (2013). Code-switching in the records of a Scottish brotherhood in

early modern Poland-Lithuania. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 49 (3): 281-319.

Nurmi Arja & Päivi Pahta (2013). Multilingual Practices in the Language of the Law: Evidence from the Lampeter Corpus. In Jukka Tyrkkö, Olga Timofeeva and Maria Salenius (eds.) Ex Philologia Lux: Essays in Honour of Leena Kahlas-Tarkka. Helsinki: Modern Language Society, 187-204.

Pahta Päivi (2012). Code-switching in English of the Middle Ages. In Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the History of English. New York: Oxford University Press, 528-537.

Schendl, Herbert & Laura Wright (eds.) 2011. Code-switching in Early English. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

The linguistic cycle: A re-examination of Old English hwæðer ‘whether’

Victor Parra-Guinaldo American University of Sharjah, UAE

Keywords: reanalysis, linguistic cycle, complementizer, economy principles, question marker The basic functions of Old English (OE) hwæðer ‘whether’ have already been established in the literature (Visser 1963, Mitchell 1985, Traugott 1992, and others). Two main categories are typically distinguished in its functional classification: pronoun and conjunction. In addition, its adverbial form hwæð(e)re ‘however’ has been recognized as an associated element (Mitchell 1985). Past classifications of OE hwæðer are in need of considerable revision though, as they underrepresent its diverse functionality and transitory nature and fail to address issues yet unresolved. For example, most include what has been referred to as a question particle under the category of conjunction, ignoring the fact that the former has a different function and life span than the latter. As far as the evolution of hwæðer during the OE period, the consensus is that the pronominal use is its original one. Ukaji (1997) for example points out that this use is closest to its etymological reference (PIE *kwo- + *-tero- > PGmc *XwaÞaraz (*Xwe-)), that is, a pronoun and a comparative suffix that can be translated as ‘which of the two’. But a more important, though less evident, question

185

yet to be explained is whether its use as a conjunction (complementizer introducing a subordinate clause) predates its use as a question marker (QM), as was claimed early on by Nusser (1913) and Andrew (1940), or if the QM precedes the complementizer chronologically, as I claim. Following van Gelderen’s (2004 and later) work on diachronic development, where Economy Principles (Late Merge and Head Preference) motivate the change of lexical heads into functional ones, I will present in this paper a comprehensive and historically cogent classification of OE hwæðer’s functions, which is theoretically sound, and will tackle the issue of its chronology; I argue for a change from QM in an independent sentence to a complementizer heading a subordinate clause, which complies with the syntactic shift from paratactic to hypotactic we are familiar with and which is supported by a representative number of sentences containing hwæðer as they were drawn from the OE period of the diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (Kytö & Rissanen 1988). Andrew, S. O. (1940). Syntax and style in Old English. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Gelderen, E. v. (2004). Grammaticalization as economy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Pub. Co. Kytö, Merja & Matti Rissanen. (1988). The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. In Ossi

Ihalainen et al. (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics: Hard and Soft, 169-79. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Mitchell, B. (1985). Old English grammar: Vol. 1 & 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nusser, O. (1913). Geschichte der Disjunktivkonstruktionen im Englischen.

Anglistische Forschungen, 37. Traugott, E. C. (1992). Syntax. In Richard Hogg (Ed.), The Cambridge history of the

English language: Vol. 1. The Beginnings to 1066 (pp. 168-289). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ukaji, M. (1997). A History of Whether. In M. Ukaji, T. Nakao, M. Kajita & S. Chiba (Eds.), Studies in English Linguistics: A Festschrift for Akira Ota on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (pp. 1236-1261). Tokyo: Taishukan.

Visser, F. T. (1963-1973). An historical syntax of the English Language. Leiden: Brill.

Towards a theory of historical psycholinguistics: The position of adverbial clauses in Early Modern English

Meike Pentrel

Osnabrueck University

This paper combines findings from modern psycho-/cognitive linguistics and historical data. Based on the uniformitarian principle (cf. Lass 1997;

186

Bergs 2012) this study assumes that the same cognitive strategies govern the production and comprehension of texts today and in the past. However, if present-day predictions are not met, this might call for an adjustment of either the assumed cognitive strategies or the initial assumption regarding historical text production.

In practice, I will look different types of adverbial clauses in Early Modern English, e.g. temporal, conditional, causal. In theory, these clauses can be placed before or after the associated main clause (e.g. Quirk et al. 1985), yet PdE studies have shown that certain sequences are preferred. A number of cognitive processing as well as discourse strategies influencing the order have been proposed, e.g. Adverbial Length, Iconicity of Sequence, or Given-New (Prideaux 1989; Diessel 1996, 2005, 2008). The strategies may oppose or override each other, often depending on the text type.

This study is based on a 1 million-word from The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1660-69) which can be assumed to range stylistically between conceptually spoken and written language (cf. Koch & Oesterreicher 1985). Due to its narrative structure a frequent use of adverbial clauses can be expected; this outweighs problems such as that The Diary was written in shorthand. The patterning of adverbial clauses in the Diary should meet the predictions for such a text type made by PdE processing strategies. This study critically evaluates the results of the empirical analysis in the light of PdE data and supposedly universal cognitive factors. It may thus provide a feedback loop between the historical data and contemporary cognitive/psycholinguistic theory. Bergs, Alexander. 2012. “The Uniformitarian Principle and the Risk of Anachronisms

in Language and Social History”. In: Blackwell Hadndbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Ed. By Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy, Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre, Oxford: Blackwell, 80-99.

Diessel, Holger. 1996. “Processing Factors of Pre- and Postponed Adverbial Clauses.” In: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society: General Session and Parasession on The Role of Learnability in Grammatical Theory, 71-82.

Diessel, Holger. 2005. “Competing Motivations for the Ordering of Main and Adverbial Clauses.” In: Linguistics 43 (3), 449-470.

Diessel, Holger. 2008. “Iconicity of Sequence: A Corpus-Based Analysis of the Positioning of Temporal Adverbial Clauses in English.” In: Cognitive Linguistics 19 (3), 465-490.

Koch, Peter & Wulf Oesterreicher. 1985. “Sprache der Nähe – Sprache der Distanz. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte”. In: Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 36. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 15-34.

187

Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Prideaux, Gary D. 1989. “Text Data as Evidence for Language Processing Principles: The Grammar of Ordered Events.” In: Language Science, Vol. 11(1), 27-42.

Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey and Jan Svartvick. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.

On multiple clausal embedding in Old English

Rodrigo Pérez Lorido University of Oviedo

Keywords: Old English; language processing; recursiveness; clausal embedding; relative clause extraposition. It is a well-known fact that centre-embedded structures like (1a) below pose special difficulties for the language processor, as they require increased effort from short-time memory, and that they are cross-linguistically avoided by using different strategies which involve the generation of right-branching structures like (1b):

(1) a. The man [ the boy [ the woman saw ] heard ] left.

b. The woman saw the boy [ that heard the man [ that left ] ].

The processing problems of centre embedding become evident in OV languages with postnominal relatives, like Old English, where the nesting of sentences and the subsequent clustering of verbs in final position produce very complex sequences, which are difficult to process (see the construct in (2a) and the actual Old English rendering in (2b) for illustration):

(2) a. *… forðan þe seo sawul [ ðe þone scyppend [ þe hi gesceop

and hire geferan ] lufað ] gesælig is. b. … forðan þe [ seo sawul is gesælig] [ðe þone scyppend lufað ] [ þe hi gesceop and hire geferan ] ‘because the soul is blessed that loves the God that created it and its fellow-pilgrims’. (ÆLS I 20:169)

Authors from Colman (1988) to Ogura (2001) have discussed the role of Relative Extraposition as a means to avoid centre-embedded structures and its relevance as a factor in the change OV VO in English, and more

188

recently Karlsson (2007, 2009) has analysed recursiveness in written and spoken texts, setting the quantitative limits of clausal embedding. To date, however, no study has addressed the full extent to which centre embedding is allowed in Old English, the contexts for its application or the factors which block it. This paper aims at filling that niche, taking the data on embedded preverbal subjects and objects found in a large corpus of OE prose and analysing them against a series of variables that include: internal constituent structure of the elements in the complex sentences, language-particular tolerance to verb clustering, and impact of pragmatic factors such as topicality and focus placement.

The main conclusions to which I have come are:

Centre embedding of pre-verbal subjects and objects in Old English was not especially constrained by the cognitive capabilites of the OE speakers (or at least no more than it is in other modern Germanic languages).

The more elaborate or formal texts (Cura Pastoralis, Bede) promoted a wider use of clausal embedding than narrative and less elaborate ones (A-S-C, Orosius).

Pragmatic factors such as topicality and the focal nature of antecedents interacted heavily with syntactic constraints on the structure of the elements in complex sentences.

Some of the restrictions on adjacency and clustering of verbal forms in embedded structures that hold for modern German and Dutch do not seem to hold for Old English.

Colman, Fran. 1988. Heavy arguments in Old English. In John M. Anderson & N.

Macleod (eds.). Edinburgh Studies in the English Language, 1. Edinburgh: John Donald. 33-89.

Karlsson, Fred. 2007. Constraints on multiple center-embedding of clauses. Journal of Linguistics 43/2: 365-392.

Karlsson, Fred. 2009. Origin and maintenance of clausal embedding complexity. In Geoffrey Sampson, David Gil & Peter Trudgill (eds.). Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 192-203.

Ogura, Mieko. 2001. Perceptual factors and word order change in English. Folia Linguistica Historica 22/1-2: 233-253.

189

On the role of frequency in the grammatical constructionalization of the passive construction

Peter Petré KU Leuven

Keywords: Passive construction, construction grammar, grammaticalization, syntax, information structure It is commonly assumed that the English passive, as a periphrastic verbal construction, developed out of copular [BE AdjectivalParticiple]. Most attention in timing this change has gone to the formally innovative prepositional and recipient passives, both becoming firmly established during the late fourteenth century, as well as the slightly later fixation of by for the expression of the agent, which completes the passive’s equivalence with an active transitive construction.

Toyota (2008: 124) suggests the first function of the passive, already present in Old English, was that of backgrounding the actor, as in quasi-impersonal passives whose actor is completely indefinite:

(1) Þara geleafan & gehwyrfednesse is sægd þæt se cyning swa wære

efnblissende. ‘In their faith and conversion (it) is said that the king was equally rejoicing.’ (c925(a900), Bede)

As an extension to this function, the primarily foregrounding function of topicalizing the undergoer developed in the course of Middle English. This development is associated with the fixation of SVO, which led to topics increasingly becoming subjects to maintain interclausal topic-continuity (e.g. Los 2009). The passive provided a straightforward way of making undergoers or recipients into subject-topics and started to extend its range with formal innovation as a result.

From a constructionist perspective, the complex functionality of [BE Participle], and its history, raises important questions. How different are the periphrastic (topicalizing or backgrounding) and the copular constructions really? The formal differnece between prepositional passives and copular constructions (he is highly thought of versus *he is afraid of ‘X is afraid of him’) suggests that at least two somewhat independent constructions are at play.

In this paper, I draw attention to the role of relative frequencies in the transition from an extension (in a semantic network around a prototype) to

190

a separate construction. Those few studies that provide frequency data, such as Seoane (2006) or Toyota (2008), do not really address this issue in detail. I provide evidence that already in early Middle English there is a significant shift in the relative weight of the various functions of [BE Participle], involving an increase of both backgrounding and topicalizing functions. This may have led to a more distinct (formally or co-textually determined) opposition between them, facilitating the eventual emancipation of the topicalizing passive. Generally, this paper wishes to contribute to the issue of operationalizibility of frequency in (grammatical) constructionalization (Traugott & Trousdale 2013). Bybee, Joan. 2003. Cognitive Processes in Grammaticalization. 6e New Psychology of

Language ed. by Michael Tomasello, vol. 2, 145–167. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Toyota, Junichi. 2008. Diachronic change in the English passive (Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Traugott, Elizabeth C. & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 6). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Seoane, Elena. 2006. Information Structure and Word Order Change: %e Passive as an Information-rearranging Strategy in the History of English. 6e Handbook of the History of English ed. by Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los, 360–391. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Los, Bettelou. 2009. The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English: Information structure and syntax in interaction. English Language and Linguistics 13(1). 97-125.

Anger, fear and amusement: The lexico-semantic field of emotions in the

Ormulum

Sara M. Pons-Sanz University of Westminster

The Ormulum is an early Middle English work of biblical exegesis authored by Orm, a monk originating from the East Midlands. Scholars are generally dismissive about its literary interest. Yet, it has received much attention from linguists, who recognise its value not only in connection with Orm’s innovative spelling practices but also as a source of linguistic data from a dialect which is rather poorly represented in the early stages of the English language.

191

One of the linguistic features of the text that has received some attention is the significant number of Norse-derived terms it records (not surprising, given its dialectal origin). Yet, most studies only go as far as the identification of the terms, without looking in detail at how the terms work in the text and the particular semantic and stylistic relations that they have with their native counterparts, when they exist (think, for example, about Brate 1885, the main study of the Norse-derived terms in the text). There are, however, some important exceptions to this general trend: for example, Hille 2004 analyses the distribution of ME til (cp. OIc til) and to, while Johannnesson 2006 explores the make-up of the lexico-semantic field of bread in the text. The present paper will attempt to follow in the footsteps of these works by studying in detail Orm’s use of terms belonging to the lexico-semantic field of emotions: e.g. ME angren ‘to make angry’, breth ‘anger’, epen ‘to cry’, kaggerleȝc ‘love, lust’, rade ‘afraid’, skemtinge ‘amusement’, skerren ‘to terrify’, and wandreth ‘trouble, suffering’. Firstly, the evidence for their Norse-derivation will be established; afterwards, the terms and their native equivalents, identified on the basis of the Historical Thesaurus of English, will be examined in their contexts in order to determine the semantic and stylistic factors that are likely to have led Orm to chose between the native and borrowed terms. Finally, time permitting, Orm’s use will be compared with that of his near-contemporaries. Brate, Erik. 1885. ‘Nordische Lehnw rter im Ormulum’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der

Deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 10: 1-80 and 580-86. Hille, Arnold. 2004. ‘On the Distribution of the Forms to and till in the Ormulum’,

English Studies 85, 22-32. Historical Thesaurus of English. 2013. Ed. by Christian Kay et al. (Glasgow: University

of Glasgow). Available at <http://historicalthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk>. Johannesson, Nils-Lennart. 2006. ‘Bread, Crumbs and Related Matters in the

Ormulum’, Selected Proceedings of the 2005 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX), ed. R. W. McConchie et al. (Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project), 69-82.

192

Abbreviating Lydgate: Ideographic symbols in two manuscripts of the Troybook and The Siege of Thebes

Justyna Rogos

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan

Keywords: Lydgate, Middle English manuscripts, abbreviations, paratext Abbreviation symbols used in medieval manuscripts are typically considered from either of two mutually dependent analytical perspectives: paleographic, which focuses on the graphic representation of the abbreviation, and linguistic, which translates the abbreviation symbol into a meaningful alphabetic sequence. In both cases the point of reference for examining the forms and functions of abbreviations is the immediate context in which they appear, i.e. the abbreviated lexeme. In this paper the manuscript page is ‘zoomed out’ to re-contextualise abbreviations as part of the interplay between textual and paratextual (cf. Genette 1997) components of a handwritten text. The author examines scribal abbreviating practices in two manuscripts of Lydgate’s Troybook and The siege of Thebes (Cambridge, Trinity College MS O. 5. 2. and London, British Library Royal MS 18 D II) with the purpose of demonstrating how abbreviations interact with such paratextual features as layout, script type (and size), ornamentation or rubrication. On the basis of a comparison of forms and functions of abbreviations in two manuscripts of the same pair of texts it will be argued that the Middle English scribes’ decisions about applying a given abbreviation symbol in a particular context are informed not so much by the orthography of the manuscript text (i.e. the incidence of a specific alphabetic sequence) as by a combination of lexical and paratextual factors. In the former case, it is the occurrence of a specific lexeme that triggers abbreviation, whereas in the latter abbreviations are integrated into the broader context of what Genette (1997) subsumes under the term ‘paratext’: titles, rubrics, mise en page or type of script. In this approach abbreviations used by the scribes of Lydgate’s manuscripts are not just time- and space-saving devices (cf. Petti 1977: 22), functionally equivalent to alphabetic strings (e.g. Martin 1892; Capelli 1912; or Bischoff 1979), but, along with other non-textual devices, they shape the dynamics of the manuscript page. Bischoff, Bernard. 1979. Latin paleography. Capelli, Adriano. 1912. Dizionario di abbreviature Latine et Italiani. Milan.

193

Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation (translated by Jane E. Levin). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Martin, Charles Trice. 1892. The record interpreter: A collection of abbreviations, Latin words and names used in English historical manuscripts and records. London: Reeves and Turner.

Petti, Anthony G. 1977. English literary hands from Chaucer to Dryden. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

On the differential evolution of simple and complex object constructions

in English

Günter Rohdenburg University of Paderborn

This paper surveys the evolution of object structures in English by using the much more conservative standard German as a background foil. It will be shown that English has diverged from German in two diametrically opposed ways. On the one hand, in the area of simple object constructions, English has shown a striking trend towards transitivization, leading to the replacement of a vast range of prepositional objects and adjuncts by direct objects. Consider, for instance, examples like (1)-(5), whose German translation equivalents continue to exclusively use prepositional phrases to render the direct objects in English.

(1) What bait do you fish? (2) She reached her hand into the bag. (3) He strolled the ball into the net. (4) They had incited a rebellion. (5) She had won the pools/lottery.

As a result, the functional diversity of the direct object in English has been increased immensely.

On the other hand, in the area of more complex object structures, English has experienced a series of major changes, resulting in the virtual loss of several types of construction and the contraction of many others. At the same time, most of these reductive changes have introduced a high degree of functional specialization, unknown to German, by either narrowing the semantic spectrum of the original syntactic frame or by compelling the use of alternative grammatical devices.

Thus, several types of double object construction have been phased out completely, and even the remaining prototypical domain of verbs of

194

transfer and communication has been drastically restricted. For instance, relevant examples using the verb return, which were still attested in the 19th century, are no longer possible today.

Similarly, of the many and varied external possessor constructions once found in English only the type illustrated in (6) could be said to be still productive. Unlike their usual German equivalents featuring an external dative object, the productive type in English entails the sequence S-V-O. This test reveals example (7) to be a constructional relic. In addition, even more complex examples like (8) were abandoned long ago without leaving a trace.

(6) He patted me on the shoulder. (7) They stared me in the face. (8) …, hee rounds Sebastiano this answer in his eare, … (EEPF, 1635)

Finally, in what has been referred to as the Great Complement shift, the syntactic frames S-V-O + infinitive and S-V-O + that-clause have also become more specialized. In the latter case, in particular, several verb classes once associated with this frame have largely dropped out of use, and their functions have in part been taken over by specific gerundial constructions amongst others. Crucially, however, originally available that-clauses not preceded by a direct object have mostly survived intact. Compare, for instance, the situation in (9). Unlike German, English has thus evolved a sharp contrast between that-clauses with or without preceding objects.

(9) She answered (*her mother) that she would be back by noon. In addition to the quotations in OED2, the database used for this study consists of a number of British and American newspapers, the BNC and a collection of historical datasets provided by Chadwyck-Healey and the Gutenberg project. Hawkins, John A. (1986) A Comparative Typology of English and German: Unifying the

Contrasts. London and Sydney: Croom Helm. Rohdenburg, Günter (1995) “On the replacement of finite complement clauses by

infinitives in English”. English Studies 76: 367-388. Rohdenburg, Günter (forthcoming) “On the changing status of that-clauses”. In:

Hundt, Marianne (ed.) The Syntax of Late Modern English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

195

The rise of the English language in Ireland

Patricia Ronan Université de Lausanne

Keywords: language contact, language shift, Ireland, social factors It is the aim of this study to trace the rise of the English language in Ireland and to correlate this process with Schneider’s dynamic model of the development of New Englishes (Schneider 2003).

Ireland had had a stable linguistic and socio-historical structure until the arrival of the first Anglo-Norman settlers in the 12

th century. By the end of

the 19th

century, almost complete language shift to English had taken place. In comparison with the other language shift situations described in Schneider’s model, this process was comparatively long drawn out in Ireland, having taken the best part of seven centuries, and it was also completed rather haltingly. Especially during the late Medieval period the rise of the English language experienced repeated drawbacks (Kallen 1994, Hickey 2007). The paper relates developments in social power structures to the progress of the language shift to English. Socio-historical data will be evaluated and correlated with data from Middle-, Early Modern-, Late Modern and Modern English. Data samples will be taken from historical and contemporary corpora (Hickey 2003, Kallen and Kirk 2008). The findings will show how the changes in socio-economic power relations between the two languages and population groups involved may be considered a relevant factor for the progress of language shift in Ireland. Hickey, Raymond 2003. Corpus Presenter. Software for language analysis.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hickey, Raymond. 2007. Irish English. History and present-day forms. Cambridge

Cambridge University Press. Kallen, Jeffrey L. 1994. ‘English in Ireland’. In Burchfield, R. (ed.) The Cambridge

History of the English language, vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 148-96.

Kallen, Jeffrey L and John M. Kirk. 2008. ICE-Ireland: A User’s Guide. Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona.

Schneider, Edgar W. 2003. ‘The Dynamics of New Englishes: From Identity Construction to Dialect Birth’, Language 79.2, 233-81.

196

It is common in several of the provincial dialects of England: English regional material in John Russell Bartlett’s

Dictionary of Americanisms

Javier Ruano-García University of Salamanca

Keywords: Dictionary of Americanisms, English regional sources, dialect lexicography, Late Modern Englishes In the Introduction to the first edition of the Dictionary of Americanisms (1848) John Russell Bartlett explains that “In preparing this work, I have examined all the English provincial glossaries, and the principal English dictionaries; which it was necessary to do in order to know what words and phrases were still provincial in England” (xxvii). Bartlett’s motivation in undertaking his project was to give a detailed account of the words that were peculiar to the US by the middle of the nineteenth century, including not only those words of American origin, but also colloquialisms “used in familiar conversation” (iv) and regional terms, since “the dialects and provincialisms of those parts of England [...] have extended to New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan” (iii). As a result, the first edition of the Dictionary includes an important number of regionalisms that were used in England in light of the evidence provided by a variety of sources representative of English dialects. The second edition issued in 1859 shows a change of policy, as it “claims to be more strictly American than the first” (v), which becomes clear with the omission of almost 800 terms in favour of those Bartlett referred to as pure Americanisms. This, as Crowell (1972: 240) points out, reflects Bartlett’s “new view of his task as a lexicographer and a new definition of the term ‘Americanism’”. Similarly, the fourth edition of 1877 built on the second of 1859 deleting a few terms, most of which were British.

This paper examines the English regional material used in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms. I look at the four editions of the dictionary and focus on the evidence furnished by six of the most relevant historical dialect glossaries and dictionaries quoted by Bartlett, namely John Ray’s A Collection of English Words not Generally Used (1674), Grose’s A Provincial Glossary (1787), Brockett’s Glossary of North Country Words (1825), Forby’s The Vocabulary of East Anglia (1830), Holloway’s A General Dictionary of Provincialisms (1838) and Halliwell’s Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words (1847). The paper addresses the following questions: (1) Bartlett’s treatment of the regional data and with which lexicographic purpose they

197

were quoted; (2) whether Bartlett relied more profusely on any of these works and, therefore, the transatlantic link made explicit for some terms was reliant on any specific source; and (3) how the change of policy observed in the second and fourth editions of the dictionary may apply to the data provided by these dialect sources. The analysis suggests the important contribution of Forby (1830) and Halliwell (1847), and how the first edition of the dictionary relied on some of these works to illustrate the English distribution of words that Bartlett found in New England. Also, the comparative study of the four editions highlights a quantitative change as regards the words and senses taken from these English sources. The analysis likewise shows how Bartlett on occasion preserved some English provincial terms and their corresponding geographic labels, but omitted the references to the English works from which they had been taken. Bartlett, John Russell. 1848. Dictionary of Americanisms. New York: Bartlett and

Welford. Bartlett, John Russell. 1859. Dictionary of Americanisms. 2nd ed. Boston: Little,

Brown & Co. Bartlett, John Russell. 1877. Dictionary of Americanisms. 4th ed. Boston: Little, Brown

& Co. Brockett, John T. 1825. A Glossary of North Country Words in Use, Newcastle upon

Tyne: Printed by T. and J. Hodgson. Crowell, Michael G. 1972. “John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms”.

American Quarterly 24(2): 228-242. Forby, Robert. 1830. The Vocabulary of East Anglia. 2 vols. London: J. B. Nichols and

Son. Grose, Francis. 1787. A Provincial Glossary. London: Printed for S. Hooper. Halliwell, James O. 1847. Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words. 2 vols. London:

John Russell Smith. Holloway, William. 1838. A General Dictionary of Provincialisms. Lewes: Sussex Press. Ray, John. 1674. A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used. London: Printed

by H. Bruges.

Null subjects in Old English: A case of diatopic variaton?

Kristian Rusten University of Bergen

The question of whether Old English (OE) allowed referential null subjects is still controversial, despite recent corpus-based investigations by Walkden

198

(2012, 2013) and Rusten (2010, 2013). Currently, three main positions are identifiable: van Gelderen (2013) argues that OE ‘is a genuine pro drop language, although the system is in decline’, while Rusten (2013: 977) argues that referential null subjects are ‘more or less extinct by the time of the extant OE texts’. Walkden (2013: 162–163) takes an intermediary position, from which it is argued that referential null subjects in OE are found only in Anglian or Anglian-influenced texts. On the basis of comparatively high frequencies for referential null subjects in such texts, Walkden argues that OE subject realisation displays diatopic variation.

This paper will present a quantitative investigation of this hypothesis. It builds on an exhaustive, contrastive survey of null and overt referential pronominal subjects as they occur in all 131 texts contained in the YCOE (Taylor et al 2003) and the YCOEP (Pintzuk & Plug 2001). The results show that the dialect-split hypothesis may be problematised: First, null subjects are exceedingly rare in the prose genre, and many of the texts which feature null subjects tend to be early. Secondly, while a number of Anglian or Anglian-influenced texts do display very high frequencies for referential null subjects (e.g. Bald’s Leechbook, Herbarium, Lacnunga, Quadrupedibus), they are all medical handbooks. This raises the possibility that their occurrence is restricted by text-type rather than dialect. The fact that a number of Anglian-influenced texts which are not medical handbooks (e.g. the Blickling Homilies, the C manuscript of Gregory’s Dialogues and the Life of St. Chad) display frequencies between 0.3%–1%, may be taken as support for this position, since these frequencies are equally low as those typically found in West Saxon texts. A similar point applies for the prose–poetry distinction, as referential null subjects are much more frequent in the poetry than the prose.

Thus, two key problems must be solved before it is possible to conclude that the occurrence of referential null subjects in OE is explainable as diatopic variation: the occurrence of such subjects is highly erratic, but they appear to cluster in (i) early texts and in (ii) particular genres. Differences in frequency could therefore be attributable to diachronic change in progress or style in addition to dialect. Gelderen, Elly van. 2013. Null subjects in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 44: 271–285. Pintzuk, Susan & Leendert Plug. 2001. The York-Helsinki parsed corpus of Old English

poetry. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang18/pcorpus.html. Rusten, Kristian A. 2010. A study of empty referential pronominal subjects in Old

English. MPhil thesis, University of Bergen. Rusten, Kristian A. 2013. Empty referential subjects in Old English prose. A

quantitative analysis. English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 94: 970–992.

199

Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk & Frank Beths. 2003. The York-Toronto-Helsinki parsed corpus of Old English prose. Online: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YCOE/YcoeHome.htm.

Walkden, George L. 2012. Syntactic reconstruction and Proto-Germanic. PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge.

Walkden, George L. 2013. Null subjects in Old English. Language Variation and Change 25: 155–178.

Binomials in several editions of an early modern almanac

Hanna Rutkowska

Adam Mickiewicz University

Keywords: binomials, Early Modern English, early printed books, corpus linguistics This contribution discusses the findings of a corpus-based, comparative case study which investigates the use of binomials in six editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes, a comprehensive compendium of prose and verse texts on a variety of subjects, e.g. astronomy, medicine, and religion, published between 1506 and 1656. My study aims mainly at identifying the word classes involved, the types of semantic relationship between the elements of binomials, as well as the modifications introduced in binomial expressions in particular editions. Apart from the description, I also focus on the reasons for the editorial changes recorded in the corpus. The phrases under analysis are often rather faithfully reproduced in the Kalender editions. However, some modifications can also be traced, and these seem to have been determined by a variety of factors, including the spelling system employed in a given publishing house, the stylistic considerations, and also by the socio-historical background, such as the English Reformation.

The employment of binomials, i.e. two coordinated and semantically linked lexemes (see Bhatia 1994, Kopaczyk 2009), is one of characteristic features of formal registers in Early Modern English (Nevalainen 1999, Adamson 1999), particularly of legal records (Bhatia 1994, Kopaczyk 2013). The present study shows that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries binomials are also abundant in less formal writings, such as almanacs, addressed to laymen and used on a daily basis. They comprise mainly pairs of nouns, and less frequently verbs and adjectives, usually coordinated by means of the conjunction and, and occasionally by or (e.g. good or bad) and nor. As regards the semantic relationship between the coordinated

200

elements, most of them are synonyms (e.g. fortunes and destinies, bound nor tied), or complement each other (e.g. old and feeble, might and will). There are also numerous instances of antonyms or words associated by contrast (e.g. body and soul, rising and descending), and occasional examples of cause-and-effect relationships (e.g. cost and charges, gathered and housed). The majority of the binomials found in the corpus are hapax legomena, but there is also a number of phrases reappear many times in the text, e.g. virtues and vices, and living and dying.

The corpus examined for the purposes of this study contains over 420 thousand words, and constitutes a database of transcriptions prepared by the present author, and based on the facsimiles available at Early English Books Online (EEBO, at http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo/). The analysed editions include those published by Pynson (1506, STC 22408), de Worde (1528, STC 22411), Powell (1556, STC 22412), Wally (c. 1585, STC 22416.5), Adams (1611, STC 22421), and Ibbitson (1656, Wing B713). Adamson, Sylvia, 1999, “Literary language”, in: Roger LASS (ed.) The Cambridge

History of the English Language. Volume III: 1476-1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 539–653.

Bhatia, Vijai, 1994, “Cognitive structuring in legislative provisions”, in: John Gibbons (ed.) Language and the Law. London: Longman, 136–155.

Jackson, Willem Alexander, Frederic Sutherland Ferguson & Katharine F. Pantzer (eds.) 1976, A short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English books printed abroad, 1475-1640, Volume 2: I–Z. London: Bibliographical Society. (STC)

Kopaczyk, Joanna, 2009, “(Multi-word) units of meaning in 16th-century legal Scots”, in: R.W., McConchie; Jukka, Tyrkkö; Alpo, Honkapohja (eds.) Selected Proceedings of the 2008 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (Hel-Lex 2). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 88-95.

Kopaczyk, Joanna, 2013, The legal language of Scottish burghs. Standardization and lexical bundles (1380-1560). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nevalainen, Terttu, 1999, “Early Modern English lexis and semantics”, in: Roger LASS (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume III: 1476-1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 332–458.

Wing, Donald Goddard, 1982–1998, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, New York: The Modern Language Association of America. (Wing)

201

The English imperative: From verb- to clause-level mood marker

Tanja Rütten

University of Cologne

The imperative is today understood as a sentence mood (e.g. in Quirk et al. 1985: 827, Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 853) that has its origins in an Old English verbal mood indicating wishes, orders and commands (comp. examples 1 and 2). While this fact is often taken for granted, our knowledge about this astonishing change from verb- to clause-level mood marker is rather poor. There are no studies that illustrate, let alone discuss, the change.

(1) Lēofan men, gecnāwaþ þæt sōð is: … nderstandaþ ēac georne þæt dēofol þās þēode nū fela gēara dwelode tō swýþe … (Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, 1014, DOEC) (2) If a man should bid his servant goe sheare all my sheepe and mark them: if that servant should shere all his sheep, and marke them …, and not marke his Lambs … doth that servant fulfill his Masters command? (Pagitt, treatise, 1645, COERP)

In my paper, I will show that the change seems to have involved the following three steps: 1. a coalescence of imperative and subjunctive mood in Middle English (cf. Fisher 1992: 249), which leaves the morphological imperative indistinct from the subjunctive. 2. a tendency to drop the subject when followed by morphological imperatives (in contrast to subjunctives, which retain an overt subject). 3. a growing focus on constituent order that eventually resulted in the imperative as a category of the sentence rather than the verb.

Simple as this may seem, there are certain oddities to be considered: For one thing, it seems that the imperative first fell together with the subjunctive. But while the subjunctive survives as a morpho-syntactic, i.e. predominantly verbal, mood marker, imperative mood shifted to the clause level. So what is the precise relationship between both the imperative and the subjunctive, and when did both go separate ways? And why?

In my paper, I will trace the change outlined above in a corpus-based study of the imperative (verb and sentence) mood in Old, Middle, and Early Modern English sermons. I will follow the three steps proposed above (syncretism, constituent order, zero subject), focusing in particular on the ways in which the imperative collides with the subjunctive in this change.

202

Fischer, Olga. 1992. “Syntax”. In: Norman Blake (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. II. Cambridge University Press. 207-408

Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Quirk, Randolph, Jeoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik and Sidney Greenbaum. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.

COERP = Corpus of English Religious Prose. Under compilation at the University of Cologne. Kohnen, Thomas, Tanja Rütten, Kirsten Gather, Dorothee Groeger and Ingvilt Marcoe.

DOEC = Dictionary of Old English Corpus

The lexical field of intellect in Old and Middle English: A pilot study

Kinga Sadej-Sobolewska University of Social Sciences, Warsaw

Keywords: intelligent, wise, Old English, Middle English, lexical field The Historical Thesaurus of English enumerates approximately 70 synonyms (including approx. 30 compounds) of the adjectives intelligent, clever, wise in Old and Middle English. Such abundance of words may be indicative of how blurred the concept of intelligence was and how many different aspects it covered. The exceptionally large number of lexemes also highlights the importance of the concept of intelligence and wisdom in Medieval England.

The aim of the present paper is to analyse the Old and Middle English synonyms of the adjectives intelligent, clever, wise with special attention paid to the position these synonyms occupied within the field. The list of lexemes will be compiled on the basis of The Historical Thesaurus of English and A Thesaurus of Old English. The quantitative study of the selected texts will indicate the central and peripheral members of the lexical field, their most frequent collocations as well as metaphorical and metonymic extensions. The collected linguistic data will show what notions the concept of intelligence and wisdom encompassed in Medieval English. The paper will also describe the semantic shifts affecting the field in question, revealing the changes to its shape in the transition from Old to Middle English. The analytical tools employed in my research will include diachronic prototype semantics (Geeraerts 1997) as well as the theory of metaphor (Lakoff 1987, Kövacses 2000). Being merely a pilot study, the present paper constitutes an introductory analysis of a larger project

203

investigating the lexical field of KNOWLEDGE in English from a diachronic perspective.

The conclusions concerning the present topic will be drawn on the basis of a corpus study. The data will be selected from such electronic texts corpora as the Chadwyck-Healey Corpus, the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose and the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. The dictionaries consulted will include the Oxford English Dictionary, Bosworth — Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary and the Dictionary of Old English.

Bosworth, Joseph & T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Available at:

http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/. Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandell Amos & Antonette diPaolo Healey. 2003. Dictionary

of Old English on CD-ROM (A-G). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Chadwyck-Healey. 1992. English Poetry Full-Text Database. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey Ltd.

Edmonds, Flora, Christian Kay, Jane Roberts & Irené Wotherspoon. 2005. A Thesaurus of Old English. Glasgow: University of Glasgow. Available at: http://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/.

Geeraerts, Dirk. 1997. Diachronic Prototype Semantics: a Contribution to Historical Lexicology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kay, Christian, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels & Irene Wotherspoon. 2013. The Historical Thesaurus of English. Glasgow: University of Glasgow. Available at: http://historicalthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/.

Kövacses, Zoltan. 2000. Metaphor. A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Markus, Manfred (ed.). 2008. Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose. Full version 2.3. Innsbruck: Department of English.

McSparran, Frances (ed.). 1999. The Middle English Compendium: Middle English Dictionary. A Hyper Bibliography of Middle English Prose and Verse. Ann Arbor: Humanities Text Initiative University of Michigan. Available at

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mec/index.html. Simpson, J. et al. (eds.). The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford

University Press. Available at http://www.oed.com.

204

Features of verbal conflict in early English debate poetry

Hanna Salmi University of Turku

Keywords: conflict talk, debate poetry, speech turns, historical dialogue analysis Despite increasing interest in conflict talk, disputes are still an understudied genre (Pagliai 2010: 63). One reason for this is the difficulty of obtaining data on real-life conflicts—a problem which can be partially solved by using constructed dialogue as the material of study, since “it reveals patterns of knowledge about the workings of real [...] disputes” (Spitz 2006: 10). For English historical linguistics, one source of such constructed literary material is debate poetry, seldom studied from a linguistic viewpoint. In this paper, a selection of medieval and early modern English debate poetry is examined with a particular focus on the ways in which conflict talk is constructed within the genre.

My approach is ‘bottom-up’, beginning with a close reading and micro-analysis of the data. I will analyse the sequential organisation of each debate: openings and closings, along with the linguistic means used to mitigate or aggravate the dispute (e.g. “impoliteness”) and the different types of moves used by the characters. The emphasis of the study is qualitative rather than quantitative. The source materials range from The Owl and the Nightingale to the early modern Saint Bernard’s Vision, and thus from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Some of these debates are quite rich in interactive and emotive features, while others are rather less expressive.

This paper will shed light on the range of discursive resources that were used for representing verbal conflict in the stylised literary form of the debate poem; it seems reasonable to assume that these would in many cases be the most salient and easily recognisable features of disputes, found also in genuine face-to-face debates. The paper also explores the variation in the degree to which these features were used in different texts. Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Studies in

interactional sociolinguistics 28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, Jonathan, and Merja Kytö. 2010. Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken

Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grimshaw, Allen D., ed. 1990. Conflict Talk: Sociolinguistic Investigations of

Arguments in Conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

205

Jucker, Andreas H., Gerd Fritz, and Franz Lebsanft, eds. 1999. Historical Dialogue Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Koch, Peter, and Wulf Oesterreicher. 1985. “Sprache der Nähe - Sprache der Distanz’: Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 1985: 15-43.

Mazzon, Gabriella. 2009. Interactive Dialogue Sequences in Middle English Drama. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 185. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Moore, Colette. 2011. Quoting Speech in Early English. Studies in English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Muntigl, Peter, and William Turnbull. 1998. Conversational structure and facework in arguing. Journal of Pragmatics 29 (3): 225-256.

Pagliai, Valentina. 2010. Introduction: Performing disputes. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20 (1): 63-71.

Spitz, Alice. 2006. Power plays — Mother-daughter disputes in contemporary plays by women: A study in discourse analysis. PhD dissertation. Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

The diachronic aspects of complement variation in two communication verbs

Mateusz Sarnecki

University of Warsaw

Keywords: complementation, statistical modelling, variation Some English verbs of communication function syntactically as a class of predicates which can be complemented with a prepositional phrase whose head is followed by about or of. Examples of such verbs include speak, talk, tell and write. Whichever of the prepositions is selected, the meanings of the resulting phrases, e.g. write about and write of, are similar in that they both introduce the topic of the communication event.

Still, in line with the cognitive linguistic principle of variation in form reflecting variation in meaning, various authors have suggested that the two prepositional heads express differing construals of the topic of communication. In the context of speak, for example, about has been characterized as indicating that the speaker is considering not only the topic itself, but also its various aspects (Dirven et al. 1982: 60, 62; Lindstromberg 2010: 207). In contrast, of can be taken to imply a more limited perspective, with the speaker focusing exclusively on the topic (Dirven et al. 1982: 27; Lindstromberg 2010: 207).

Such differences between the constructions with about and of have already been subjected to corpus-driven statistical analysis (Krawczak &

206

Glynn, in press) based on contemporary synchronic data. However, it would also be interesting to look at this variation from a diachronic perspective. Such investigation might help to demonstrate whether the posited semantic tendencies in the selection of the prepositional head have remained stable over a longer course of time, and, more generally, shed light on the historical development of the variation in question.

This study will examine prepositional complementation in two communication verbs: speak and tell. The data, which come from the period 1920s–2000s, will be extracted from the TIME Magazine corpus (Davies 2007–). The relevant samples will be subjected to usage-feature analysis (Dirven et al. 1982, Rudzka-Ostyn 1989) and annotated for various semantic and formal features, including the abstractness and countability of the topic, sentence polarity, and object length. These coded data will then serve as a basis for multivariate statistical techniques (cf. e.g. Gries 1999, 2003), including multiple correspondence analysis and binary logistic regression.

Bretones Callejas, C.M. (in press) Construals in language and thought: What shapes

what? (Amsterdam: John Benjamins) Davies, Mark (2007–) TIME Magazine Corpus: 100 million words, 1920s–2000s.

Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/time/. Dirven, René (1982) “Talk: linguistic action perspectivized as discourse”. In: R. Dirven,

L. Goossens, Y. Putsey & E. Vorlat (eds.), 37–84. Dirven, René, L. Goossens, Y. Putsey & E. Vorlat (eds.), (1982) The Scene of Linguistic

Action and its Perspectivization by speak, talk, say, and tell. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins).

Gries, Stefan T. (1999) “Particle movement: a cognitive and functional approach”, Cognitive Linguistics 10: 105–145.

Krawczak, Karolina & Dylan Glynn (in press) “Operationalising construal. Of / about prepositional profiling for cognitive and communicative predicates”. In: C.M. Bretones Callejas (ed.).

Lindstromberg, Seth (2010) English Prepositions Explained. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Vorlat, Emma (1982) “Framing the scene of linguistic action by means of speak”, in R. Dirven — L. Goossens — Y. Putsey — E. Vorlat (eds.), 9–36.

207

On the time-depth and social conditioning of binomials: The example of to have and to hold

Ursula Schaefer

TU Dresden - Universität Freiburg Keywords: binomials, cognitive linguistics, idiomaticity, philology, phraseology. All in all, phraseology as an individual field of research does not rank high in English (speaking) linguistics (cf. Norrick 2007). This is all the more surprising as idiomatic expressions, which stand at the very core of phraseology, are ubiquitous in English (and in other languages), and definitions are legion. Thus, John R. Taylor defines idioms – in accordance with many other linguists before – as “expressions which have to be specifically learned” (

32003: 223). Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., in the course of

identifying “the poetics of the mind”, emphasizes that the use of idioms very much depends on conventions that “determine the appropriateness of idioms in different social situations” (1994: 274). As Gibbs has to concede that “it is not clear what motivates the development of these conventions of usage,” he draws the conclusion that “speakers learn to use some idioms [...] simply by forming arbitrary links between an idiom, its figurative meaning, and a specific social situation” (1994: 275).

Taylor focusses on idioms because they “show that more general constructions in a language may not be able to account for the full set of expressions in a language” (

32003: 262). Gibbs, in his turn, integrates

idiomatic expressions in his cognitive theory of metaphors. Despite the diverging theoretical interests, the Taylor and Gibbs agree that the competence to use idioms appropriately is gained outside our ‘normal’ first linguistic acquisition.

In my paper I want to discuss whether Gibbs’ claim that speakers form arbitrary “links between an idiom, its figurative meaning, and a specific social situation” really holds for all idiomatic expressions. My doubts shall be substantiated with an – admittedly – outstanding example: the verbal binomial to have and to hold. I will follow the development of this expression from its earliest attested occurence in Beowulf (l. 658; with no matrimonial implications) over an early Middle English example, where it is equivalent to the verb marry, down to its firm place in the matrimonial vows in the Common Prayer Book.

My example specifically lends itself to closer scrutiny because, as of the 13th century, we seem to know its prevailing ‘social setting’, which

208

subsequently almost entirely blocks the use in other social contexts. My aim is not so much to prove any given theoretical postulates or research methods right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, but rather to illustrate how qualitative philological, text-oriented historical analyses may contribute to the intreaguing field of idiomaticity, and hence: phraseology. Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. (1994). The Poetics of the Mind. Figurative Thought,

Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: CUP 1994. Norrick, Neal R. (2007). “English Phraseology”. Phraseologie: Ein internationales

Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung – Phraseology: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. Ed. Harald Burger, Dmitrij Dobrovol’skij, Peter Kühn, and Neal R. Norrick. Vol. 2. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2007, 615 – 19.

Taylor, John R. (32003). Linguistic Categorization. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP 2003.

Entrenchment in historical corpora? Reconstructing dead authors’ minds from their usage profiles

Hans-Joerg Schmid & Anette Mantlik

Ludwig Maximilians University Munich Background and aim: Historical corpora can provide insights into pathways of the conventionalization of constructions. The diachronic development of a given construction, like language change in general, is instigated and controlled by the linguistic behaviour of language users, their E-language, a sample of which is observed in corpora. This behaviour, however, is largely determined by the way in which the construction is represented and processed by individual language users (i.e. their I-language) and activated by communicative needs in social situations. If one subscribes to a sociopragmatically-based cognitive view of I-language in terms of degrees and types of entrenchment what we find in historical corpora is ultimately an effect of how a construction was entrenched in the minds of the authors represented in the corpus and of what they were trying to get across. While at first sight it seems patently foolhardy to regard historical E-language as providing evidence for historical I-language, this paper will present and illustrate a methodology for looking inside dead authors’ minds and reconstructing degrees of entrenchment and entrenchment processes.

Data: More than 800 instances of the N+BE+that construction (the truth is that ..., the problem was that ...) from the period between 1384 and 1871 were collected from several corpora: the OED3 quotations database, the Old Bailey Corpus, the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence, the

209

Paston Letters and a 15-million word corpus extracted from Project Gutenberg. All examples were coded in terms of syntactic, lexical, semantic, textual, pragmatic and user-related variables.

Method: Multivariate statistical techniques (cluster analysis, logistic regression) are used to describe the distribution of the data and to model conventional usage at given points in time taking into consideration the full range of semantic, textual and pragmatic variables. The main point of this analysis, however, is not to predict conventional usage of the construction at earlier stages of English but to establish a benchmark against which data from individual authors can be assessed in terms of entrenchment.

Results: Detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of usage profiles of individual authors provide surprising insights into degrees to which and ways in which the construction was presumably entrenched in these authors’ minds. More concretely, the data allow for a differentiation of authors concerning chunking, schema-formation on different levels of specificity and pragmatic associations triggering the use of the construction.

A comparison between the Finnsburg Fragment and the Finnsburg Episode: An information structural approach

Claudia Schneider & Roland Schuhmann

Uni Jena - SAW Leipzig

Keywords: Linguistics, Information Structure, Old English, Finnsburg In Germanic heroic literature it is quite seldom that more than one version of a particular story is transmitted. One of these rare cases is found in the double transmission of the same event in the Finnsburg Fragment and the Finnsburg Episode. Whereas the first one is a separate text (48 lines, fragmentarily preserved because beginning and end are missing), the latter is found within the epic poem Beowulf (l. 1068-1158). Of the 90 lines of the Finnsburg Episode, only the first 17 lines (1068-1085a) correspond to the 48 lines of the Finnsburg Fragment regarding the content.

In literature there is not only a lot of discussion about the question how the two versions of the story go together, but it is also debated whether the Finnsburg Fragment is a lay (so that not much of the text would be missing) or only a short fragment of a longer epic.

In our talk we will present an analysis of selected parts of the corresponding lines from an information structural (IS) approach. In this

210

linguistic approach the text is analyzed with respect to how the relevant information is packaged (Keywords: topic, focus, givenness, definiteness, context, saliency etc.). With this analysis we may shed some light on the following questions:

1. In which way do both texts differ from each other and how can the differences be explained? 2. Can IS contribute to the question whether the Finnsburg Fragment is a lay or an epic? 3. Can IS help to favor editing variants, different interpretations of meanings, and clarify referents?

Regarding the last point, for example, with the help of the centering theory and the saliency hierarchy, it becomes clear that the first falling warrior in the Fragment has to be a Dane. The Frisians have not been mentioned in the discourse for a few sentences. Hence, their saliency is low. Therefore, it is unlikely that they are referred to by the pronoun him, which rather refers to the Danes, whose fate in the battle has been in the foreground. Cf. the example in the appendix. Fry, Donald K. (ed.). 1974. The Finnsburh Fragment and Episode. London. Fulk, Robert Dennis, and Robert E. Bjork, John D. Niles (eds.). 2008. Klaebers’s

Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 4th Ed. Toronto. Götze, Michael et al. 2007. “Information structure”. In: Interdisciplinary Studies on

Information Structure 7.147-187. Krifka, Manfred. 2007. Die Centering-Theorie (Vorlesungstexte).

online: (last access: 2 Dec 2013) http://amor.cms.huberlin.de/~h2816i3x/Lehre/2007_VL_Text/VL_Text_2007_02Centering.pdf.

Appendix Finnsburg Fragment, lines 41a-43a Hig fuhton fíf dagas, - swá hyra nán ne féol drihtgesíða, - ac hig ðá duru héoldon. Ðá gewát him wund hæleð - ...

They fought for five days - as none ot them fell of the army-companions - but they held the doors. Then a wounded warrior departed from them - …

211

212

Part-of-speech annotation in historical corpora: Comparative evaluation of tagger output

Gerold Schneider & Marianne Hundt

University of Zurich

Keywords: part-of-speech tagging, ARCHER corpus, Early and Late Modern English, semi-automated, syntactic parsing A recent version of ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers) has been part-of-speech annotated with two different tagsets, CLAWS and Penn TreeBank (Leech et al. 1994, Marcus et al. 1993). In addition, it has been parsed with a dependency parser (Schneider 2008). Part-of-speech annotation typically reaches accuracy levels of between 95 and 97% in corpora of present day English. For historical data, these levels are lower: Rayson et al. (2007) report 85% for annotated Shakespearean English after spelling normalization.

We (semi-)automatically improve part-of-speech annotation of ARCHER with the help of comparative tagger output evaluation. In this presentation, we report the results of a pilot study that makes use of mappings between CLAWS and Penn TreeBank tagging, with a focus on words where the taggers provide a set of possible annotations. In addition, we exploit parsing as a step to improve tagger output, namely those instances where the parser suggests tag corrections (Sennrich, Volk & Schneider 2013) or where we have only partially parsed sentences. The third component is to add to the lexicon on the basis of the words that are unknown to the taggers. We show that part-of-speech tagging accuracy of historical corpora can be improved with limited human intervention.

Leech, Geoffrey; Roger Garside & Michael Bryant. 1994. “CLAWS4: the tagging of the

British National Corpus. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 94), Kyoto, Japan. 622 – 628.

Marcus, Mitch; Beatrice Santorini & Mary Ann Marcinkiewicz. 1993. “Building a Large Annotated Corpus of English: the Penn Treebank.” Computational Linguistics 19:313-330.

Rayson, Paul; Dawn Archer; Alistair Baron; Jonathan Culpeper & Nicholas Smith. 2007. “Tagging the Bard: Evaluating the accuracy of a modern POS tagger on Early Modern English corpora”. In Proceedings of Corpus Linguistics 2007, July 27–30, University of Birmingham, UK.

Schneider, Gerold. 2008. Hybrid Long-Distance Functional Dependency Parsing. Doctoral Thesis, Institute of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich.

213

Schneider, Gerold. 2012. “Adapting a parser to historical English”. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, Volume 10: Outposts of Historical Corpus Linguistics: From the Helsinki Corpus to a Proliferation of Resources.

Sennrich, Rico; Martin Volk & Gerold Schneider. 2013. “Exploiting Synergies Between Open Resources for German Dependency Parsing, POS-tagging, and Morphological Analysis”. In Proceedings of RANLP 2013, Hissar, Bulgaria.

Article choice in Early Middle English

Annina Seiler

University of Zürich The functional shift from demonstrative determiner to definite article in English is assigned to the Old English period (Sommerer 2011, Crisma 2011), to the transition period between Old and Middle English (cf. Traugott 1982: 250), or to the later ME period (Philippi 1997). Even in Present-Day English, the grammaticalization process of the article system is incomplete since (in)definiteness is not obligatorily marked on all NPs. The development of the definite article is closely linked to the emergence of the indefinite article, which evolves from the numeral ān (Hopper & Martin 1987). This paper investigates how the choice of determiner (definite article, indefinite article, bare NP) is motivated in early Middle English texts, taking into account semantic-pragmatic features such as definiteness, specificity, and countability, but also the syntactic structure of the noun phrase. Based on the data provided by the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME), diatopic, diachronic and diastratic variation of article use is analysed. The Early Middle English period represents one of the focal points in the development of the article system. Hence, the study contributes to an understanding of the triggers that determine article choice in the history of English and it ties in with work done on other language stages (e.g. by Sommerer 2011) as well as with studies analysing the formal side of the development (e.g. McColl Millar 2000a). The study is part of a larger project looking into both the definite and indefinite articles in conjunction with related phenomena such as the development of the demonstrative that, the differentiation of that and this as well as strong and weak adjective declension in the Middle English period. Crisma, Paola. 2011. ‘The emergence of the definite article in English: A contact-

induced change?’ In P. Sleeman & H. Perridon (eds.), The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic: Structure, Variation, and Change. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 175-192.

214

Hopper, Paul & Janice Martin. 1987. ‘Structuralism and diachrony: The development of the indefinite article in English. In A. G. Ramat, O. Carruba & G. Bernini (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 295-304.

McColl Millar, R. 2000a. System Collapse System Rebirth. Bern: Lang. McColl Millar, R. 2000b. ‘Some suggestions for explaining the origin and

development of the definite article in English.’ In O. Fischer, A. Rosenbach & D. Stein (eds.), Pathways of change. Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 275-310.

Philippi, Julia. 1997. ‘The rise of the article in the Germanic languages.’ In A. van Kemenade & N. Vincent (eds.), Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change. Cambridge: CUP. 62-93.

Sommerer, Lotte. 2011. Old English se: From Demonstrative to Article. A Usage-based Study of Nominal Determination and Category Emergence. Unpublished PhD thesis.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1982. ‘From propositional to textual and exressive meanings: Some semantic-pragmatic aspects of grammaticalisation. In W. P. Lehmann & Y. Malkiel (eds.), Perspectives on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 245-271.

Structural features as predictors for that/zero variation in mental state verbs (MSVs): A diachronic corpus-based multivariate analysis

Christopher Shank & Koen Plevoets

Bangor University - University of Ghent

Most of the attention following Rissanen (1991) and Finnegan and Biber’s (1995) seminal research on the rise and predominance of the zero-complementizer form as an object-clause link in PDE has focused on the mental state verbs (i.e. think and know) while considerably less has been directed at the equivalent claims and conclusions made regarding other verbs in this domain.

(1) Well, Suphalia, I think that/zero you cannot make a better choice; but you will not attend. (CoHAE: 1812)

(2) Beraldo I know that/zero there was a time when Hippolito feared

nothing but dishonour. (CoHAE: 1810)

This paper examines the diachronic development of that/zero complementation alternation seen in ten mental state verbs (MSVs) viz. think, suppose, believe, imagine, expect, guess, feel, know, understand and realize. We build upon previous work and related findings/claims by

215

exploring the diachrony of that/zero complementizer variation in this large MSP set from 1640-2012. Using Wordsmith, a total of 65,000 hits (for all 10 verbs) were randomly extracted from separate parallel spoken and written corpora: CEEC and Old Bailey Corpora (1640-1913), CMET and CLMETEV (1640-1920), London Lund (1960-1990), ANC (1990 - 1993), COHAE (1810-2012), BNC spoken (1980-1993) COCAE (1994-2009) and the Alberta Unset (2010-2010) corpus. All of matrix +complement that/zero constructions were coded for 28 structural variables including person, tense, polarity, and presence of modal auxiliaries, syntactic complexity, and complement clause subjects. Statistically sufficient sample sizes (n>40) for all historical periods were extracted and a diachronic multivariate stepwise regression analysis is used to examine the statistical significance of 13 structural factors (as summarized in Kaltenböck 2004 and presented in Torres Cacoullos and Walker 2009) in regards to the selection of that/zero development in both spoken and written genres for all ten verbs.

The results reveal varying degrees of significance for each of the 13 matrix and complement clause features, however; stronger significance and implications are revealed when additional variables (e.g. polarity, length of the subject, the effect of time as a variable etc.) are incorporated via a ‘weighted’ variable analysis. These findings are used to identify the structural factors which are diachronically significant in predicting the presence of the zero complementizer form within this set of MSVs and to set up a discussion concerning the implications for using this type of statistically driven diachronic approach.

Finnegan, Edward & Biber, Douglas 1995. “That and Zero complementizers in Late

Modern English: exploring Archer from 1650-1990, in Aarts, Bas; Meyer, Charles, M. (Eds.) The verb in contemporary English. Theory and description. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kaltenbock, Gunther. 2004. “That or no that – that is the question. On subordinator suppression in extraposed subject clauses”, Vienna English Working Papers 13 (1): 49-68.

Rissanen, Matti (1991) On the history of that / zero in object clause links in English. In Aijmer, K. & Altenberg, B. (eds.), English corpus linguistics: Studies in honour of Jan Svartvik. London: Longman. 272-289.

Thompson, Sandra A. & Mulac, Anthony (1991) A quantitative perspective on the grammaticalization of epistemic parentheticals in English. In Traugott, E. C. & Heine, B. (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 313-339.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Dasher, Richard B. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 96.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Torres Cacoullos, Rena & Walker, James A. (2009) On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas: A variationist study of that. Linguistics 47(1): 1-43.

216

Van Bogaert, Julie (2010) A constructional taxonomy of I think and related expressions: Accounting for the variability of complement-taking mental predicates. English Language and Linguistics 14(3): 399-427.

Diachronic aspects of shell noun constructions: With a focus on the bottom line is (that)

Reijrou Shibasaki Meiji University

This study is aimed to investigate one specific construction in spoken-oriented discourse, i.e. the bottom line is (that) and its variant forms, especially in the history of American English, mainly based on The Corpus of Historical American English 1810-2009 and The Corpus of Contemporary American English 1990-2012. Similar expressions such as the fact is (that), the thing is (that), the point is (that), to name but a few, have one common syntactic structure preceded by the determiner the and possibly prenominal modifiers, whereas followed by the copula be and at times by a non-relative that-clause. Types of nouns used in this specific construction are called ‘shell nouns’ (Schmid 2000); the construction with these nouns is thus called the shell noun construction.

According to The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), bottom line is considered to have the following meanings: “orig. U.S., the last line of a profit-and-loss account, showing the final profit (or loss); fig., the final analysis or determining factor; the point, the crux of the argument.” The last meaning ‘the point, the crux of the argument’, which is figuratively derived from the semantics of profit and loss accounting, is attested in the shell noun construction. Online Etymology Dictionary tells us that this figurative meaning started from 1967; the earliest example of this construction in OED traces back to 1982.

The results from the corpus surveys give support for the constructional development of the bottom line is (that) from the 1970s to the present, increasingly frequent in more recent years; an increase in productivity is a key feature of the nature and development of a construction (Trousdale 2008). Furthermore, the construction began with the main clause type, i.e. the bottom line is that-complement, whilst rendering the parenthetical type, i.e. the bottom line is,… in the 1980s onward, i.e. a functional expansion of main clauses as seen in the advent of the parenthetical type (Bybee 2001). However, the bottom line is (that) cannot be viewed as fully syntactically mobile because all the examples in the corpora are found to

217

occur just in front of the speaker’s statement, not in the clause-medial or in the clause-final position (cf. Brinton 2008). In a nutshell, the bottom line is (that) is specialized in front of the speaker’s statement with a variety of interactive functions such as ‘introductory’ (Curzan 2012) and ‘anticipatory, projecting’ (Hopper and Thompson 2008) at the initial position of talk. At the terminal position, speakers (or writers) instead utilize another type of shell noun constructions, i.e. that’s the bottom line, which summarizes what is uttered in the preceding discourse. Constructions are formed and progress in a network not in isolation, and their usage and development are discourse-based.

Brinton, Laurel J. 2008. The comment clause in English. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Bybee, Joan. 2001. “Main clauses are innovative, subordinate clauses are

conservative.” In Complex sentences in grammar and discourse, eds. by Joan Bybee and Michael Noonan, 1-17. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Curzan, Anne. 2012. “Revisiting the reduplicative copula with corpus-based evidence.” In The Oxford handbook of the history of English, eds. by Terttu Nevalainen and Elizabeth C. Traugott, 211-221. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hopper, Paul J. and Sandra A. Thompson. 2008. “Projectability and clause combining in interaction.” In Crosslinguistic studies of clause combining, ed. by Ritva Laury, 99-123. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php). Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2000. English abstract nouns as conceptual shells. Berlin: Mouton

de Gruyter. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2009. 2nd ed. on CD-ROM Version 4.0 and online

version. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trousdale, Greame. 2008. “Constructions in grammaticalization and lexicalization.” In

Constructional approaches to English grammar, eds. by Greame Trousdale and Nikolas Gisborne, 33-67. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

The emergence of English reflexive verbs: An analysis based on the Oxford English Dictionary

Peter Siemund

University of Hamburg Present-Day English is generally assumed to possess only a handful of lexicalized reflexive verbs (absent oneself from, pride oneself on, etc.) and to use reflexive pronouns neither for the marking of motion middles nor the derivation of anticausative (decausative) verbs. Such middle uses of reflexive markers (non-argument reflexives) are widespread in other

218

European languages. Based on corpus evidence, Geniušienė (1987), Peitsara (1997), and Siemund (2010) demonstrate that English reflexive pronouns do occur in these functions and offer extensive lists of the verbs involved. I here follow up the historical development of these verbs from Middle English to Present-Day English. My analysis is based on a survey of the relevant verb entries in the Oxford English Dictionary (222 verbs), complemented by an examination of the OED quotation base. My study shows that the number of reflexive verbs in English has gradually, but steadily, increased since the emergence of complex reflexives (myself, yourself, etc.) in Middle English. They often result from lexicalization processes, but the data also show more regular patterns indicative of grammatical processes. The Oxford English Dictionary proves to be a rich and highly valuable data source for carrying out serious grammatical analyses.

Geniušienė, Emma. 1987. The Typology of Reflexives. Berlin: Mouton. Peitsara, Kirsti. 1997. The development of reflexive strategies in English. In Matti

Rissanen, Merja Kytö & Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.), Grammaticalization at Work. Studies of Long-term Developments in English, 277–370. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Siemund, Peter. 2010. Grammaticalization, lexicalization and intensification. English itself as a marker of middle situation types. Linguistics 48(4), 797–836.

He luuede abstinenciam: Code-switching and language-mixing in post-Conquest texts

Janne Skaffari

University of Turku

Keywords: code-switching, early Middle English, multilingual practices, post-Conquest England In the last two decades, historical linguists have been paying increasing attention to code-switching in texts composed and/or copied in medieval and early modern England (for an overview of the field and a number of papers reporting original research, see Schendl & Wright (eds.) 2011). Most scholars have explored material produced in the late Middle English period or thereafter, with code-switching between English and Latin or French, or in some cases between all three languages. The practices of the earlier periods have had much less coverage (see, however, e.g. Schendl 2005 and the diachronic survey from ICEHL 13 subsequently published as Pahta &

219

Nurmi 2006). The paper proposed for ICEHL 18 will examine types and patterns of code-switching and language-mixing in post-Conquest England, up to the early thirteenth century, a period thus far overlooked in historical code-switching research.

Code-switching is witnessed in early Middle English sources in a variety of forms (from intrasentential single-word switches to longer units appearing intersententially) and functions (from text-organizing to authority-encoding). While many switching patterns may be conventionalized and formulaic, there are also more creative insertions of non-English words, phrases and passages into the English matrix. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the embedded language is Latin. Sometimes switches into Latin are cushioned by “English support” (Diller 1997-98), which raises a variety of questions about the reception and use of multilingual texts by their readers.

The forms and functions of code-switching will be illustrated with data collected both from the best-known texts of the period, the Ancrene Wisse and the Peterborough Chronicle, and from material less widely researched before, such as the Vices and Virtues dialogue. Moreover, attention will be paid to multilingual manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and texts with English as the embedded language. The proposed paper will help to place early Middle English code-switching patterns on a continuum of multilingual practices from those already recorded in the preceding Old English period to those observed in later texts.

Diller, Hans-Jürgen. 1997-98. Code-switching in medieval English drama. Comparative

Drama 31 (4), 506-537. Pahta, Päivi & Arja Nurmi. 2006. Code-switching in the Helsinki Corpus: A thousand

years of multilingual practices. In Ritt et al. (eds.). Medieval English and its Heritage: Structure, Meaning and Mechanisms of Change. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 203-220.

Schendl, Herbert. 2005. ‘Hec sunt prata to wassingwellan’: Aspects of code-switching in Old English charters. Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 5.

Schendl, Herbert & Laura Wright (eds.). 2011. Code-Switching in Early English. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

220

Particle placement in nineteenth-century English: A multi-factorial study

Erik Smitterberg Uppsala University

Keywords: Late Modern English, particle placement, multi-factorial analysis, corpus linguistics Transitive phrasal verbs allow two different word orders: the adverbial particle may either precede the object, as in She put down the book, or follow it (e.g. She put the book down). As Gries’s (2003) multi-factorial analysis of Present-day English demonstrates, speakers’ word-order choices in this regard are influenced by a large number of factors, such as the length of the object and whether or not the referent of the object has been mentioned in the preceding discourse. However, less is known about particle placement in the Late Modern English period.

The aim of this corpus-based study is to answer two research questions:

(1) What linguistic variables influence particle placement in nineteenth-century English?

(2) Do the extralinguistic parameters of time and genre influence particle placement in a way that is independent of the linguistic factors investigated?

Previous research (Akimoto 1999; Smitterberg 2007) indicates that the pattern in She put the book down gained ground during the 1800s. Moreover, Smitterberg’s (2007) monofactorial analyses demonstrate that several linguistic factors which Gries (2003) showed are influential in Present-day English also appear to affect particle placement in nineteenth-century data. This paper adds to such previous findings by presenting the results of a multi-factorial analysis that will show which of the linguistic factors investigated have an independent effect on particle placement in nineteenth-century English. Furthermore, the inclusion of the variables of time and genre in the analysis will indicate whether apparent stylistic variation and diachronic change in particle placement are independent of the linguistic factors or whether such effects in the data are due to shifting proportions of variants of the linguistic variables.

The data for this study are drawn from A Corpus of Nineteenth-century English (CONCE) and the Corpus of Nineteenth-century Newspaper English (CNNE). CONCE includes both informal, speech-related genres such as drama comedy and formal expository prose like scientific writing; it is thus

221

a suitable source of data for a study of stylistic variation. As regards CNNE, newspaper language has been shown to be in the forefront of important processes of language change in Late Modern and Present-day English, such as colloquialization and densification (see e.g. Hundt and Mair 1999; Leech et al. 2009). It is thus hoped that the inclusion of CNNE in the study will add significantly to the picture of linguistic variation and change in particle placement. Akimoto, Minoji. 1999. “Chapter 7: Collocations and Idioms in Late Modern English”.

In: Brinton, Laurel J., and Minoji Akimoto (eds.), Collocational and Idiomatic Aspects of Composite Predicates in the History of English. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 207–238.

CNNE = The Corpus of Nineteenth-century Newspaper English, being compiled by Erik Smitterberg.

CONCE = A Corpus of Nineteenth-century English, compiled by Merja Kytö and Juhani Rudanko.

Gries, Stefan Thomas. 2003. Multifactorial Analysis in Corpus Linguistics: A Study of Particle Placement. New York and London: Continuum.

Hundt, Marianne, and Christian Mair. 1999. “ ‘Agile’ and ‘Uptight’ Genres: The Corpus-based Approach to Language Change in Progress”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 4 (2), 221–242.

Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair, and Nicholas Smith. 2009. Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smitterberg, Erik. 2007. Particle Placement in Nineteenth-century English. Paper presented at the Third Late Modern English Conference, Leiden, 30 August–1 September 2007.

Diversity between panels of the Franks Casket: Spelling and runic paleography

Helena Sobol

University of Warsaw

Keywords: Franks Casket, Old English, runes, spelling, paleography The Franks Casket is a whalebone box measuring 23 x 19 x 13 cm, dated to about 700 AD by the majority view, though a persuasive dissenting view has been expressed in Vandersall (1972). Its panels contain images of scenes from the Judeo-Christian tradition, Germanic mythology and Roman legend, surrounded by mainly runic (three words are in Roman letters)

222

inscriptions amounting to about 59 words, predominantly in Early Old English (five words are in Latin).

The systematic differences between the panels have been noticed by scholars examining the Casket since the pioneering studies by Napier (1901) and Viëtor (1901). Yet these differences have never called into question the standard procedure of explaining the difficulties of one panel basing on the data provided by another. The present paper aims at a re-examination of the methodological soundness of this approach; another aim is to add to our understanding of early Anglo-Saxon runic culture. In order to do so, the paper looks at the panels as coherent units which were consciously combined to create a composite whole, and not just as elements of the same work. The approach adopted here resembles the one used in studies of medieval anthologies, which are complex manuscripts composed of coherent units.

When seen is this light, the panels show a large enough differentiation of spelling and paleographical features to exclude the possibility of a single author for the whole Casket and the texts inscribed on it. Surprisingly the only recent scholar to study the paleographical aspects of these inscriptions, Klein (2009), dismisses such a possibility in the face of evidence. What is more, the content of the inscriptions also provides evidence against the – usually assumed – knowledge of the names of the runic characters among the early Anglo-Saxons. This in turn undermines the widely accepted explanation provided by Ball (1974) of the cryptic runes used on the right panel.

Ball, Christopher J.E. 1974. ‘Franks Casket: right side — again’. English Studies 55:6.

512. Klein, Thomas. 2009. ‘Anglo-Saxon literacy and the Roman letters on the Franks

Casket’. Studia Neophilologica 81. 17–23. Napier, Arthur Sampson. 1901. ‘Contributions to Old English literature: 2. The Franks

Casket’. in Ker, William Paton et al. (eds.). An English miscellany presented to Dr. Furnivall in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday. Oxford: Clarendon. 362-381.

Vandersall, Amy L. 1972. ‘The date and provenance of the Franks Casket’. Gesta 11.2. 9-26.

Viëtor, Wilhelm. 1901. The Anglo-Saxon runic casket. Marburg: Elwert.

223

Relations and news: Textual labels in the titles of early modern news pamphlets

Carla Suhr

University of Turku

Keywords: titles, textual labels, pamphlets, genre The book historian Eleanor Shevlin claims that “titles embody the potential to illuminate not just individual works, but reading processes, authorial composition, publishing practices, marketing trends, and generic transformations as well” (1999: 43-44). In the past few years, linguists have picked up on several of these aspects of titles. They have taken notice especially of the potential of textual labels given in titles to carry genre expectations (see Ratia 2013, Suhr 2011). At the same time, linguists have also begun to recognize that visual features of a page can carry linguistic meanings or aid the reading comprehension of a text (see McConchie 2013, Suhr 2011); other studies have acknowledged the competition between marketing trends and what Shevlin (1999: 43) calls the contractual nature of the title (see Tyrkkö, Marttila & Suhr 2013).

As yet, linguistic studies of titles and title-pages have been based on impressions derived from very small data sets (McConchie 2013, Ratia 2013; see Suhr 2011 for a slightly larger data set). It has been noted that only in the latter half of the seventeenth century were textual labels highlighted on the title-page by larger type size or different type; earlier title-pages attracted readers primarily by their visual aspects (Suhr 2011). This paper is a pragmatic examination of the textual labels and visual features in the titles and title-pages of over 50 early modern popular news pamphlets dealing with storms, monsters and the devil. The textual labels of both primary and secondary titles will be catalogued as well as the topical labels and textual tags such as “or” or “being” that often introduce secondary titles. Visual highlighting of labels (or lack of it) will also be noted. The results will be compared with those of two earlier studies (Ratia 2013, Suhr 2011), in order to verify the timing of the turn from visual to verbal title-pages, and to gain a better understanding of how the structure and labels of early modern news pamphlet titles reflect generic expectations.

Genette, Gerard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Transl. Jane E. Lewin.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

224

McConchie, R.W. 2013. Some reflections on Early Modern printed title-pages. Principles and Practices for the Digital Editing and Annotation of Diachronic Data (Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 14) ed. by Jukka Tyrkkö & Anneli Meurman-Solin. Helsinki: VARIENG. http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/14/mcconchie/

Ratia, Maura. 2013. Investigating genre through title-pages: Plague treatises of the Stuart period in focus. Principles and Practices for the Digital Editing and Annotation of Diachronic Data (Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 14) ed. by Jukka Tyrkkö & Anneli Meurman-Solin. Helsinki: VARIENG.

http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/14/ratia/ Shevlin, Eleanor. 1999. Shevlin, Eleanor F. 1999. “To reconcile book and title, and

make ‘em kin to one another”: The evolution of the title’s contractual functions. Book History 2 (1): 42-77.

Suhr, Carla. 2011. Publishing for the Masses: Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique 83). Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.

Tyrkkö, Jukka, Marttila, Ville & Suhr, Carla. 2013. The Culpeper Project: Digital editing of title-pages. Principles and Practices for the Digital Editing and Annotation of Diachronic Data (Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 14) ed. by Jukka Tyrkkö & Anneli Meurman-Solin. Helsinki: VARIENG. http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/14/tyrkko_marttila_suhr/

On MV/VM order in Old English long-line poetry

Hironori Suzuki Daito Bunka University

Keywords: Old English poetry, word order, auxiliary, alliteration, metre Old English poetry is generally considered to have been composed in loose syntax. Momma (1997) argued for a much stricter prosodical syntax, challenging the famous syntactic laws of Kuhn (1933). However, even under Momma’s rules, there still seems to be much freedom, even apparent randomness, in the word order of the modal auxiliary (M) and non-finite verbs (V).

Another approach to the composition of Old English poetry is the oral-formulaic theory proposed by scholars such as Magoun (1953) and Fry (1967). A recent study along these lines is Ogura (2006), who investigates the Meters of Boethius and concludes that they are so formulaic as to fit the mould of Anglos-Saxon poetry. Again, within this formulaic theory, both MV and VM orders can be found, apparently pretty randomly.

225

In a paper presented at the ICEHL 12, I discussed factors affecting the word order of M and V in Beowulf. The results indicated that alliteration and the scope of each half-line boundary are in fact the crucial factors in determining the MV/VM word order.

Meanwhile, some scholars, such as Getty (2002), argue that instead it is verb forms that dictate the word order. However, the results of my recent survey (2010) of Meters of Boethius indicate that verb forms are not a major factor in determining word order, and that instead alliteration is a much more important factor.

The purpose of this paper is to test my theory regarding long-line poetic texts: i.e. the longer the line, the greater the chance of there being alliteration. This study again suggests that, rather than verb forms exerting much influence, it is alliteration and the scope of each half-line boundary that are crucial in determining word order across all auxiliary types In Old English poems, including long-line ones.

In addition, a closer examination of the instances of the VM order with both of them alliterating suggests that the distinction between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ alliteration (‘major’ refers to alliteration of open class words; ‘minor’ to alliteration of closed class words) might be a profitable one to make since ‘major’ alliteration seems to have more influence on word order than ‘minor’ alliteration, which may be no more than accidental or purely ornamental alliteration.

These findings would suggest that Old English verse syntax was subject to stricter regulation than has so far been acknowledged.

Fry, Donald K. 1967. “Old English Formulas and Systems”. English Studies 68, 193-

204. Getty, Michael. 2002. The Metre of Beowulf: A Constraint-Based Approach. Berlin and

New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Klaeber, Fr., ed. 1950. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. Boston: Heath. Krapp, George P. and Elliot V. K. Dobbie, eds. 1931-1953. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic

Records, I-VI. New York: Columbia University Press. Kuhn, Hans. 1933. “Zur Wortstellung und –betonung im Altgermanischen”. Beiträge

zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 57, 1-109. Magoun, Jr., Francis P. 1953. “The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative

Poetry”. Speculum 28, 446-467. Momma, Haruko. 1997. The Composition of Old English Poetry. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press. Ogura, Michiko. 2006. “The Making of the Meters of Boethius”. Bonds of Language: A

Festschrift for Dr. Yasuaki Fujiwara on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday ed. by Ushiro, Yuji, Satoshi Ota, Shin-ichi Tanaka, Eiji Yamada, Kazuaki Ota, Naohiro Takizawa, and Koichi Nishida, 43-57. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.

226

Suzuki, Hironori. 2004. “On MV/VM order in Beowulf “. New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics: Selected Papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21-36 August 2002 Volume 1: Syntax and Morphology ed. by Kay, Christian, Simon Horobin, and Jeremy Smith, 195-213. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Suzuki, Hironori. 2006. “Effect of Alliteration on Constructions with Complex Predicates in Old English Poetry”. Textual and Contextual Studies in Medieval English ed. by Michiko Ogura, 179-192. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Suzuki, Hironori. 2010. “Metrical Influences on the AV/VA Orders in Old English Poetry”. Aspects of the History of English Language and Literature: Selected Papers Read at SHELL 2009, Hiroshima ed. by Osamu Imahayashi, Yoshiyuki Nakao, and Michiko Ogura, 199-212. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Technical vocabulary and medieval text types: A semantic field approach

Louise Sylvester

University of Westminster

Keywords: vocabulary, technical, text type, semantic field, lexical hierarchy The text base of the three-year Leverhulme-funded project, Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources (Universities of Westminster and Manchester), allows us to focus on the vocabulary of a single semantic field across a range of text types in order to investigate whether we can trace the evolution of a technical lexis in this domain and how the different text types contribute to or make use of varying degrees of technicality in order to establish the conventions of their genres. This paper seeks to discover in what sense we can mark vocabulary items as technical. Distribution may be taken as a diagnostic factor: vocabulary shared across the widest range of text types may be assumed to be both prototypical for the semantic field, but also the most general and therefore least technical since lexical items derive at least part of their meaning from context, a wider range of contexts implying a wider range of senses. Another way of addressing the question of technicality is to classify the lexis into semantic hierarchies: in the terms of componential analysis, more components of meaning puts a term lower in the semantic hierarchy and flags it as having a greater specificity of sense, and thus as more technical. We can then interrogate the various text types, comparing the number of lexical items (adjusted for overall word counts) at different levels within the hierarchy. For this paper four text types from the 12

th-14

th centuries have been

selected: wills, sumptuary laws, petitions, and romances. The vocabulary relating to dress and textiles has been extracted from the texts and the

227

lexical items categorised as follows: shared across all four text types; two or all three of the administrative text types, but not the literary one; the romance and at least one other; or restricted to one. The lexis of each text type will be classified into a semantic hierarchy in order to investigate the relationship between text type requirements and technicality of lexis. The notion of technicality has featured prominently in theories about linguistic choices in late medieval British texts (see e.g. Wright 1995 and for a different view Trotter 2011): a more precise understanding will allow us to address questions relating to lexical choice, code choice in mixed language texts, and the requirements and functions of text types. Sylvester, Louise, Mark Chambers and Gale R Owen-Crocker eds. Forthcoming

Medieval Dress and Textiles: A Multilingual Anthology of Sources. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer

Trotter, David 2011 ‘Language Labels, Language Change, and Lexis’. In Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours ed. Christopher Kleinhenz & Keith Busby. Turnhout: Brepols, 43-61

Wright, Laura 1995 ‘A Hypothesis on the Structure of Macaronic Business Writing’. In Medieval Dialectology ed. Jacek Fisiak. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 309-321

Typological profiling: Analyticity versus syntheticity between Middle English and Present-Day English

Benedikt Szmrecsanyi University of Leuven

Keywords: analytic, synthetic, typology, drift, gramar No one interested in typological change in the history of English will manage to avoid the terms ANALYTIC and SYNTHETIC, terminology that goes back to August Wilhelm von Schlegel (Schlegel 1818). The textbook view is that English is supposed to have changed from a rather synthetic language – i.e. one that relies heavily on inflections to code grammatical information – in Old English times into a rather analytic language that draws on word order and function words to convey grammatical information. The wholesale loss of nominal and verbal inflections that started towards the end of the Old English period, so the textbook story goes, has set in motion a long-term drift towards analyticity that is still in operation today. By way of a reality check, we adopt terminology, concepts, and ideas developed in quantitative morphological typology (cf. Greenberg 1960, Szmrecsanyi 2009) to empirically investigate the coding of grammatical information in

228

English diachrony. Specifically, we utilize a quantitative, language-internal measure of OVERT GRAMMATICAL ANALYTICITY, defined as the text frequency of free grammatical markers, and a measure of OVERT GRAMMATICAL SYNTHETICITY, defined as the text frequency of bound grammatical markers. We subsequently apply these measures to the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English series, which covers the period between circa AD 1100 and AD 1900, and demonstrate that this time slice does not, in fact, exhibit a steady drift from synthetic to analytic. Rather, analyticity was on the rise until the end of the Early Modern English period, but declined subsequently; the reverse is true for syntheticity. That said, the historical variability in English in all the historical periods we investigate is not particularly dramatic. Compared to languages like Italian, German, Bulgarian and Russian, English scores consistently low on syntheticity in all these periods. An analysis of frequency fluctuation in individual markers further reveals that while in the big picture, twentieth-century English is quantitatively almost back to the analyticity-syntheticity coordinates defining twelfth-century English, modern analyticity and syntheticity seem qualitatively different from their Early English counterparts. Greenberg, Joseph H. (1960). A quantitative approach to the morphological typology

of language. International Journal of American Linguistics 26, 178-194. Schlegel, August Wilhelm von (1818). Observations sur la langue et la littérature

provençales. Paris: Librairie grecque-latine-allemande. Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt (2009). Typological parameters of intralingual variability:

grammatical analyticity versus syntheticity in varieties of English. Language Variation and Change 21, 319–353.

Phrasal verbs as an alternative to prefixed verbs in Middle English?

Harumi Tanabe Seikei University

Keywords: phrasal verbs, prefixed verbs, prefixes, replacement, Ancrene Wisse In the making of present-day English phrasal verbs, it is well-known that a plentiful number of OE prefixed verbs such as upstigan, and forðferan started to disappear in late OE as newly formed verb-particle combinations such as give up and send forth superseded them, during the normalization of fixed word order in the ME period (Kennedy 1920, Hiltunen 1983, Claridge 2000 etc; for a recent counter-argument, Thim 2013). In this

229

process, the separable and inseparable OE prefixes seem to have gradually moved from the pre-verbal to the post-verbal position and become an adverbial constituent of phrasal verbs, or may have been simply lost. As a result, Middle English saw an ample inventory of verb-particle combinations which acquired the seminal configuration of present-day phrasal verbs, the constructions highly frequent and productive in the present-day English.

Asserting that this shift is an example of drag-chain influence, Samuels (1972: 164-5) states that the prefixes were gradually replaced not, in fact, with simplex verbs, but from various sources: 1) adverbs like away, down, out, up, which had been used to reinforce prefixed verbs in special contexts; 2) fixed phrases as completive or intensives, such as hew to pieces, burn to ashes; and 3) new verbs of both foreign and native origins.

The aim of this study is to reanalyze the empirical data and especially to examine whether or not the occurrence of phrasal verbs resulted from the replacement of prefixed verbs with adverbs, and if not, what the relationship is between the prefixed verbs and phrasal verbs in ME. By comparing the data from the MSS texts of Ancrene Wisse, the Katherine Group, the Gospels and some other works written in various periods, we will show that the prefixed verbs are seldom replaced with phrasal verbs and not always with the simplex verbs but with the combination of the same prefix and a different verb or with reduced prefixes (ie. a-, be-, y-) or with entirely different verbs. Interestingly, this result is consistent with the argument in Brinton (2005: 124) that the phrasal verb exhibits a direct line of development from OE and is independent from the prefixed verbs. Brinton, Laurel J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and Language

Change. Cambridge: CUP. Claridge, Clauida. 2000. Multi-word Verbs in Early Modern English: A Corpus-based

Study, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Hiltunen, Risto. 1983. The Decline of the Prefixes and the Beginnings of the English

Phrasal Verbs: The Evidence from Some Old and Early Middle English Text. Turku: Turun Yliopisto.

Kennedy, Arthur Garfield. 1967. The Modern English Verb-Adverb Combination. New York: AMS.

Samuels, M. L. 1972. Linguistic Evolution: with Special Reference to English. Cambridge: CUP.

Thim, Stefan. 2013. Phrasal Verbs: the English Verb-Particle Construction and its History, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

230

Caxton’s use of binomials for printing or translation?

Akinobu Tani Hyogo University of Teacher Education

This study examines the use and disuse of binomials by Caxton to explore the possibility that he employed them for printing (specifically for justification) rather than for translation (meaning and style). To achieve this purpose, the present study analyses where the binomials are placed on the folios of the Tale of Melibee in Caxton’s editions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Comparing the variant readings of binomials in the tale among six manuscripts (contained in Six-text Print of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tale) and Caxton’s first edition, Tani (2010) finds that Caxton’s edition reveals a great divergence from six Chaucerian manuscripts in the treatment of binomials, and suggests the possibility that Caxton employed binomials for the purpose of printing. In her studies, Hellinga (1982, 1999) has shown that printers had to overcome physical constraints in printing, for example, in order to achieve justification. As a means of justification or aligning the end of lines, binomials could have been employed in order to lengthen a line by coordinating synonyms. On the other hand, in Caxton’s Chaucer, the original binomials in Chaucerian manuscripts could have been decomposed, leaving only one of the two original elements. This possibility has been disregarded in linguistic studies such as Leisi (1947). In the case of Caxton, who was a printer as well as a translator, due attention should be paid to this aspect of binomials to better understand his use of binomials.

Focusing on the variant readings of binomials in Caxton’s editions different from the ones in the six manuscripts, this study tries to understand (1) where they are found on the folios, (2) how they are treated by Caxton, i.e. expanded or decomposed, and (3) to what extent they are employed for printing purposes in contrast to employing them for meaning and style. In the discussion, Caxton’s use of binomials as translation methods in Paris and Vienne and Reynard will also be mentioned.

Hellinga, Lotte. 1982. Caxton in Focus: Beginning of Printing in England. London:

British Library. Hellinga, Lotte. 1999. “Printing”, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain Vol.3

1400-1557. eds Lotte Hellinga and J.B.T. Trapp. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 65-108.

Leisi, Ernst. 1947. Die tautologische Wortpaare in Caxton’s “Eneydos.” Zurich and New York: Hafner.

231

Tani, Akinobu. 2010. “Word Pairs in Chaucer’s Melibee and their Variant Readings,” in Aspects of History of English Language and Literature, eds. Osamu Imahayashi, Yoshiyuki Nakao and Michiko Ogura, 101-113. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Standardisation and the Auchinleck Manuscript

Jacob Thaisen University of Stavanger

Keywords: Language Modelling, Standardisation, The Auchinleck MS This paper discusses the standardising variety dubbed ‘Type II’ following Samuels (1963). Representatives of it are Scribes 1 and 3 of Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 19.2.1 (‘Auchinleck’), a large vernacular miscellany produced in the London area in the first half of the fourteenth century. Already A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English fitted these two scribes in locations separate albeit adjacent, and in this paper I trace the immediate exemplars from which the two scribes worked.

The spelling forms found in the immediate exemplars will always have primed even an otherwise ‘translating’ scribe, and the resulting skew of his usage in the direction of the exemplars is what makes it possible to trace them. To validate my methodology, I first report on a one-way ANOVA/Tukey’s Range Test on similarity metrics obtained with probabilistic models trained and tested on the full text of the Auchinleck manuscript divided up into 200-line segments. The populations distinguished by the statistics strongly correlate with a palaeographical division by scribe, implying that any variation observable in the spelling of a single scribe must primarily reflect what was in the exemplars when other potential variables are kept constant to the extent possible. I accordingly next repeat the study twice: for the respective stints of Scribes 1 and 3. The metrics indicate that the two scribes copied their longer texts from materials in respectively four and three different hands.

A generation ago it was thought that the Auchinleck manuscript was the product of scribes, translators, and versifiers working under the same roof and therefore perhaps especially liable to develop similar usages. It is generally accepted today, however, following Doyle and Parkes (1978) and Shonk (1985), that the manuscript provides the earliest known English example of ad hoc collaboration between freelancing professional scribes working out of separate workshops. It is perhaps less immediately obvious how this setup can have fostered or furthered standardisation of spelling.

232

When considered in combination with the nonidentical usages of Scribes 1 and 3 and the evident presence of features transferred from the exemplars, the collected evidence underlines how early a stage Type II represents in the development of standard English and how slow and erratic was the course of this development (cf. Wright 2000).

New native prefixes in Middle English

Stefan Thim University of Vienna

Keywords: word-formation, derivational morphology, analytic drift, Middle English, language contact Histories of English word formation tend to sketch neat unidirectional accounts of the development of derivational affixation in the language. Whilst Old English is justly presented as a period where native prefixation thrives, the following periods are said to be characterised by a dramatic decrease in native word formation, both with regard to the inventory of native affixes and with regard to their role in forming new words. But although these traditional accounts may to some extent be regarded as justified, a closer look reveals a number of remarkable inconsistencies. These are, one may presume, at least partly due to the predilection in linguistics for teleological paths of development, with a marked consequent neglect of historical changes that cannot be easily fitted into such a long-term picture.

The fate of the native prefixes is usually presented as sealed by the Middle English period (cf. the standard accounts by Kastovsky 1992 and Burnley 1992). Whilst many of the prefixes are phonologically and semantically weakened to a considerable degree already towards the end of the Old English period (see the discussion by Lutz 1997), the subsequent ‘depletion’ of the language of native prefixes is somehow metaphorically regarded as connected to the influx of borrowed prefixes from French and Latin, while more recently higher analyticity in word formation has been attributed to Celtic influence (cf. Tristram and Bismark 2012). These are by no means satisfactory explanations, not least since most of the borrowed Romance prefixes can clearly be shown to belong to different functional domains (Adamson 1999) and also because the notion of large-scale contact-induced analytic drift in derivational morphology (cf. Haselow

233

2012) is called into question by a number of counterexamples which are rarely discussed in this context.

The present paper focuses on the widely ignored observation that the Middle English period witnesses, in fact, the rise of a number of new native verbal prefixes, in particular down-, out-, up-. Marchand’s classic handbook (1969) treats them as elements in verbal compounds, and so do most later accounts of word-formation in present-day English. But such analyses are unsatisfactory, since the phonological, morphological and semantic properties of these elements clearly show them to be prefixes. I will discuss the Middle English development in some detail, but, perhaps more importantly, explore the implications of this development for our perception of English word formation from a typological and historical point of view. Adamson, Sylvia. 1999. “Literary Language”. In: The Cambridge History of the English

Language III: 1476–1776, ed. Roger Lass. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 539–653. Burnley, David. 1992. “Lexis and Semantics”. In: The Cambridge History of the English

Language II: 1066–1476, ed. Norman Blake. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 409–499. Haselow, Alexander. 2012. “A Typological View on the History of English Derivation”.

English Studies 93. 203–226. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1992. “Semantics and Vocabulary”. In: The Cambridge History of

the English Language I: The Beginnings to 1066, ed. Richard Hogg. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 290–408.

Lutz, Angelika. 1997. “Sound Change, Word Formation and the Lexicon: The History of the English Prefix Verbs”. English Studies 78. 258–290.

Marchand, Hans. 1969. The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation: A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach. 2nd ed., completely revised and enlarged. München: Beck.

Tristram, Hildegard L.C. and Christina Bismark. 2012. “On the Demise of Morphological Complexity in English and the Insular Celtic Languages: A Research Report”. In: Communicative Spaces: Variation, Contact, and Change (Papers in Honour of Ursula Schaefer), ed. Claudia Lange, Beatrix Weber and Göran Wolf. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. 381–399.

Outgroup construction in early medieval England

Olga Timofeeva University of Zürich

The aim of this paper is to investigate lexical and syntactic strategies of outgroup construction in Anglo-Saxon elite discourse. It focuses on the outgroups of the Viking age, from the earliest Scandinavian raids on Britain

234

in the late eighth century up to the spread of the Norman rule in the late eleventh and the takeover of the Agenvins in the mid twelfth centuries. Methodologically, this study brings in three innovative approaches. Firstly, it sees Old English and Anglo-Latin written texts from this period as a continuum of discourse practices that influence each other and change over time (Timofeeva 2013). The genres that are taken into account here are historical and religious writings, legislation and poetry in both languages. Secondly, it uses Benedict Anderson’s notion of ‘imagined communities’ (1991), understanding it as a socially and linguistically constructed group unity, imagined by the people who associate themselves with that unity, with an important proviso that in the Anglo-Saxon context it is not a national but a kingship-based imagined community that is operative. Thirdly, I bring in critical discourse studies (e.g., as summarised in van Dijk 2008) and envisage the Anglo-Saxon texts as those commissioned by the political elite – West Saxon kingship – and produced by the symbolic elite – writers, chroniclers, copyists, the clergy more generally. The Viking raids of the period provide a ‘bid for counter-power’, to which the elites have to react both militarily and ideologically. The ideologies of the Anglo-Saxon elites (and the elites to come after the Norman Conquest) are then analysed at the discourse level, concentrating on the strategies of outgroup derogation, such as criminalisation of the Vikings in historical discourse (chronicles), discrimination in legal discourse (law codes), and stereotypisation in religious discourse (homilies and ecclesiastical letters). These terms are of course applied anachronistically to medieval data, therefore the limitations of such extensions are also addressed towards the end of the paper. Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edition. London: Verso. Timofeeva, Olga (2013) “Of ledenum bocum to engliscum gereorde: Bilingual

Communities of Practice in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Communities of Practice in the History of English, ed. by Joanna Kopaczyk and Andreas H. Jucker, 201–224. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 235. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Van Dijk, Teun A. (2008) Discourse and Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

235

Left-dislocated noun phrases in the recent history of English: Evolution, genre distribution and discourse functions

David Tizón-Couto University of Vigo

Keywords: left-dislocation, Early Modern English, Late Modern English, genre, discourse functions. This investigation finds a significant decrease of Left Dislocated Noun Phrases (LDNPs such as After it was dark any Ship that came to us we engaged them) from the ME period onwards in the examples extracted from the Penn(-Helsinki) parsed corpora of Middle English (PPCME2), Early Modern English (PPCEME), Modern British English (PPCMBE) and the Early English Correspondence Corpus (PCEEC). The decrease (ME: 10.7, EModE: 2.4 and LModE: 1.3 instances per 1,000 words) could be explained as a combination of several factors such as the establishment of the syntactic and orthographical bases of the sentence (Culpeper and Kytö 2010:168) or prescriptivist criticism as regards words “put out of their proper order” (Michael 1970:471).

The analysis focuses on the genre distribution and discourse functions of the 989 LDNPs extracted from the Modern English corpora (PPCEME, PPCMBE and PCEEC). As for the distribution across historical genres of a word-order variant such as LD, commonly associated with spoken language (Geluykens 1992, Prince 1997, Gregory and Michaelis 2001), the findings suggest that the frequency of LDNPs in speech-like texts (letters and diaries) has proven lower (n.f. 0.13) than in speech-purposed (drama and sermons; n.f. 0.94) or in mixed (fiction and trial proceedings) and written (biography, educational treatise, handbook, history, law, philosophy, science and travelogue; n.f. 0.64) genres since the ME period. However, concerning their discourse function, those LDNPs that carry out an affective or highlighting function (in the sense of Keenan-Ochs and Schieffelin 1976:245; Geluykens 1992:95; Kim 1995:285), rather than a more neutral discourse-organisational role (Netz et al. 2011), have been found to be more likely in speech-like (58.2%) and speech-purposed (55.8%) genres (only 35.2% in mixed genres and 37.5% in written genres). Additional variables suggest that the form and function of LDNPs reflect differences between speech-related and purely written genres. For instance, a tally of the element which may precede LDNPs (usually a conjunction or a complementiser) shows that 34.2% of all instances of LDNPs preceded by a conversational item such as clause-level and (Culpeper and Kytö 2010:166)

236

is attested in letters and diaries (by far the highest percentage for any genre). In addition, bare LDNPs (i.e. with no previous conjunction) are most frequent in speech-purposed (70.2% in sermons and drama) and mixed texts (67.6% in fiction and trial proceedings), while those that have a previous marker of any kind are more likely to convey a highlighting functional shade (44.1% of the total for affective roles) rather than a neutral discourse-organisational function (35.8% of the total for discourse-organisational roles). These two latter findings suggest, respectively, that LDNPs seem to have been particularly useful as deictic rhetorical devices in written-to-be-spoken texts such as sermons and drama, and that other conversational clause-initial markers such as and interacted more regularly with LDNPs when the authors/speakers felt freer to innovate (i.e. in genres with less editorial control). Anagnostopoulou, Elena, Henk van Riemsdijk and Frans Zwarts, eds., 1997. Materials

on left dislocation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Culpeper, Jonathan and Merja Kytö. 2010. Early Modern English dialogues. Spoken

interaction as writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geluykens, Ronald. 1992. From discourse process to grammatical construction: on left

dislocation in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gregory, Michelle and Laura Michaelis. 2001. Topicalization and left-dislocation: a

functional opposition revisited. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1665-1706. Keenan-Ochs, Elinor and Bambi Schieffelin. 1976. Foregrounding referents: a

reconsideration of left dislocation in discourse. BLS 2: 240-257. Kim, Kyu-hyun. 1995. Wh-clefts and left-dislocation in English conversation: cases of

topicalization. In Downing, Pamela and Michael Noonan, eds., Word order in discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 247-296.

Michael, Ian. 1970. English grammatical categories and the tradition to 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Netz, Hadar, Ron Kuzar and Zohar Eviatar. 2011. A recipient-based study of the discourse functions of marked topic constructions. Language Sciences 33.1: 154-166

Prince, Ellen. 1997. On the functions of left-dislocation in English discourse. In Kamio, Akio, ed., Directions in functional linguistics. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 117-144.

Traugott, Elisabeth. 2007. Old English left-dislocations: their structure and information status. Folia Linguistica 41.3-4: 405-441.

237

On the status of *magan in Old English

Magdalena Tomaszewska University of Warsaw

Keywords: preterite-present, *magan, Old English The Old English verb *magan ‘to be strong, be able, may’ belongs to the so-called preterite-present class. Verbs in this very important but not homogeneous group have developed into the contemporary English modals, as has *magan (ModE may) or “dropped out of the language altogether or were assimilated to another more regular class of verbs” (Lightfoot 2009: 30).

The common feature of such verbs was that (a) in Old English they lacked inflectional third person singular markers (like the Present-Day English modals), and (b) their originally strong past tense forms were replaced by new weak forms throughout the paradigm. Possibly, the change was triggered by semantic factors (Hogg ─ Fulk 2011: 299) or was conditioned by pragmatic reasons.

In the 1990s some evidence was presented to support the claim that periphrastic constructions with modal auxiliaries functioned in Late Old English (cf. Traugott 1992: 186-200, Warner 1993: 2), and that *magan itself was used as an auxiliary in translations of the Latin subjunctive or future indicative in the Northumbrian Gospels (Bosworth-Toller’s ASD) or “with a verb in the infinitive understood” (OED) and elsewhere (Mitchell 1985: §1014, Visser 1963-1973: §1653). In the face of such discrepancies between the lexical and the auxiliary use of the verb, it seems reasonable to seek further evidence for both uses in Old English.

The aim of the paper is to analyze, on the basis of the corpus of The Dictionary of Old English in Electronic Form A-G, the contrasting lexical and auxiliary characteristics of *magan in Old English. The paper will discuss morphosyntactic as well as semantic issues. The expected results are (a) summarizing arguments in favour of the lexical and the auxiliary status of *magan in Old English available in various studies devoted to the subject, (b) verifying relevant arguments against the data in the corpus and commenting on the findings, and (c) presenting new evidence as regards the status of the verb. The Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online. Prague: Charles University.

Available at <bosworthtoller.com>. [ASD] Cameron, Angus et al. (2003) The Dictionary of Old English in Electronic Form A-G

238

(CD-ROM). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, University of Toronto.

The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [OED] Hogg, Richard M. & R. D. Fulk (2011) A Grammar of Old English. Vol. 2: Morphology.

Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Lightfoot, David W. (2009) “Cuing a New Grammar”. In: Ans van Kemenade &

Bettelou Los (eds.). The Handbook of the History of English (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell), 24-44.

Mitchell, Bruce (1985) Old English Syntax. Vols. 1-2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1992) “Syntax”. [In:] Norman Blake (ed.) The Cambridge

History of the English Language. Vol. 1. The Beginnings to 1066. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 168-289.

Visser, F. Th (1963-1973) An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Warner, Anthony R. (1993) English Auxiliaries. Structure and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The creation of pseudo-archaisms in the 18

th Century: A linguistic study of

Thomas Chatterton’s Rowley Poems

Oliver Traxel

University of Wuerzburg

Keywords: 18th

century, archaisms, forgery, Rowley Poems, Thomas Chatterton. Already during the Early Modern English period the occasional use of archaisms was popular among some scholars. Ben Jonson acknowledged their “Majesty” and “Authority” (Herford et al. 1947: 622), the preface to Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender attributed “great grace” to “olde and obsolete wordes” (Greenlaw et al. 1932-57: VII, 8), and Purists looked back at Chaucer in order to counteract the increasing influx of loanwords. By doing so, words or spellings could be devised that invoke the impression of belonging to an earlier language stage even if they had never existed, for which reason they may be called “pseudo-archaisms” (cf. Traxel 2012). The creation of such forms can also be observed in later periods, as seen, for example, in “Wardour-Street English” found in some historical novels especially during the 19

th century (cf. Wisner 2010) or in the mock language

of present-day medieval or Renaissance fairs. Such occurrences are generally still recognisable as obvious attempts at

evoking an archaic atmosphere due to their collocation with modern linguistic forms. However, there are also works which look as if they could

239

have been written at earlier times. These can be playful texts created for entertainment purposes, such as Wilhelm Busch’s Max & Moritz translated into Chaucerian-style Middle English (Görlach 1981), or plain forgeries meant to be passed off as original compositions. This paper focuses on a notorious case that falls into the latter category, namely poetry ascribed to a non-existent monk named Thomas Rowley, supposed to have lived in the 15

th century, which in reality was composed by 18

th-century author Thomas

Chatterton (1752-1770). Though editions of Chatterton’s Rowley Poems contain linguistic

commentaries (e.g. Skeat 1872; Taylor 1971) most studies focus on the cultural background and significance of his works (e.g. Haywood 1986; Kaplan 1989). The availability of these poems in electronic form has now made a detailed linguistic investigation feasible (e.g. <http://www.exclassics.com /rowley/rwlintro.htm>; various editions at <http://www.archive.org>). Software like Corpus Presenter (<http://www.uni-due.de/CP>) can be used to draw up wordlists and KWIC-concordances that can be examined in order to understand the process of creating deliberate archaisms. Particular regard will be given to where Chatterton failed in providing authentic Middle English forms. Some possible reasons for these misconceptions will be suggested, which may shed light on the question of how the linguistic past was perceived during the 18

th century.

Görlach, Manfred (ed. and transl.) 1981 The gestes of Mak and Morris. Presented to

Hans Kurath on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Heidelberg: Winter. Greenlaw, Edwin – Charles Grosvenor Osgood – Frederick Morgan Padelford – Ray

Heffner (eds.) 1932-57 The works of Edmund Spenser. A Variorum edition. 11 vols. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.

Haywood, Ian 1986 The making of history. A study of the literary forgeries of James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton in relation to eighteenth-century ideas of history and fiction. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Herford, Charles H. – Percy Simpson – Evelyn Simpson (eds.) 1947 Ben Jonson. Volume VIII: The poems. The prose works. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kaplan, Louise J. 1988 The family romance of the impostor-poet Thomas Chatterton. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Skeat, Walter W. (ed.) 1872 The poetical works of Thomas Chatterton. 2 vols. London: Chiswick Press.

Taylor, Donald S. (ed.) 1971 Thomas Chatterton: The complete works. A bicentenary edition. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Traxel, Oliver M. 2012 “Pseudo-archaic English: the modern perception and interpretation of the linguistic past”, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 47/2-3: 41-58.

240

Wisner, Linell B. 2010 Archaism or textual literalism in the historical novel. PhD dissertation. University of Tennessee. <http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/860/>.

Diatopic variation of two syntactic constructions in Middle English and its implications for language contact

Carola Trips & Achim Stein

University of Mannheim - University of Stuttgart Keywords: language contact, Middle English, Old French, clefts, left dislocations Working with historical data presupposes that we take into account different types of variation: diatopic, stylistic, and diachronic. Further types of variation that should be considered are subject to register and the provenance of the original texts that the ME manuscripts are based on. Although the Middle English (ME, ca. 1150-1500) texts available for linguistic studies are a perfect “testing ground” for investigating diatopic variation on all levels of language, because no written standard superimposes regional differences, surprisingly few studies have dealt with it (see e.g. Kroch and Taylor, 1997, Kroch et al., 2000, Ingham, 2006, Haeberli, 2010).

In two corpus-based studies on left dislocation and cleft constructions in ME and medieval French (9th until 15th century) we investigated changes along the diachronic dimension and addressed the question of whether significant changes in ME times could be attributed to Old French (OF, until 1300) influence. For left dislocations we found that one type of this construction (object left dislocation with an unmodified NP) suddenly increased in early Middle English (M1 in the corpus: 1150-1250, Stein and Trips, To appear):

(1) ða fuglas þa we hie ne onweg flegdon. these birds then we them not away drove ‘These birds, we didn’t drive them away.’ (Alex:21.11.258)

For clefts we found that the type where a subject pronoun occurs in focus position started to appear in the periods M2 and M3 (1250-1420).

241

(2) ‘Hit was I,’ seyde Balyn, ‘that slew this knyght in my defendaunte;’ “It was I”, said B., “that slew this knight in my defense.” (MALORY,53.1762)

The provenance of the texts seemed to be an important factor in explaining our results (Trips and Stein, 2013).

In this paper we are going to take a look at these two phenomena from a different angle: we will address the questions of whether there is also diatopic variation of (the different types of) left dislocations and clefts in ME and whether the two phenomena show changes in the diachronic dimension. Since we are interested in the language contact scenario between ME and OF (1150-1500), we will examine if significant findings in the diatopic dimension can be correlated with contact-induced change. This implies the question of whether a locus of contact-induced change can be identified. Apart from pursuing these questions, we will also discuss methodological issues related to working with historically annotated corpora like the PPCME2 for ME (Kroch and Taylor, 2000) and the MCVF for OF (Martineau, 2009). We will focus on aspects like the representativeness of diatopic variation in these corpora and advantages (and disadvantages) of working with these corpora instead of working with editions of full texts. Haeberli, E. 2010. “Investigating Anglo-Norman Influence on Late Middle English

Syntax”. In The Anglo-Norman Language and Its Context, R. Ingham (ed), 143–163. York: York Medieval Press.

Ingham, R. 2006. “The Status of French in Medieval England: Evidence from the Use of Object Pronoun Syntax”. Vox Romanica: Annales Helvetici Explorandis Linguis Romanicis Destinati (65): 86–107.

Kroch, A., Ann and Ringe, D. 2000. “The Middle English Verb-second Constraint: A Case Study inLanguage Contact and Language Change”. In Textual Parameters in Older Language, S. Herring, L. Schoesler and P. van Reenen (eds), 353–391. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Kroch, A. and Taylor, A. 1997. “Verb movement in Old and Middle English: Dialect variation and language contact”. In Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change, A. v. Kemenade and N. Vincent (eds), 297–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kroch, A. and Taylor, A., (eds). 2000. The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, Second Edition (PPCME2). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

Martineau, F., (ed). 2009. Le corpus MCVF. Modéliser le changement: les voies du français. Ottawa: Université d’Ottawa.

Stein, A. and Trips, C. “Modelling language contact with diachronic crosslinguistic data”. To appear in Firm Foundations: Quantitative Approaches to Grammar and Grammatical Change, Y. V. Sam Feather-ston (ed), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Trips, C. and Stein, A. 2013. “Cleft sentences in the history of French and English: a

242

case of pragmatic borrowing?” Submitted to Proceedings of Going Romance 2012.

Binomials in English novels of the Late Modern period: Fixedness, formulaicity and style

Jukka Tyrkkö

University of Tampere

Keywords: Binomials, multinomials, legal language, Early Modern English, corpus linguistics. The paper explores binomials and multinomials in Early Modern English parliamentary acts, focusing especially on the frequencies of these constructions. Binomials and multinomials are common in legal writing, as they increase precision, although they are also used for stylistic reasons (Danet 1980, Kopaczyk 2009: 93). Diachronically, legal writing became more verbose and precise during the Early Modern period (e.g. Hiltunen 1990: 58), and hence the paper sets out to study whether the use of binomials and multinomials also increases during the period.

Binomials are defined as word pairs that are syntactically connected by coordinators and that are semantically related in their meaning, while multinomials consist of longer sequences of related words (Gustafsson 1984: 124; Frade 2005: 134). Further, formulaic binomials are “permanent and fixed combinations in the language”, while unformulaic binomials “are temporary but fill the semantic and syntactic requirements” (Gustafsson 1975, Moon 1998). In addition to surveying the overall diachronic frequencies, the study further examines formulaic constructions by analysing high-frequency binomials and multinomials.

The data of the study are parliamentary acts from my corpus, the Corpus of Early Modern English Statutes (1491–1707). The category of parliamentary acts contains approximately 180,000 words. The instances of binomials are located by lexical searches for coordinators. Further, the corpus is normalised in its spelling variation which enables a more accurate examination of the high-frequency binomials by analysing clusters that involve either the coordinator and or or.

The paper shows that binomials are noticeably common in the Early Modern parliamentary acts and become diachronically more frequent, reflecting the sociohistorical changes of the era. Most binomials and multinomials consist of coordinated nouns but coordinated verbs are also

243

common. Further, formulaic binomials (such as ordered and enacted) appear, for instance, in the enactment clause that is repeated in each act, and other high-frequency word pairs include for example legal actors and legal actions (shall and may). Further, some of the binomials and multinomials remain common throughout the analysed time span, while others are repeated only in individual acts.

Danet, Brenda 1980. Language in the legal process. Law and Society Review 14.3,

445–564. Frade, Celina. 2005. Legal Multinomials: Recovering Possible Meanings from Vague

Tags. In Bhatia, Vijay, Jan Engberg, Maurizio Gotti and Dorothee Heller (eds.), Vagueness in Normative Texts. Bern: Peter Lang. 133–156.

Gustafsson, Marita. 1984. The syntactic features of binomial expression in legal English. Text 4.1–3, 123–141.

Gustafsson, Marita. 1975. Binominal Expressions in Present-Day English. A Syntactic and Semantic Study. Turku: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis.

Hiltunen, Risto. 1990. Chapters on Legal English. Aspects Past and Present of the Language of the Law. Jyväskylä: Gummerus.

Kopaczyk, Joanna. 2009. Multi-word Units of Meaning in 16th-century Legal Scots. In McConchie, R. W., Alpo Honkapohja and Jukka Tyrkkö (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 2008 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 88–95.

Moon, Rosamund. 1998. Fixed expressions and idioms in English: A corpus-based approach. London: Clarendon Press.

Psych-verbs in the history of English: The reanalysis of argument structure

Elly van Gelderen

Arizona State University

The present paper examines alternating psych-verbs in the history of English. It is well-known from the literature (e.g. Allen 1995) that Object Experiencers are reanalyzed as Subject Experiencers, as between (1) and (2). (1) Þa bodan us færdon =ObjExp the messengers us frightened `The messengers frightened us.’ (OED, Ælfric Deut i. 28) (2) We feared the messengers. =SuExp

244

This is not only true in English but in other Indo-European languages as well. The paper then demonstrates (a) that Object Experiencers are constantly renewed through external borrowing and internal change and (b) that Subject Experiencers are reanalyzed as Agents. For instance, verbs such as worry meant ‘to kill by strangling/compressing the throat’ in Old and Middle English, as in (3), with an Agent and Theme and is reanalyzed as an experiencer verb in contemporary English. Likewise, the verb thrill meant `to pierce’, as in (4). (3) Harald ... threwe hym to the grounde and had wyried hym with

his hondes (OED, 1387 Trevisa tr. R. Higden Polychron. VII. 534) (4) & scharp lance þat thrilled Ihesu side. (OED, c1330 Mannyng

Chron.) Examples of Experiencers reanalyzed as subjects are given in (5) and (6). (5) I am liking private life a lot right now. (COCA Spoken 2009) (6) Wall Street is fearing a bloodbath (COCA Magazine 2007) The paper then turns to an investigation of possible factors relevant in the change. I look at the appearance of light verbs and reflexive objects in Middle English and ambiguous contexts (as known from Fischer & van der Leek’s 1980 work). As a descriptive framework, I use a vP shell without necessarily adhering to an exo-skeletal view of the lexicon-syntax connection, as in e.g. Borer (2005). The conclusion is that, as the morphological causative is lost, there is a restructuring of this vP. The main emphasis, however, will be on an analysis of the data.

V2 in Middle English dialects

Ans van Kemenade Radboud University Nijmegen

Keywords : syntax, information structure, dialect variation, word order, middle english It is well-known that there are two types of V2 in Middle English, one type (type 1) in which subject-finite verb inversion is categorical and restricted to main clauses (questions, relic negative-initial clauses, clauses introduced by adverbs like then, thus, now), and another type (type 2) which is not

245

strictly speaking V2, but in which the position of the finite verb (second position or later) is the result of the interplay of various factors, such as type of first constituent, type of subject (pronominal vs. nominal), and type of finite verb (auxiliary, unaccusative or unergative intransitive) (van Kemenade and Westergaard 2012).

It has been established by Kroch and Taylor (1997) that in at least one Northern Middle English text, the Northern prose Rule of St. Benet, categorical V2 (type 1) is not restricted to the three contexts mentioned above, and they make a case that this is due to Scandinavian influence on the syntax of Northern English.

This paper explores the dialectal distribution of the various types of V2 contexts in Middle English, specified according to the various factors identified above (type of first constituent, type of subject, type of finite verb). Data are drawn from the Penn Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English (Kroch and Taylor 2000), supplemented by selected texts from the LAEME corpus for early Middle English (Laing and Lass 2008), and by selected other texts for late Middle English. I will establish ‘V2 profiles’ for each text. The paper will then explore to what extent the observed dialectal variation is due to syntactic (microparametric) differences between dialects, and to what extent it can be attributed to more general pragmatic factors. Kemenade, Ans van and Marit Westergaard. 2012. ‘Syntax and Information

Structure: V2 Variation in Middle English’. In Information Structure in the History of English, ed. Bettelou Los, María-José López-Couso, and Anneli Meurman-Solin, 87-119. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kroch, Anthony and Ann Taylor. 1997. ‘Verb Movement in Old and Middle English: Dialect Variation and Language Contact’. In Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change, ed. Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent, 297–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kroch, Anthony. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-3/index.html.

LAEME: Laing, Margaret, & Roger Lass. 2008–. A linguistic atlas of early Middle English 1150–1325. Version 1.1. Online at

http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.

246

Old problems and new solutions in English runology: Thorn, eoh, and the duplex runes

Theo Vennemann

University of Munich

Keywords: futhorc, Punic Thesis, thorn rune, eoh rune, duplex runes Many problems of the shapes, sound values, and names of specific Scandinavian and Old English runes have remained unsolved by the three major theories of runic origins, the Greek, Etruscan, and Latin Theses. A new theory (cf. Vennemann 2011, 2013) claims that several of the most enigmatic properties of the Elder Futhark are solved when studied within the Punic Thesis, i.e. the assumption that the Proto-Futhark is nothing but the Carthaginian alphabet applied to Proto-Germanic and that deviations from this Proto-Futhark reflect Late Punic orthographic developments. This presentation will show how this approach carries over to the Old English Futhorc, solving additional problems.

As an example for the explanation of the name of an Old English rune, the name of the thorn rune, Proto-Germanic *thurnaz ‘thorn’, is derived from the name *dalt (Hebrew daleth) ‘door’ of the Phoenician letter D. This letter is assumed to have been adopted as a *d rune with the name *dura- ‘door’ translating the Phoenician name. When the sound value of D changed into a fricative in Late Punic, the sound value of the *d rune was adjusted so that the rune became the historical th rune – with the consequence that the name of the rune had to be adjusted in accordance with the acrophonic principle. The Germanic noun closest to *dura- ‘door’ but beginning with th- was *thurnaz ‘thorn’. This argument at the same time explains why the thorn rune has the shape and the early place in the alphabet of the Phoenician (and Greek and Latin) D.

As an example for the explanation of the form and sound value of an Old English rune, the rune named eoh, also ih (with long i), will be analyzed. Its form is unexplained, and concerning its sound value both vowels and consonants have been proposed. The solution derives from the facts that (1) the shape of the rune is that of the Late Punic letter yod, and (2) this letter is in Late Punic regularly employed to represent the vowel i (hence ih rune in accordance with the acrophonic principle).

The duplex runes (with their internally doubled shapes) b, g, and d are explained as follows: They represent the strong variants (geminates in Phoenician) of their weakened (fricated, semivocalized) Late Punic

247

counterparts (non-geminate in Phoenician) adopted into Germanic as w, u, and th. A similar explanation will be given for the fourth duplex rune, p. Antonsen, Elmer. 2002. Runes and Germanic linguistics, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bammesberger, Alfred, and Gaby Waxenberger (eds.). 2006. Das fuþark und seine

einzelsprachlichen Weiterentwicklungen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. [There e.g. “Das Futhark und seine Weiterentwicklung in der anglo-friesischen Überlieferung”, pp. 171–187.]

Düwel, Klaus. 2008. Runenkunde, 4th ed. (Sammlung Metzler, 72). Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.

Glaser, Elvira, Anna Seiler and Michelle Waldispühl (eds.), LautSchriftSprache: Beiträge zur vergleichenden Graphematik. Zürich: Chronos.

Looijenga, Tineke. 2003. Texts and contexts of the oldest runic inscriptions (The Northern World, 4). Leiden: Brill.

Odenstedt, Bengt. 1990. On the origin and early history of the runic script: Typology and graphic variation in the older futhark (Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi, 59). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Page, Raymond Ian. 1999. An introduction to English runes. 2nd ed. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell.

Page, Raymond Ian. 1995. Runes and Runic Inscriptions: Collected essays on Anglo-Saxon and Viking runes. Woodbridge: Boydell. [there e.g. “The Old English rune eoh, īh, ‘yew-tree’”, pp. 133-144.]

Parsons, David. 1999. Recasting the runes: The reform of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala universitet.

Parsons, David. “History of the Anglo-Saxon and Frisian futhorc”, in: Heinrich Beck et al. (eds.), Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 25, 2nd ed., Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 564-567.

Vennemann, Theo. 2011. “Griechisch, lateinisch, etruskisch, karthagisch? Zur Herkunft der Runen”, in: Glaser et al. (eds.) 2011: 47-81.

Vennemann, Theo. 2013. (Three articles in Sprachwissenschaft 38.) Waxenberger, Gaby. 2013. “The perfect fit of the futhark and the imperfect

attestation of the Old English runes”, in: Glaser et al. (eds.) 2011: 83-108. Waxenberger, Gaby. 2013. “The reflection of pre-Old English sound changes in pre-

Old English runic inscriptions”, in: Hans Sauer and Gaby Waxenberger (eds.), Recording English, researching English, transforming English (Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature, 41). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

248

Reciprocal strategies in Middle English: The development of each other or the like

Letizia Vezzosi

University of Perugia

While the grammatical expression of reciprocal (or ‘mutual’) situations in the languages of the world has received a surprising amount of attention in recent years (Frajzyngier and Curl199, König and Gast 2008, Nedjalkov 2007, just to mention a few ones), much less consideration has been devoted to the historical development of its markers, with very few exceptions almost all of them dealing exclusively with bi-partite quantifier expressions, such as Eng. each other, It. l’un l’altro, Germ. einander, Vedic anyonyam (Kulikov 2005 for Vedic, Hass 2007 and 2009 for English, Siegal 2012 for Hebrew, Fedden 2013 for Main).

Following the pioneering paper by Plank (1998), it has been generally assumed that the quantificational strategy (using König and Kokutani’s 2006 terminology) develops from a distributive construction (stage I) via an intermediate stage with the set of participants in topicalised position (stage II) which sets up the shift from morphological (stage II) to semantic (stage III) agreement on the verb (Corbett 2006: 155-160) and the following reanalysis of the two separate pronouns as one unit, i.e. a bi-partite quantifier: Stage I two-unit pronouns: EACH.NOM.SG VERB.SG OTHER.ACC.SG Subject Object

Stage II two-unit pronouns: {NP1,…NPn.NOM} VERB.SG EACH.NOM.SG OTHER.ACC.SG

Topic Subject Object

Stage III two-unit pronouns: {NP1,…NPn.NOM} VERB.PL [EACH.ACC.SG OTHER.ACC.SG]

Subject Object

Fascinating and plausible as this hypothesis might be, there is very

scanty textual evidence: each other was already grammaticalized by the end of the Middle English period (Jespersen 1927, Mustanoja 1960, van

249

Gelderen 2000) – when the two elements started to occur as prepositional complementss – and there almost no attestations of the intermediate stages. From Early Modern English onwards it further developed its properties of a single unit – it occurs as a genitive marker and as a subject of both finite and non-finite clauses and can appear in syntactic slots such as the predicate NP following a copular verb.

But no study has so far taken into consideration the other means of several means to express reciprocity in Middle English and conjectured that the peculiarity of the English language among the other Indo-European languages (i.e. each other is its prototypical reciprocal marker, while in the other languages the bi-partite quantifier marker represents an alternative or a reinforcement strategy to express reciprocity) could be the outcome of a restructuring process to express the middle voice.

In my talk I would like to concentrate on the period preceding the emergence of a grammaticalized reciprocal marker each other, when symmetrical situation (König 2007) were expressed by different constructions. The different linguistic devices (reflexive strategy, other bipartite constructions, as well as reciprocal adverbial expressions) will be analysed per se and in comparison with one another to highlight similarities and differences. Such a semasiological investigation will allow for a refinement of the meaning of the pattern each other and outline a possible different line of constructualization which could overcome the difficulty of a low-valency construction developing from a clearly transitive two-argument construction. Fedden, S. 2013. “Reciprocal constructions in Mian”. Studies in Languages 37/1: 58-

93. Frajzyngier, Z., and Curl, T. S. (eds.) 1999. Reciprocals: Forms and Functions.

Amsterdam: Benjamins Haas, F. 2007. “The development of each other: grammaticalization, lexicalisation, or

both?”. English Language and Linguistics 11.1: 31-50. Haas, F. 2009. Reciprocity in English: Historical Development and Synchronic

Structure. Routledge Studies in Germanic Linguistics 15. New York: Routledge /London: Taylor & Francis.

Gelderen, E. van 2000. A history of English reflexive pronouns. Masterdam: Benjamins.

Halevy, R. 2011. “The Grammaticalization of Bipartite Reciprocal Markers in Hebrew”. Hebrew Studies 52: 7–18.

Haspelmath, M. 2007. “Further Remarks on Reciprocal Constructions”. In Nedjalkov (2007). pp. 2087–2115.

Jespersen, O. 1927. A modern English grammar on historical principles. Vol. 3. Heidelberg. Winter.

250

König, E. 2007. “Vers une nouvelle typologie des marques réfléchies”. In A. Rousseau et al. (eds.), L’énoncé réfléchi. Rennes : Presse Universitaires de Rennes, 107-130.

König, E., and Gast, V. (eds.) 2008. Reciprocals and Reflexives: Theoretical and Typological Explorations.

Berlin. de Gruyter. König, E., and Kokutani, S. 2006. “Towards a Typology of Reciprocal Constructions:

Focus on German and Japanese”. Linguistics 44: 271–302. Kulikov, L. 2005. “Grammaticalization of a Reciprocal Pronoun in a Diachronic

Typological Perspective: Evidence from Vedic and Indo-European”. In J. Härma et al. (eds.) Actes du XXIXéme Colloque International de Linguistique Fonctionelle. Helsinki.

Mustanoja, T. 1960. A Middle English syntax: Part 1, Helsinki. [Mémoires de la société néophilologique de Helsinki, 23]

Nedjalkov, V. P. (ed.) 2007. Reciprocal Constructions. 5 vols. Amsterdam. Benjamins. Siegal, E.A.B.-A. 2012. “Diachronic Syntactic Studies in Hebrew Pronominal Reciprocal

Consructions”. In C. L. Miller-Naudé and Z. Zevit (eds.) Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew. Winona Lanke Indiana. Eisenbrauns.

Null subjects in Middle English

George Walkden

University of Manchester

There has been a great deal of interest in null subjects in Old English in recent years (cf. Rusten 2010, 2013; van Gelderen 2013; Coppess & Pires 2013; Walkden 2013). Less explored is the early Middle English period.

It is by now safely established that empty referential subjects were a native possibility in Old English. Factors that have been shown to influence expression vs. non-expression of the subject pronoun in Old English include person (Berndt 1956, van Gelderen 2000, Rusten 2010, Walkden 2013), clause type (Pogatscher 1901, Walkden 2013, Coppess & Pires 2013), mood (Coppess & Pires 2013), date of text (Rusten 2013), and text type (Rusten 2013). In addition, it has been suggested that dialect may have a role to play, with Anglian texts favouring omission (Walkden 2013).

This paper will investigate the situation in Middle English, drawing on the PPCME2 (Kroch & Taylor 2000) and LAEME (Laing & Lass 2008) corpora. Regression analysis will be performed in order to assess the significance of the above variables as predictors.

Preliminary research on the PPCME2 (Percival 2012) suggests a significant effect of date: of the forty texts in the corpus, all nine texts with more than 1% null subjects are dated 1275 or earlier, while fifteen of the

251

sixteen texts with no null subjects at all are dated to 1350 or later (the exception being the Ormulum). Table 1 presents the figures. Table 1: Texts with over 1% null subject clauses, by date

Text Null subjects Total Date

Hali Meidhad (cmhali.m1) 20 (3.9%) 511 c1225

St. Juliana (cmjulia.m1) 17 (3.0%) 568 c1225

St. Katherine (cmkathe.m1) 16 (2.9%) 544 c1225

St. Margaret (cmmarga.m1) 17 (2.7%) 639 c1225

Sawles Warde (cmsawles.m1) 3 (1.0%) 276 c1225

Trinity Homilies (cmtrinit.mx1) 77 (2.5%) 3074 a1225

Ancrene Riwle 1 (cmancriw-1.m1) 52 (1.5%) 3558 c1230

Ancrene Riwle 2 (cmancriw-2.m1) 26 (2.2%) 1163 c1230

Kentish Sermons (cmkentse.m2) 10 (4.3%) 231 1275

There is also suggestive evidence for a dialectal split: Table 1 includes the five texts of the Katherine Group and the Ancrene Riwle, composed in the West Midlands AB dialect. The evidence from the Kentish Sermons is interesting: though this text has the highest proportion of null subjects of all the Middle English texts, there is no evidence for null subjects in the (scanty) Kentish Old English data. However, the influence of literal translation may also be at work here; more careful analysis is needed to tell. Berndt, Rolf. 1956. Form und Funktion des Verbums im nördlichen Spätaltenglischen.

Halle: Max Niemeyer. Coppess, Emily, & Acrisio Pires. 2013. The residue of syntactic change: partial pro-

drop in Old English. Paper presented at the Diachronic Syntax Workshop, LSA Summer Institute, Ann Arbor, June 2013.

Kroch, Anthony, & Ann Taylor. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-3/index.html

252

Laing, Margaret, & Roger Lass. 2008. A linguistic atlas of Early Middle English. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html

Percival, Laura. 2012. Null subjects in Middle English. Ms., University of Manchester. Pogatscher, Alois. 1901. Unausgedrücktes Subjekt im Altenglischen. Anglia 23, 261–

301. Rusten, Kristian. 2010. A study of empty referential pronominal subjects in Old

English. M.Phil. dissertation, University of Bergen. Rusten, Kristian. 2013. Empty referential subjects in Old English prose and poetry.

Paper presented at ICHL 21, Oslo, August 2013. van Gelderen, Elly. 2013. Null subjects in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 44, 271–285. Walkden, George. 2013. Null subjects in Old English. Language Variation & Change

25, 155–178.

Third-person present singular verb inflection in Early Modern English: New evidence from speech-related texts

Terry Walker

Mid-Sweden University

Keywords: Language change, third-person present singular verb inflection, depositions, speech-related texts, Early Modern English Regional dialect, genre and time are key variables when examining language use and language change. This paper presents a quantitative study of third-person present singular verb inflection, primarily -S and -TH, taking these three extra-linguistic variables into account. Previous research has shown that the -S ending spread from Northern England, replacing -TH in Standard English across the Early Modern English period, first in speech-related genres such as personal letters, and later in the more formal genres (cf. Holmqvist 1922). In the light of this, where does a genre comprising texts that are both formal legal records and speech-related fit into this general picture? This paper aims to answer this question, offering evidence from the genre of depositions: oral testimonies pertaining to a criminal, civil or ecclesiastical court case taken down in writing by a scribe. Depositions are particularly suitable for study as the genre represents a variety of regions of England, and gives access to the language of ordinary men and women, mediated through the scribe. The data is taken from An Electronic Text Edition of Depositions 1560–1760 (ETED) a computer-searchable edition of transcribed manuscript material from a variety of regions in England. The findings show that during the period 1560–1760, the North showed an early preference for -S when compared with the other

253

regions, but it was London that led the change from -TH to -S in the depositions, with the East and West lagging behind. One explanation for the resistance of the East to -S might be that it was in competition with the zero inflection. The depositions genre resembles secular treatises (cf. Kohnen 2011) and similar formal genres in being slow to adopt -S, compared to genres such as letters (cf. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003). The earlier speech events rendered by the scribe as direct speech showed a clear preference for -S, but these stretches of text are in the minority in ETED. What this result suggests is that the text rendered as direct speech in depositions is freer from scribal intervention than other parts of the deposition texts, and thus may more accurately reflect the language of the original speech event. ETED = An Electronic Text Edition of Depositions 1560–1760 (ETED). 2011. Edited by

Merja Kytö, Peter J. Grund and Terry Walker. Available on the CD accompanying Merja Kytö, Peter J. Grund and Terry Walker (2011).

Holmqvist, Erik. 1922. On the History of the English Present Inflections, Particularly -th and -s. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Kohnen, Thomas. 2011. Religious language in 17th-century England: Progressive or archaic? In Joachim Frenk and Lena Steveker (eds.), Anglistentag 2010 Saarbrücken: Proceedings (Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English 32), Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 279–287.

Kytö, Merja, Peter J. Grund and Terry Walker. 2011. Testifying to Language and Life in Early Modern England. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical Linguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education.

Conservatism and innovation in Anglo-Saxon scribal practice

Christine Wallis University of Sheffield

Keywords: Old English, Manuscript Studies, Old English Prose, Scribal Practice The text of the Old English Bede (OEB) which appears in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41 (‘B’) has been studied chiefly for the way its West-Saxon dialect departs from the Mercian text of older OEB manuscripts, such as Oxford, Bodleian Tanner 10 (‘T’). Grant (1989) focuses on the novelty of B’s West-Saxon language, while Wallis (2013) suggests that its first scribe was a

254

‘translator’, replacing exemplar forms with ones from his own repertoire as he wrote. Rowley (2004) advocates viewing B as a West-Saxon artefact, and not as a sub-standard version of the Mercian original.

This paper proposes a new approach to B’s text, based on a study of the scribal behaviour evident in the four main surviving OEB manuscripts. An examination of the linguistic forms in these four manuscripts enables the creation of an OEB-specific textual continuum, whereby ‘conservative’ (often Mercian or older) and ‘innovative’ (West-Saxon or late) scribal features can be identified in the context of the OEB manuscripts. As a result of this comparative scribal viewpoint, it is possible to place B’s textual features on the conservative-innovative continuum, identifying not only the first scribe’s innovative dialectal forms, but also the relict features he retained from the exemplar. For example, doubled vowels occur in certain words in older manuscripts such as T, and although B’s first scribe often writes single vowels, occasional relicts with doubled vowels remain. The scribe’s behaviour is then categorised according to the classification used by Benskin and Laing (1981) in their compilation of the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. Finally, the paper proposes some conclusions about the age and status of B’s exemplar, based on the scribal decisions evident in its text. B was apparently copied from a manuscript which was conservative in terms of the OEB, and in addition was partially illegible. These factors influenced the shape of B’s text in spite of its first scribe’s translating behaviour.

Benskin, Michael and Margaret Laing. 1981. ‘Translations and Mischsprachen in

Middle English Manuscripts.’ So Meny People Longages and Tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Medieval English Presented to Angus McIntosh, eds. M. Benskin and M. L. Samuels. Edinburgh: Benskin and Samuels. 55-106.

Grant, Raymond J. S. 1989. The B Text of the Old English Bede: A Linguistic Commentary. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Rowley, Sharon M. 2004. ‘Nostalgia and the Rhetoric of Lack: The Missing Exemplar for Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Manuscript 41.’ Old English Literature in its Manuscript Context, ed. Joyce Tally Lionarons. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.

Wallis, Christine. 2013. The Old English Bede: Transmission and Textual History in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts. Unpublished PhD, University of Sheffield.

255

On the competition of two intensifiers: ME full and very

Jerzy Welna University of Warsaw

Keywords: full, grammaticalization, intensifier, semantic change, very The native English adjective full (OE full < PGmc *full-az) ‘full’ and the French loan adjective verrai ‘very’ both became grammaticalized and developed intensifier functions in different periods of mediaeval English, cf. constructions like OE/ME ful gōde and ME very good. Of the two, only very has survived, although its original lexical meaning ‘true’ is still found in peripheral usage; cf. phrases like the very man, the very truth, etc. The adjective ful(l) ‘complete’, which developed the function of the intensifier as early as Old English, remained for some time in rivalry with the loanword, eventually losing the competition (cf. my earlier study of 2000).

The following examples illustrate the two historical functions of full and very:

The adjectives (a) full (< Gmc) and (b) verrai (< French) (lexical function) modifying nouns: (a) Sele þonne cælic fulne to drincanne (Sax. Leechd. II. 268) [‘full

chalice’]; (b) He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght (Chaucer, CT, GP 72) [‘true …

knight’].

The same words in the function of intensifiers (grammaticalized) modifying adjectives or adverbs: (a) (…) þa men (…) ne maʒon ful eaþe locian onʒean sunnan.

(Boethius xxxviii, §5) [‘very easily’]; (b) But for he was verray repauntant he was exciled for þe fey.

(Trevisa Higden (Rolls) V. 329) [‘very contrite’].

Focusing on the rivalry of these two intensifiers in Middle English, the present contribution exploits the evidence from the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose (Markus 2008) in order to explain the regional and temporal conditioning of the competition, in particular:

(a) the loss of the intensifier function by full, and its survival in the

adjectival function;

256

(b) the acquisition by very of the intensifier function combined with the loss of the status of an adjective, except in peripheral usage.

It is evident that the processes (a) and (b) were in close correlation, although a question to be solved concerns the initiation of the change, i.e. whether the declining use of full as an intensifier caused the grammaticalization of verrai or whether a reverse process took place, which resembles the well-known controversy on “push” and “drag chains” operating in phonological change. The process also had a syntactic dimension since in contemporary standard usage full modifies nouns, whereas very stands before adjectives and adverbs. Special attention is given to cases when full and very coincide in the same text, having the same function of intensifiers. The semantic and quantitative analysis will be based on data from around one hundred selected Middle English prose texts (ca. 4,000,000 words) from the Innsbruck Corpus. Other sources like the Oxford English Dctionary or Middle English Dictionary online are also consulted.

As regards the theoretical framework of grammaticalization in English, reference is made, among others, to the studies by Fischer ― Rosenbach (2000) and Brems ― Hoffmann (2012). Bergs, Alexander ― Laurel J. Brinton (eds.) (2012) English Historical Linguistics. An

International Handbook. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Brems, Lieselotte ― Sebastian Hoffmann (2012) “New perspectives, theories and

methods: grammaticalization”. In: A. Bergs ― L.J. Brinton (eds.), 1558-1576. Fischer, Olga ― Anette Rosenbach (2000) “Introduction”. In: Olga Fischer ― Anette

Rosenbach ― Dieter Stein (eds.), 1-137. Fischer, Olga ― Anette Rosenbach ― Dieter Stein (eds.) (2000) Pathways of Change.

Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Markus, Manfred (2008) Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose. Innsbruck:

University of Innsbruck. Wełna, Jerzy (2000) “Grammaticalization in Early English”. Studia Anglica

Posnaniensia 35: 43-51.

257

The interaction of stress and final -e in Gower’s and Chaucer’s Romance nouns

Gyöngyi Werthmüller

Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Keywords: phonology, stress, metre, ME, final -e This paper intends to shed more light on two ME phonological phenomena (whose interaction, without finer details, was pointed out by e.g. Cable 1998: 41): (1) variable stress in disyllables (mostly Romance nouns); and (2) the retention or dropping of final -e. I compare the stress patterns of two contemporaries, Chaucer (CANTERBURY TALES) and Gower (CONFESSIO AMANTIS). In agreement with Minkova (1997 and 2000), I argue that Chaucer’s stress pattern was essentially Germanic, and that line-final and line-medial occurrences must be considered separately. Robinson’s (1971: 109–131) view that the stress in such words is on the first syllable even line-finally, will be dismissed.

My focus is shifted towards Gower, as his phonology and metre are vastly under-researched. 1) Overall, Chaucer’s phonology is more Germanic than that of Gower. Gower has more end-stressed instances, and he virtually never drops final -e-s, except, as a rule, before a word-initial vowel (elision). Cf.

|And cer|teinly |th

X

er n

/

a|t

X

ure0 w

/

ol |nat wer|che| (CT. D 1461) – pron. [ná:tyur]

|Of whos |n

X

at

/

u|r

X

ë this |I fin|de| (CONFESSIO II 414) – pron. [natyú:re]

2) Some words ending in inherited (etymological) -e appear almost exclusively line-finally in both of them. Line-medially, too, they are end-stressed. corage Chaucer Gower Line-final: 17 = 77% 53 = 91% Line-medial: 5 = 23 % 5 = 9 % 3) A word without an etymological -e (like resoun) is more likely to be front-stressed than a word with one (figure). The data (line-final and first-foot examples ignored): resoun Chaucer Gower Front-stress: 15 = 100% 130 = 83% pron. [ré:zun] End-stress: 0 = 0% 26 = 17 % pron. [rezú:n]

258

TOTAL: 15 = 100% 156 = 100% figure Chaucer Gower Front-stress: 3 = 40% 4 = 27% pron. [fígyur] End-stress: 2 = 60% 11 = 73 % pron. [figyú:r] TOTAL: 5 = 100% 15 = 100% 4) The textual occurrence of instances is unevenly distributed, suggestive of the poet’s (current) state of language. The 26 end-stressed (French-like) instances of resóun, for instance, appear in clusters in Gower’s CONFESSIO. List of occurrences (loci forming an agglomeration underlined):

Prologue. 488 Book I. 775 1051 Book II. ------ Book III. 1159 1163 1177 1601 2428 Book IV. 205 543 Book V. 124 1413 2580 5161 7388 7706 Book VI. 549 961 1237 2416 Book VII. 488 517 4936 Book VIII. 2236 2836 2862

This research will be extended to Chaucer, and to Langland’s PIERS PLOWMAN. Cable, Thomas. 1998. Metrical similarities between Gower and certain sixteenth-

century poets. In: Robert F. Yeager (ed.). Re-visioning Gower. Ashville, NC: Pegasus. 39-48.

Furnivall, Frederick J. (ed.) 2006. The Hengwrt MS of Chaucer’s Canterbury tales. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library, London: Published for the Chaucer Society by N. Trübner, 1868-1879. Available online: http://name.umdl.umich.edu/AGZ8233.0001.001. Last accessed: 05.12.2013.

Minkova, Donka. 1997. Constraint ranking in Middle English stress-shifting. English Language and Linguistics 1: 135-175.

Minkova, Donka. 2000. Middle English prosodic innovations and their testability in verse. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.). Placing Middle English in context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 431–461.

Peck, Russell A. (ed.) 2000. John Gower: Confessio Amantis. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. Available online: http://d.lib.rochester.edu /teams/text-online. Last accessed: 04.12.2013.

Robinson, Ian. 1971. Chaucer’s prosody: a study of the Middle English verse tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

259

Word order variation in Late Middle English: Information structure, dialects and sociolinguistic factors

Marit Westergaard & Tamás Eitler

University of Tromsø – ELTE

During the Old English period (OE), the variation in verb second (V2) word order was generally stable, with V2 in non-subject-initial declaratives mainly appearing with NP subjects and non-V2 with pronouns. This has been analyzed as a so-called IP-V2 grammar (e.g. Kroch & Taylor 2007) or one in which word order is the result of information structure (IS) factors (e.g. Bech 2001, Westergaard 2009). It is well known that the V2 variation in the Middle English (ME) period was more extensive: While in early ME, the relative word order of subject and verb was very similar to what it was in OE, the word order at the end of the ME period was relatively close to Present-day English in this respect (i.e. a Non-V2 grammar).

The late ME period also saw a certain rise of V2 in some linguistic contexts, e.g. with auxiliaries and unaccusative verbs (Warner 2007, van Kemenade & Westergaard 2012). Furthermore, northern dialects as well as East Anglian displayed a grammar where V2 was a syntactic requirement (referred to as CP-V2), due to influence from Scandinavian languages in these areas. Thus, there was considerable synchronic variation at this time, with different V2 grammars existing side by side. This word order variation has been analyzed as the result of dialect differences and sociolinguistic factors, e.g. Eitler (2006).

The present paper discusses V2 variation in late ME by providing a close investigation of four texts written around 1350-1400. The texts were all produced by the same author, Geoffrey Chaucer, and show considerable variation in V2. Our investigation takes into account both IS factors as well dialectal differences/social factors such as the intended readership of the written texts, i.e. a local, regional or national audience. We show that both types of factors are important to understand this intra-speaker variation at this crucial time in the history of the English language. Bech, Kristin. 2001. Word Order Patterns in Old and Middle English: A Syntactic and

Pragmatic Study. Doctoral dissertation, University of Bergen. Eitler, Tamás. 2006. Some sociolectal, dialectal and communicative aspects of word

order variation in late Middle English. Doctoral dissertation, Eötvös Loránd University.

Kemenade, Ans van & Marit Westergaard. 2012. ‘Syntax and information structure: Verb-second variation in Middle English.’ In Anneli MeurmanSolin, María José López-Couso & Bettelou Los (eds.) Information Structure and Syntactic Change in

260

the History of English (Oxford Studies in the History of English 2), 87-118. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 1997. ‘Verb Movement in Old and Middle English: Dialect variation and language contact.’ Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change ed. by Ans van Kemenade & Nigel Vincent, 297–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Warner, Anthony. 2007. ‘Parameters of variation between verb-subject and subject-verb order in late Middle English.’ English Language and Linguistics 11.1, 81−112.

Westergaard, Marit. 2009. ‘The Development of Word Order in Old and Middle English: The Role of Information Structure and First Language Acquisition.’ Diachronica 26.1, 65-102.

A diachronic investigation of evidentiality and genre variation in English

Richard J. Whitt The University of Nottingham

Evidentiality--the linguistic encoding of a speaker or writer’s evidence for a proposition--has gained prominence in linguistics since the early 1980s. As a social phenomenon, evidential markers play a key role in establishing a speaker’s credibility both within the discourse context and the larger discourse community. Although most studies on evidentiality have focused on languages in which speaker evidence is encoded in verbal morphology (Aikhenvald 2004), investigations into evidential markers in English are not lacking, but most of these studies focus on genre-specific contexts of modern-day usage (Chafe 1986; Hyland 2005; Bednarek 2006).

Some attention has been paid to the development of evidential markers in the history of English (Gisborne & Holmes 2007; Whitt 2010), particularly within grammaticalization studies (Brinton 1996; Traugott 1997), as well as in diachronically-oriented studies on the connection between discourse context and marking of information source (Taavitsainen 2001; Busse 2012; Grund 2012). Even so, these studies have focused either on a small number of markers or on a single genre, thus leaving several issues unaddressed: varying uses of the same evidential marker in diverse discourse contexts (genres); changing uses of evidential markers within a single genre and among different genres in the history of English; and possible connections between processes of grammaticalization, subjectification, and genre-specific uses of evidential markers.

261

This paper provides a first step in addressing these issues in the historical study of evidential markers and their evolution in English. Focusing on verbal (promise, threaten, seem, see, hear) and adverbial (supposedly, apparently) realizations of evidentiality, I will examine the influence of the larger discourse context on the use of evidential markers from the Early Modern period onwards, and see whether particular types of evidentiality (direct vs. indirect, perceptual vs. inferential) are more frequent in certain genres, and social contexts, than others (legal vs. literary, scientific vs. religious, etc.). As this is a first-step in finding correlations between genre and the evolution of evidential markers, data will be drawn from general historical corpora such as Helsinki and ARCHER. Since evidentiality is a highly subjective phenomenon because it rests solely in the speaker’s or writer’s point-of-view, it is predicted that the genres that display more overt presence of speaker or writer (e.g. the use of first-person pronouns) will exhibit a higher degree of evidential phenomena than those genres touted as more objective and distant from any one individual’s perspective. Likewise, as generic styles change over time, so will the nature of evidential marking. Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bednarek, Monika. 2006. “Epistemological Positioning and Evidentiality in English

News Discourse: A Text-Driven Approach”. Text and Talk 26.6: 635-660. Brinton, Laurel J. 1996. Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization and

Discourse Functions. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Busse, Beatrix. 2012. “Historical Text Analysis: Underlying Parameters and

Methodological Procedures”. In Methods in Contemporary Linguistics. Eds. Andrea Ender, Adrian Leemann, and Bernhard Wächli. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 285-308.

Chafe, Wallace. 1986. “Evidentiality in English Conversation and Academic Writing”. In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Eds. Wallace Chafe and Johanna Nichols. Norwood: NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp., 261-272.

Gisborne, Nikolas and Jasper Holmes. 2007. “A History of English Evidential Verbs of Appearance”. English Language and Linguistics 11.1: 1-29.

Grund, Peter J. 2012. “The Nature of Knowledge: Evidence and Evidentiality in the Witness Depositions from the Salem Witch Trials”. American Speech 87.1: 7-38.

Hyland, Ken. 2005. Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing. London: Continuum.

Taavitsainen, Irma. 2001. “Evidentiality and Scientific Thought-Styles: English Medical Writing in Late Middle English and Early Modern English”. In Modality in Specialized Texts: Selected Papers of the 1st CERLIS Conference. Eds. Maurizio Gotti and Marina Dossena. Bern: Peter Lang, 21-52.

262

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1997. “Subjectification and the Development of Epistemic Meaning: The Case of promise and threaten”. In Modality in Germanic Languages: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Eds. Toril Swan and Olaf Jansen Westvik. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 185-210.

Whitt, Richard J. 2010. Evidentiality and Perception Verbs in English and German. Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang.

Reporting clauses in 18th

and 19th

century English: A diachronic study of past tense I said and historic present I says

Bianca Widlitzki

Justus Liebig University Giessen Keywords: corpus linguistics, Late Modern English This paper investigates the use of I says and I said as reporting clauses in spoken English in the 18th and 19th centuries. In contemporary English, I says frequently serves as an alternative to I said in conversations narrating past time events (cf. Carter & McCarthy 2006: 823). The same can be observed in this example from 1807:

(1) I spoke to him, I says halloo, what are you about there? (OBC, t18070114-74)

While current usage has been discussed within larger analyses of spoken language (e.g. Rühlemann 2007), little attention has been paid to I says in earlier stages of English. The present study therefore makes the historical development its focus and approaches the subject from a qualitative and quantitative corpus linguistic perspective.

The Old Bailey Corpus, spanning the years 1720-1913, (OBC, http://www.uni-giessen.de/oldbaileycorpus), was chosen for the investigation of this conversational phenomenon. It is based on the Proceedings of the Old Bailey (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org), London’s central criminal court, whose verbatim passages are a reasonably close representation of spoken interaction in the courtroom. The corpus contains 14 million words and offers detailed mark-up for sociolinguistic (sex, social class, age), pragmatic (role in court) and textual variables (the shorthand scribe, printer and publisher of individual Proceedings).

A first analysis of the more than 14,000 reporting clauses with a first-person subject pronoun and either says or said shows that said is the more

263

frequent variant, accounting for about 90% of the tokens. This picture is complicated by the highly uneven distribution of its alternative says: while it is found in about 24% of all possible contexts in the 18

th century, this

proportion drops to less than 1% in the 19th

century. Considering the widespread use of the form in contemporary spoken English, this is surprising.

It is possible that these results are at least partly due to changing editorial practices rather than drastic changes in usage. Therefore, the possible influence of scribes, printers and publishers of the Proceedings will subsequently be investigated. Additionally, the OBC results will be compared to data from the CLMET (Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, Diller et al. 2011), a more balanced corpus containing material from 1710-1920, in order to locate them within a broader context. This will also permit a discussion across different text types and highlight the importance of this factor for studies of the (spoken) language of the past. Carter Ronald; McCarthy, Michael (2006). Cambridge Grammar of English: A

Comprehensive Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diller, Hans-Jürgen; De Smet, Hendrik; Tyrkkö, Jukka (2011). The Corpus of Late

Modern English Texts, version 3.0. <https://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0044428/ clmet3_0.htm> [27 November 2013].

Rühlemann, Christoph (2007). Conversation in context: a corpus-driven approach. London: Continuum.

More cutting than the sword: Verbal irony and ‘civilizing trends’ of power

in medieval Englishes

Graham Williams University of Sheffield

Keywords: verbal irony, court culture, ethnopragmatics, (im)politeness, early Middle English In The Origins of Courtliness (1985), Jaeger argues that the performance of power in the Middle Ages underwent significant linguistic-pragmatic change within peacetime programs led by ‘courtier bishops’ (e.g. Otto of Bamberg) - men of learning sought after by rulers who expected them to promote more ‘civilizing trends’ at their early European courts. Central to this project were ‘wit, eloquence, and the mastering of impulse, not weapons’, wherein the mastery of verbal irony, or facetia, in particular was becoming ‘the rule at court’ (Jaeger 1985: 39 and 165). And while evidence

264

for the Anglo-Saxon court is thinner than for some of its European contemporaries, there is textual evidence that verbal irony had currency in Old and Early Middle English; and in this vein, I will argue that practices of discourse may provide links for otherwise obscure cultural connections. More specifically, evidence for verbal irony - seen from an ethnographic perspective - is significant for our understanding of OE communication, and it serves to forward the most recent research on OE pragmatics and politeness, which discusses the influences of warlike Germanic values sublimated vis-à-vis Christian ethos (e.g. caritas), but has yet to connect with the courtliness that becomes so important for later Middle English (see Jucker 2012). Discussing extracts from Old and Early Middle English texts (including Beowulf and The Owl and the Nightingale), this paper argues for a richer, more complex view of medieval pragmatics, and also speaks to the possible origins of the now-ubiquitous discourses of verbal irony, sarcasm and mock (im)politeness in English. Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Origins of Courtliness ~ Civilizing Trends and the Formation of

Courtly Ideals ~ 939-1210 (Philadelphia, 1985). Jucker, Andreas H. ‘Changes in politeness cultures’, in Terttu Nevalainen and

Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of English (New York, 2012), 422-33.

Grammar change as semantic change

Margaret E. Winters Wayne State University, Detroit

The present proposal is part of a larger project on the meaningfulness of grammar. Langacker (1987:2) states that “[g]rammar (or syntax) does not constitute an autonomous formal level of representations. Instead, grammar is symbolic in nature, consisting in the conventional symbolization of semantic structure.” This view of the nature of syntax has long been taken for granted as one of the basic tenets of Cognitive Semantics. It has, further, been demonstrated numerous times for specific structures, among them, in the literature of English linguistics, Heyvaert and Cuycken’s analysis of the difference between finite and gerundive complementation (2010) and Dancygier and Sweetser’s (2005) work on hypotheticals.

What has not been widely considered, to the best of my knowledge, is to what degree this view of syntax reflects an absolute fact about the nature of grammar. Is the notion of grammar as symbolic of meaning

265

universal to all constructions in all languages at all times? Alternatively, is it a strong tendency which can, therefore, be widely studied with the understanding, however, that there exist certain kinds of exceptions? If the latter case, it would follow that there are areas of syntax and morphology which are indeed automatic, solely structural.

The synchronic possibilities sketched above (of an absolute or relative universal) are reflected in a diachronic question: is all syntactic change semantic or is semantic only part of the time? In the latter case, what might be the determiners of how change is motivated, as a semantic development or a structural one.

The present paper will explore these questions. The discussion will be based on case studies from the history of English, it will attempt to identify principled ways to determine the absolute or relative semanticity of language change and, if relative, the determining factors in semantic or structural explanations for change. Dancygier, Barbara and Eve Sweetser. 2005. Mental Spaces in Grammar. Cambridge

University Press. Heyvaert Liesbet and Hubert Cuyckens. 2010. “Finite and gerundive

complementation in Modern and Present-day English: Semantics, variation and change” in Winters, Tissari, and Allan, eds., Diachronic Cognitive Semantics, pp. 132-159.. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. vol. 1. Stanford University Press.

Tracing an obsolete preterite-present verb: The fates of OE *dugan

Anna Wojtyś Univerisity of Warsaw

Keywords: preterite-present verbs, demise, *dugan/deah, synonyms, impersonal constructions While numerous studies (e.g. Lightfoot 1979 and 2009, Warner 1993, Fischer 2003, a.o.) discuss the evolution of those preterite-presents which have survived as modal verbs, little attention is paid to those lost. Following my earlier study on the loss of unnan (forthcoming), the present paper focuses on another non-surviving preterite-present verb, i.e. *dugan/deah ‘avail, be of use’. Although the verb exhibited a low frequency (only ca. 110 occurrences registered by DOE), it continued in use throughout Old and Middle English and “became obsolete by maybe the end of the ME period”

266

(Denison 1993: 296). The exception is some northern dialects and Scottish English, where it still functions as dow ‘to be able, to be willing’ (cf., e.g., Scottish National Dictionary).

The paper attempts to account for the disappearance of *dugan from English taking under consideration both language internal and external factors. First of all, all the uses of *dugan in Old English are examined to identify its main and peripheral meanings as well as the contexts of use. The results show that the verb is chiefly attested in medical writings (Leechdoms) in the sense ‘be effective’, typically with reference to various medicines. The prevailing form is that of the 3

rd person singular present,

often found in impersonal constructions. The data obtained from Middle English texts collected in the Innsbruck Corpus, LAEME, CMEPV and MEMT show that although *dugan developed the new meaning of ‘being fit or proper’ and a modal sense, ‘have ability’, each century witnessed its decreasing frequency. The plausible causes of its demise examined in the study include semantic bleaching, loss of impersonal constructions from English and the presence of the closest synonyms of *dugan, such as mæg, framian/fremian, helpan or avail, which might have been responsible for the displacement of the verb in medical texts, the main source of its attestation. Campbell, Alistair (1959) Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Denison, David (1993) English Historical Syntax: Verbal Constructions. London and

New York: Longman. DiPaolo Healey, Antonette, Joan Holland, Ian McDougall & Peter Mielke (2000) The

Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form. Toronto: DOE Project 2000. Fischer, Olga (2003) “The development of the modals in English: Radical versus

gradual changes”. In: David Hart (ed.) English Modality in Context. (Linguistic Insights. Studies in Language and Communication 11). (Bern: Peter Lang), 17-32.

Laing, Margaret (ed.) (2008-) A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150-1325. [http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html]. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh.

Lightfoot, David (1979) Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lightfoot, David (2009) “Cuing a New Grammar.” In: Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los (eds.) The Handbook of the History of English. (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell), 24–44.

Markus, Manfred (1999) Innsbruck Computer Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts (ICAMET). CD-ROM version. University of Innsbruck.

McSparran, Frances. The Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. [http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec/] Ann Arbor: Humanities Text Initiative University of Michigan.

Mitchell, Bruce (1985) Old English Syntax. Vols. 1-2. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

267

Ringe, Don (2006) From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Scottish National Dictionary [available online at http://www.dsl.ac.uk/index.html] Sievers, Eduard (1903) An Old English Grammar. 3rd ed. Boston: Ginn and Company. Taavitsainen, Irma, Päivi Pahta & Martti Mäkinen (2005) Middle English Medical

Texts. CD-ROM. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1972) A History of English Syntax. A Transformational

Approach to the History of English Sentence Structure. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Warner, A. (1993) English Auxiliaries. Structure and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Movability of dative-marked objects of transitive adjectives in Old English

Tomohiro Yanagi Chubu University

Keywords: transitive adjectives, movability of objects, inherent Case, structural Case In Old English some adjectives, unlike their corresponding ones of present-day English, could take nominal objects without recourse to any preposition. This class of adjectives is called ‘transitive adjectives’ in the literature (cf. Maling 1983 and van Kemenade 1987). The objects were marked with genitive or dative Case. Two examples of dative-marked objects are given in (1).

(1) a. Witodlice þa arleasan beoð heora yfelum weorcum gelice. ‘Verily the wicked shall be like their own evil deeds.’ (ÆLS [Christmas] 215.170) b. þæt oðer wæs lic anre leon hiwe ‘the second was like a Lion’s form’ (ÆLS [Mark] 180.3314)

In (1a) the dative-marked object heora yfelum weorcum ‘their evil deeds’ precedes the adjective gelice ‘like’, whereas in (1b) the dative object anre leon hiwe ‘a Lion’s form’ follows the adjective lic ‘like’. This paper, focusing in particular on dative-marked objects taken by transitive adjectives like the ones in (1), investigates syntactic properties of those objects in adjectival constructions, in comparison with objects of transitive verbs. Through a study of the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose

268

(Taylor et al. 2003), I will identify syntactic similarities and differences between objects of transitive verbs and adjectives.

Transitive verbs and adjectives show the same word order patterns. Just like the examples of adjectives in (1), accusative-marked objects can either precede or follow their governing verbs in transitive verb constructions. In addition, objects of both kinds of predicate can be topicalized. An example of an adjective is given in (2).

(2) Þysum weorce wæs sum oþer gelic ‘Another work was like this one (ÆLS [Martin] 474.6265)

The two kinds of predicate, however, exhibit a different behavior with respect to the so-called Object Shift (cf. Holmberg 1986 and Thráinsson 2001). Objects of transitive verbs can move across adverbs when the finite verbs overtly moves out of their base-generated positions, which is often called ‘Holmberg’s Generalization’ (Holmberg 1986). On the other hand, objects of transitive adjectives can hardly move across adverbs. This is because adjectives cannot be raised overtly and does not satisfy Holmberg’s Generalization. I will argue that the similarities and differences can be attributed to layers of clause structure where transitive verbs and adjectives are used—objects of transitive adjectives are hierarchically embedded ‘more deeply’—and Case assignment mechanism—objects of transitive verbs are structurally Case-marked while those of transitive adjectives are inherently Case-marked. Holmberg, Anders (1986) Word Order and Syntactic Features in Scandinavian

Languages and English, PhD Dissertation, University of Stockholm. Kemenade, Ans van (1987) Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of

English, Dordrecht, Foris. Maling, Joan (1983) “Transitive Adjectives: A Case of Categorial Reanalysis,” in

Linguistic Categories: Auxiliaries and Related Puzzles, Vol. 1, edited by F. Heny and B. Richards, 253-289, Dordrecht, Reidel.

Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Frank Beths (2003) The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. University of York.

Thráinsson, Höskuldur (2001) “Object Shift and Scrambling,” in The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, edited by M. Baltin and C. Collins, 148–202, Malden, MA, Blackwell.

269

On privative verbs and the double object construction in Middle English

Eva Zehentner University of Vienna

Keywords: ditransitive construction, dative alternation, verbs of dispossession, Middle English, syntax-semantics interface The present paper discusses the possible causes of the steady decrease of privative verbs such as binimen, (bi)rēven, or robben (see example (1)) used in the double object construction (DOC) during the Middle English period (cf. Barðdal 2007; Colleman & De Clerck 2011; Mitchell 1985; Visser 1984).

(1) (c1230(?a1200) Ancr.) Ouertrust reaueð godd his rihte dom & his rihtwisnesse ‘Presumption robs God of his righteous judgment and his justice’.

More precisely, the paper addresses the question whether there is a correlation, or even a causal relationship, between the disappearance of DOC clauses with this class of verbs and the rise of the dative alternation, i.e. the possibility of ditransitive verbs to be paraphrased by a prepositional pattern with to (or for):

(2) (a1470 Malory) They gaff the godis [...] to theire knyghtes ‘They gave the goods to their knights’.

It will be argued that it was mainly through the appearance of this paraphrase that the semantics of the ditransitive construction became increasingly associated with a basic ‘give’ situation involving the successful transfer of a patient to a recipient (Goldberg 1995: 31-33). As a consequence, uses at the periphery of this core meaning involving e.g. verbs of dispossession (Colleman & De Clerck 2011: 204), were marginalised and eventually ousted from the DOC pattern. This in turn led to the increasing use of readily available alternative patterns, as shown in example (3):

(3) (c1405 (c1390) Chaucer Pars.) whan a womman steleth hir body from hir housbonde ‘when a woman steals her body away from her husband’.

270

These patterns were characterised by prepositional phrases with from (or of) denoting the deprivée (or theme), and were able to propagate themselves with great success due to a number of reasons. First, the development catered to the general trend of moving from more synthetic to more analytic patterns. Second, the development reinforced tendencies and distinctions which were already present in Old English, but of which some were blurred when morphological case marking was eroded (Allen 1995: 28-29; Visser 1984: 611, 632-633) – e.g. the availability of non-prototypical case frames such as ACCDeprivée GENTheme for privative verbs as well as the presence of the more explicit prepositional paraphrases involving from (Colleman & De Clerck 2011: 201).

Methodologically, this paper is based on a quantitative corpus study of the relevant instances of privative verbs as well as to-/for-DOCs in the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (PPCME2).

It will be demonstrated that the results not only confirm a strong correlation and suggest a causal relationship between the two phenomena in question, but that their investigation will enable us to draw more general conclusions on argument structure and the syntax-semantics interface. Allen, Cynthia L. 1995. Case marking and reanalysis: grammatical relations from Old

to Early Modern English. Oxford: OUP. Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2007. The semantic and lexical range of the ditransitive

construction in the history of (North) Germanic. Functions of Language 14(1), 9-30.

Colleman, Timothy & Bernard De Clerck. 2011. Constructional semantics on the move: on semantic specialization in the English double object construction. Cognitive Linguistics 22(1), 183-209.

Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax. Vol.1: Concord, the parts of speech, and the sentence. Oxford: Clarendon.

Visser, Fredericus Th. 1964 [1984]. An historical syntax of the English language. Leiden: Brill

.

271

Calamities and counterfactuals: A historical view of polarity reversal

Debra Ziegeler Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3

Keywords: proximative adverbs, counterfactuality, polarity reversal The past literature on the semantics of proximative adverbs in English, such as almost, has been replete with argument over the precise definitions of the inferences of negation that accompany the meanings of proximity expressed by such adverbs. In suggesting, for example, that John almost fell it is understood that he did not fall, and yet the negation is not part of the meaning of the adverb. Such inferences have been classed as either semantic entailments (e.g. Sevi 1998, Hitzeman 1992, Horn 2002, 2011, Pons Bordería and Schwenter 2005, and Amaral 2007), or pragmatic implicatures (e.g. Sadock 1981, Atlas 1984, 2005, and Ziegeler 2000, 2010). Further research has revealed a large number of languages in which the meanings of negation are no longer implicit in the context, but are expressed overtly as a form of pleonastic negation (e.g. Wierzbicka 1986, Kuteva 1998, Pons Bordería and Schwenter 2005, and Amaral 2007). Schwenter 2002 and Pons Bordería and Schwenter 2005 have claimed the presence of such expletive negation as evidence for an entailment analysis of almost, following Horn’s (2002) analysis of the adverb as an unasserted entailment. In the present paper, the adverb is considered as expressing pragmatic counterfactual meaning rather than negative entailments.

The questions that arose from these earlier studies were first, whether English has ever had a history of expletive negation accompanying the use of almost, and second, why a language encodes expletive negation if the negative inferences are so strong as to be labelled entailments. An initial search of the use of almost from 1710-1925 in the CLMET(EV) Corpus revealed that the representation of bare preterite verb complements (those most likely to yield counterfactual meanings) was infrequent, but in such cases, the complement referred to an event which was highly undesirable, and often, hyperbolic. The evidence therefore supported claims made earlier by Akatsuka and Strauss (2000) that counterfactuals are used most often to express the avoidance of unfavourable events. A comparison of the use of a synonymous adverb, nearly, using the same corpora, yielded even more interesting results: that the development of counterfactual meaning was a recent phenomenon, and that the complement meaning has completely reversed its polarity from proximity-to-P to proximity-to-not-P over a period of less than 300 years. The present

272

paper investigates the reasons for such an orientation switch in the adverbs almost and nearly, taking into account the predominance of complements referring to calamitous events in the Late Modern English period, and using limited data selected from the CLMET(EV) corpus. Factors accounted for within the corpus search include the presence of other possible markers of counterfactuality also referring to adversative situations.

Amaral, Patrıcia, 2007. The Meaning of Approximative Adverbs: Evidence from

European Portuguese. PhD Dissertation. Ohio State University. Atlas, Jay D., 1984. Comparative adjectives and adverbials of degree: an introduction

to radically radical pragmatics. Linguistics and Philosophy 7, 347–377. Atlas, Jay D., 2005. Logic, Meaning and Conversation. Oxford University Press, New

York. CLMET(EV). The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts Extended Version, comp.

Hendrik de Smet. https://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0044428/clmet.htm Hitzeman, Janet, 1992. The selectional properties and entailments of ‘almost’. In:

Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society, vol. 28. pp. 225–238. Horn, Laurence R., 2002. Assertoric inertia and NPI licensing. In: Proceedings of the

Chicago Linguistic Society 38, Part II (The Panels). pp.55-82. Horn, Laurence R. 2011. Almost forever. In: Yuasa, Etsuyo, Bagchi, Tista, & Beals,

Katherine (Eds.), Pragmatics and Autolexical Grammar. In Honor of Jerry Sadock. John Benjamins, Amsterdan and Philadelphia, pp. 2-21.

Pons Borderı´a, Salvador, Schwenter, Scott, 2005. Polar meaning and ‘expletive’ negation in approximative adverbs. Spanish por poco (no). Journal of Historical Pragmatics 6 (2), 262–282.

Sadock, Jerrold M., 1981. Almost. In: Cole, Peter (Ed.), Radical Pragmatics. Academic Press, New York, pp. 257–271.

Schwenter, Scott, 2002. Discourse context and polysemy: Spanish casi. In: Wiltshire, Caroline, Camps, Joaquim (Eds.), Romance Philology and Variation: Selected Papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. John Benjamins, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, pp. 161–175.

Sevi, Aldo, 1998. A Semantics for Almost and Barely. Masters Dissertation. Tel Aviv University.

Wierzbicka, Anna, 1986. Precision in vagueness. Journal of Pragmatics 10, 597–614. Ziegeler, Debra P., 2000a. What almost can reveal about counterfactual inferences.

Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1743–1776. Ziegeler, Debra P., 2010. Running the gauntlet on the proximatives debate: A

response to recent challenges. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 681-704.