A diachronic analysis of the adjective intensifier well from Early Modern English to Present Day English

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-245
Author(s):  
James M. Stratton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Stress Pattern ◽  
Standard Variety ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Sample Representativeness ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Old Bailey ◽  
Diachronic Analysis ◽  
Audio Video

AbstractWhile the use of well as an intensifier of most adjectives had supposedly died out by Early Modern English (Fettig 1934: 186, Mustanoja 1960: 327, Stenström 2000: 188, Ito and Taglimonte 2003: 278), no studies have empirically examined its frequency diachronically. The present study traces its use from Early Modern English (1560) to Present Day English, (2014) using five speech-related corpora in addition to various dialectal sources and audio/video clips. Results indicate that this use was retained in some dialects of English despite not being attested in the Corpus of English Dialogues nor the Old Bailey Corpus, which document predominantly the incipient standard variety. A qualitative analysis of its use reveals a potential diachronic shift in its stress pattern and the scale structure of its intensified heads. Moreover, the present study discusses some of the methodological challenges which arise when using historical corpora to investigate linguistic change, drawing particular attention to sample representativeness and data analysis.

Parenthetical reporting clauses in the history of English: the development of quotative inversion

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNA CICHOSZ
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old English ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Diachronic Analysis ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Annotated Corpora

This study is a corpus-based diachronic analysis of English reporting parentheticals, i.e. clauses introducing direct speech, placed after or in the middle of the reported message. The aim of the investigation is to trace the development of the construction throughout the history of English, establishing the main factors influencing the choice between VS and SV patterns (i.e. with and without quotative inversion respectively), showing how various reporting verbs were increasingly attracted to the construction, and demonstrating the gradual morphological reduction of the main reporting verbs: quoth and say. The study is based on syntactically annotated corpora of Old, Middle, Early Modern and Late Modern English, and uses other corpora to illustrate more recent changes. The study reveals that reporting clauses do not show regular quotative inversion with all subject types until the Early Modern English period and links this development to the emergence of the comment clause with say. It is also claimed that quotative inversion is not directly derived from the V-2 rule and that parenthetical reporting clauses have functioned as a separate construction since the Old English period.

Measuring productivity diachronically: nominal suffixes in English letters, 1400–1600

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS C. PALMER
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Multifaceted Approach ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Morphological Productivity ◽  
Multifactor Analysis ◽  
Diachronic Analysis ◽  
Early English ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
Hapax Legomena

Much scholarship on morphological productivity has focused on measures such ashapax legomena, single occurrences of derivatives in large corpora, to compare and contrast the varying productivities of English affixes. But the small size of historical corpora has often limited the usefulness of such measures in diachronic analysis. Examining letters from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, this article advances a multifaceted approach to assessing historical changes in nominal suffixation in English. It adapts methodologies from work on morphological productivity in contemporary language – in particular, measures of base and derivative ratios from Hay & Baayen (2002) – to provide quantitative and qualitative descriptions of changes in the productivity of native -nessand borrowed -ity, -cion, -ageand -mentin Early Modern English. Ultimately, the study argues that diachronic productivity is best evaluated with a multifactor analysis, including measures of suffixal decomposability, aggregation of new derivatives and evidence of hybridization. It also suggests that increased use of neologisms with borrowed suffixes in Early Modern English might be explained by the increasing transparency of these suffixes in derivatives during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

scholarly journals Sociolinguistics and Language History: The Helsinki Corpus of Early English Correspondence

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Terttu Nevalainen ◽  
Helena Raumolin-Brunberg
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Language History ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Early English

The paper introduces our new project on diachronic sociolinguistics, focusing on the problems of compiling a representative corpus for this purpose. We study long-term linguistic change in the Late Middle and Early Modern English periods (1420-1680) in a computer-readable corpus of personal letters, which is designed specifically for the purposes of sociohistorical research. When completed, the Helsinki Corpus of Early English Correspondence will comprise some 1.5 million running words representing all the literate social ranks of the time, both sexes, and different ages and occupations. In our case, the issues that a corpus compiler must deal with include the coverage of all the sociolinguistically relevant categories of data, authenticity of extant materials, and the quality of editing.

Where Patriarchy, Gender, and Verdicts Collide: Servant Theft Against their Masters in England during the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Letawsky
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Occupational Roles ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Old Bailey ◽  
Societal Expectations

Servant theft against their masters during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was common and influenced by societal expectations and regulations.  Strict guidelines dictated prescriptive notions of servant behaviour, which could be difficult for servants to maintain. With limited freedom under a system of service influenced by patriarchy and religion, servants chose to commit theft offences to provide a solution to their circumstances.  Male and female servants usually stole items that corresponded to their occupational roles.  By examining fifteen court cases tried at The Old Bailey, one can see that male and female servants demonstrated similar levels of criminality, but female servants often received harsher punishment for their thefts than male servants due to the patriarchal framework of early modern English sociaty.

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