Constraints on ellipsis alternation: A view from the history of English

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Nykiel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Form Processing ◽  
Argument Ellipsis ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
History Of ◽  
Construction Type ◽  
Semantic Dependencies ◽  
Late Modern

AbstractI offer a diachronic perspective on English ellipsis alternation, or the alternation between inclusion and omission of prepositions from remnants under sluicing and bare argument ellipsis. The relative freedom to omit prepositions from remnants has not been stable in English; this freedom is connected to the strength of semantic dependencies between prepositions and verbs. Remnants without prepositions are first attested, but remain less frequent than remnants with prepositions, as late as Early Modern English and gain in frequency following this period. I demonstrate that three constraints—correlate informativity, structural persistence, and construction type—predict ellipsis alternation in Early and Late Modern English. However, predicting ellipsis alternation in present-day English requires semantic dependencies in addition to the three constraints. The constraints can be subsumed under principles of language processing and production (considerations of accessibility, a tendency to reuse structure, and a conventionalized performance preference for efficiently accessing constituents that form processing domains), permitting a unified processing account of ellipsis alternation with cross-linguistic coverage.

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.

On the history of if- and though-links with declarative complement clauses

2001 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
María José López-Couso ◽  
Belén Méndez-Naya
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Standard View ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Complement Clause ◽  
Complement Clauses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Construction Type ◽  
Selection Of

This article examines the history of a construction type which has been almost completely disregarded in the extensive literature on complementation, namely declarative complement clauses introduced by if and though. Contrary to the standard view, which favours an adverbial analysis for these clauses, it is shown here that there are convincing arguments for considering certain if- and though-clauses as complements, though it is also admitted that their behaviour differs in some respects from standard cases of declarative complementation. The article also reveals the existence of a number of factors favouring the selection of the minor complementizers if and though over the major complement-clause links that and zero in Old, Middle, and Early Modern English. Evidence has primarily been drawn from the diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts.

scholarly journals Word-entries and Big Data in Lexicons of Early Modern English

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Ian Lancashire
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Online Database ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
History Of ◽  
Survival And Growth ◽  
The University

This brief thirty-year history of Lexicons of Early Modern English, an online database of glossaries and dictionaries of the period, begins in a fourteenth-floor Robarts Library lab of the Centre for Computing and the Humanities at the University of Toronto in 1986. It was first published freely online in 1996 as the Early Modern English Dictionaries Database. Ten years later, in a seventh-floor lab also in the Robarts Library, it came out as LEME, thanks to support from TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal for Research) and the University of Toronto Press and Library. No other modern language has such a resource. The most important reason for the emergence, survival, and growth of LEME is that its contemporary lexicographers understood their language differently from how we, our many advantages notwithstanding, have conceived it over the past two centuries. Cette brève histoire des trente ans du Lexicons of Early Modern English, une base de données en ligne de glossaires et de dictionnaires de l’époque, commence en 1986 dans le laboratoire du Centre for Computing and the Humanities, au quatorzième étage de la bibliothèque Robarts de l’Université de Toronto. Cette base de données a été publiée gratuitement en ligne premièrement en 1996, sous le titre Early Modern English Dictionnaires Database. Dix ans plus tard, elle était publiée sous le sigle LEME, à partir du septième étage de la même bibliothèque Robarts, grâce au soutien du TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal for Research), de la bibliothèque et des presses de l’Université de Toronto. Aucune autre langue vivante ne dispose d’une telle ressource. La principale raison expliquant l’émergence, la survie et la croissance du LEME est que les lexicographes qui font l’objet du LEME comprenaient leur langue très différemment que nous la concevons depuis deux siècles, et ce nonobstant plusieurs de nos avantages.

The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature

2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 542
Author(s):  
Seiwoong Oh ◽  
David Lowenstein ◽  
Janel Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Early Modern English Literature ◽  
History Of

The rise and development of parenthetical needless to say

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 134-159
Author(s):  
Zeltia Blanco-Suárez ◽  
Mario Serrano-Losada
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
Late Modern

Abstract The article traces the diachronic development of the assumed evidential needless to say. This parenthetical expression allows the speaker to make certain assertions regarding the obviousness of what s/he is about to say, thus serving as an evidential strategy that marks the information conveyed as being based on inference and/or assumed or general knowledge. Parenthetical needless to say has its roots in the Early Modern English needless to-inf construction (meaning ‘it is unnecessary to do something’), which originally licensed a wide range of infinitives. Over the course of time, however, it became restricted to uses with utterance verbs, eventually giving rise to the grammaticalized evidential expression needless to say. In fact, it is only in Late Modern English that the evidential pragmatic inferences become conventionalized and that the first parenthetical uses of the construction are attested. In Present-day English, parenthetical needless to say occurs primarily at the left periphery with forward scope.

Do you investigate word order in detail or do you investigate in detail word order? On word order and headedness in the recent history of English

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Pérez-Guerra
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Verb Phrases ◽  
Text Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Modern

AbstractThis paper examines the design of verb phrases and noun phrases, focusing on the diachronic tendencies observed in the data in Middle English, Early Modern, and Late Modern English. The approach is corpus-based and the data, representing different periods and text types, is taken from the

May under verbs of hoping: Evolution of the modal system in the complements of hoping verbs in Early Modern English

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Yanovich
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Compositional Semantics ◽  
Modal System ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Recent Innovation ◽  
Two Stages ◽  
Late Modern

The chapter traces two stages of the rise of the may-under-hope construction of Late Modern English, present in examples like (i) Dearest, I hope we may be on such terms twenty years hence. Despite the archaic feel to it, this construction is in fact a very recent innovation that arose not earlier than the sixteenth century. I conjecture that its elevated flavor does not stem from its old age, but rather was inherited from another construction, with the inflectional subjunctive under hope. Along the way, I also present evidence that the textual absence of may under verbs of hoping before the rise of this construction was not due to narrow compositional semantics.

Speech Representation in the History of English

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Speech Event ◽  
Speech Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Modern

This volume explores the speech representation of the past, comprising in-depth analyses of how speakers and writers mark, structure, and discuss a previous speech event or fictional speech in the history of English. Focusing on the Early Modern English and the Late Modern English periods, the chapters are concerned with topics such as parentheses as markers of represented speech, the development of BE like as a reporting expression, the gradual formation of free indirect speech reporting, and the interpersonal functions of represented speech. Various social contexts and genres are covered, including witness depositions, literary texts, letters, histories, and the spoken language of the recent past. The chapters draw on historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics, and corpus linguistics in showing a wide array of approaches to the study of speech representation in the history of English.

scholarly journals Exile and Linguistic Encounter: Early Modern English Convents in the Low Countries and France

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie K. M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Barriers ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
History Of

The history of religious migration and experience of exile in the early modern period has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Neglected within this scholarship, however, is sustained discussion of linguistic encounter within these often fraught transcultural and transnational interactions. This article breaks new ground by exploring the linguistic experiences of religious exiles in English convents founded in the Low Countries. Most women within English communities in exile were linguistically challenged; focusing on the creative ways these women subsequently negotiated language barriers sheds new light on female language acquisition and encounter during this period.

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