Three changing patterns of verb complementation in Late Modern English: a real-time study based on matching text corpora

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Mair
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Standard English ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Grammatical Variation ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Infinitival Complements ◽  
Late Modern

The article looks at three instances of grammatical variation in present-day standard English: the use of bare and to-infinitives with the verb help, the presence or absence of the preposition/complementizer from before -ing-complements depending on prevent, and the choice between -ing- and infinitival complements after the verbs begin and start. In all three instances, current British and American usage will be shown to differ, and these differences need to be interpreted against diachronic changes affecting Late Modern English grammar as a whole. The description of twentieth-century developments is mainly based on data obtained from matching corpora of British and American standard English. Since in all three cases studied developments did not originate in the twentieth century, additional data from the quotation base of the OED were used to outline the long-term evolution of the relevant portions of the grammar since ca. 1600. In general/methodological terms, the article aims to show that an utterance-based model of language change, in combination with the exceptionally well-developed corpus-linguistic working environment available to the student of standard English, can lead to new discoveries even in a well-studied area such as the grammar of standard English.

scholarly journals Using the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-606
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE WALLIS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Teaching Resource ◽  
The University ◽  
Late Modern

This article reports on the use of the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource in historical sociolinguistics and historical linguistics courses at the University of Sheffield. Pronouncing dictionaries are an invaluable resource for students learning about processes of standardisation and language attitudes during the Late Modern English period (1700–1900), however they are not easy to use in their original format. Each author uses their own notation system to indicate their recommended pronunciation, while the terminology used to describe the quality of the vowels and consonants differs from that used today, and provides an additional obstacle to the student wishing to interrogate such sources. ECEP thus provides a valuable intermediary between the students and the source material, as it includes IPA equivalents for the recommended pronunciations, as well as any metalinguistic commentary offered by the authors about a particular pronunciation. This article demonstrates a teaching approach that not only uses ECEP as a tool in its own right, but also explores how it can be usefully combined with other materials covering language change in the Late Modern English period to enable students to undertake their own investigations in research-led courses.

scholarly journals How long was the nineteenth century?

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (spe) ◽  
pp. 81-98
Author(s):  
David LIGHTFOOT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Learning Procedure ◽  
The Way

This paper reviews the problems of the deterministic and predictive view of language change initiated by nineteenth century linguists and shows that such a view is still present in many analyses proposed by twentieth century linguists. As an alternative to such a view, the paper discusses an approach along the lines of Niyogi and Berwick (1997), which takes the explanation for long-term tendencies to be a function of the architecture of UG and the learning procedure and of the way in which populations of speakers behave.

scholarly journals Comparative variationism for the study of language change: five centuries of competition amongst Spanish deontic periphrases

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Blas Arroyo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
History Of

AbstractBased on a corpus composed entirely of texts close to the pole of communicative immediacy, mainly private letters from the sixteenth, eighteenth and twentieth centuries (c. 1960), this paper analyses the results of a variationist study on the historical evolution undergone by the Spanish modal periphrases with three distinct auxiliary verbs (haber, tener, deber). Using the heuristic tools of the comparative method, the data show that variation has been constrained by a handful of common factor groups over almost five centuries. Nonetheless, with the odd exception, these factors have conditioned each verb in a different way. Moreover, the sense of this variation changes as time goes by, with especially relevant reorganisation in the first part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, there is a notable association between these constraints and the degree of markedness and the frequency of the conditioning contexts, giving support to a usage-based approach to language change in which cognitive processes such as entrenchment play a decisive role. These data also allow a particular profile to be traced for each modal verb in the history of Spanish, in which tener and haber finally undergo a complementary distribution, whereas deber follows a different pattern. After several centuries of stagnation, tener becomes the star in the deontic firmament of spontaneous communication, diffusing abruptly as a change from below in the twentieth century, and replacing haber, which had been the unmarked variant for centuries.

War, Changing Patterns of Warfare, State Collapse, and Transnational Violence in Afghanistan: 1978–2001

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-888 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. SIDKY
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World System ◽  
September 11Th ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
Interstate Relations ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The World ◽  
War Rhetoric ◽  
Changing Patterns

The war in Afghanistan was one of the most brutal and long lasting conflicts of the second half of the twentieth century. Anthropologists specializing in Afghanistan who wrote about the war at the time reiterated the United State's Cold War rhetoric rather than provide objective analyses. Others ignored the war altogether. What happened in Afghanistan, and why, and the need for objective reassessments only came to mind after the September 11th attacks. This paper examines the genesis and various permutations of the Afghan war in terms of causal dynamics embedded in the broader interstate relations of the world system and its competing military complexes during the second half of the twentieth century and changes in that system in the post-Cold War period.

James Buchanan’s use of Anne Fisher’s A new grammar: Towards the development of an English grammar teaching method in eighteenth-century English grammar writing

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Vera Willems
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Method ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Discourse Community ◽  
James Buchanan ◽  
Grammar Teaching ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Language Norms

AbstractIn light of the question how the eighteenth-century English grammar writing tradition contributed to the development of Standard English, this article attempts to answer the question to what extent the grammarian James Buchanan made use of Anne Fisher’s grammar in writing his own. While Buchanan admitted that he consulted the works of other grammarians, he did not reveal which he used. It is argued that Buchanan drew on Fisher’s grammar for his focus on English concord, and for the inclusion of example sentences of false syntax and of exercises on bad English. However, the differences in layout and the subjects discussed in the example sentences and exercises are such that the similarities can be said to fall within the remit of acceptable eighteenth-century authorship and that they do not seem evidence of an attempt to plagiarise. On the contrary, Buchanan’s reliance on Fisher’s grammar can best be understood as a concern with the didactics of English grammar rather than with the actual language norms purported by Fisher – though some features seem inspired by her. As such, Buchanan’s use of Fisher’s grammar can be seen as an attempt to further the development of an English grammar teaching method within the discourse community of the eighteenth-century grammarians.

Great Risk for the Kingdom

2016 ◽  
pp. 236-248
Author(s):  
Mark Alan Charles Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Great Risk ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Prosperity Theology ◽  
Charismatic Christianity ◽  
Late Modern

Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity (“PCC”) has successfully navigated the challenges modernity poses to religion, growing rapidly in the twentieth century. Toward the end of the twentieth century, however, neoliberalism began its ascent to its current hegemonic status. Neoliberalism reconfigures social institutions as marketized practices with a measurable ‘payoff'. PCC adapted to this challenge in the form of a “growth churches,” adopting many of the characteristics of neoliberalism. In adopting a homogenous model and method of ‘best practice' in order to facilitate growth; offering a ‘prosperity' theology that fits well with the development of human capital; and endorsing the universalization of risk through modelling “pastorpreneur” leadership, it is argued in this chapter that growth churches are a paradigmatic example of a late modern religious phenomenon accommodating neoliberalism in a largely uncritical manner. The chapter concludes with some observations that critique this association between neoliberalism and growth churches.

The Theological Mediation

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-41
Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Theology Of The Cross ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Hans Urs Von Balthasar ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
Late Modern

This chapter examines late modern reappropriations of the classical theology of the cross. In continuity with medieval and Reformation theology, these hold that Christ’s suffering was a divinely willed redemptive act, in vicarious satisfaction for human sin. The neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth, in line with the Reformed tradition, emphasizes election and covenant. The theme of divine kenosis, found in nineteenth century German an English thinkers, is taken up into Orthodox trinitarian soteriology by the Russian theologian Sergei Bulgakov, with strong attention to Patristic dogma. Hans Urs von Balthasar stresses Christ’s “descent into hell” as the central symbol of the divine entry into the lost human condition. Jürgen Moltmann sees the suffering of God as the only possible theological response to the horrors of the twentieth century, especially the Holocaust.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
John Skorupski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
East European ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Late Modern

This is a critical study of late modern ethical thought in Europe, from the French Revolution to the advent of modernism. I shall take it that ‘late modern’ ethics starts with two revolutions: the political revolution in France and the philosophical revolution of Kant. The contrast is with ‘early modern’. Another contrast is with ‘modernism’, which I shall take to refer to trends in culture, philosophy, and politics that developed in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, and lasted into the twentieth century—perhaps to the sixties, or even to the collapse of East European socialism in the eighties....

scholarly journals New -way(s) with -ward(s): lexicalization, splitting and sociolinguistic patterns

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-239
Author(s):  
Karlien Franco ◽  
Sali A. Tagliamonte
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Large Database ◽  
Phrasal Verbs ◽  
Morphological Variable

AbstractThis paper investigates the distribution of a morphological variable that has not gained much attention in the literature: adverbial -s versus -Ø. This morpheme predominantly occurs with adverbs ending in -ward(s), like forward(s), afterward(s), and inward(s), or -way(s), such as anyway(s) or halfway(s). Using a large database of sociolinguistic interviews of Ontario English and an apparent-time perspective, we show that the use of the variants changes over the twentieth century, with the adverbial suffixes -ward(s) and -way(s) behaving differently. -Ward(s) shows a trend towards -s, while most words in -way(s) increasingly take -Ø–splitting by adverbial suffix. Anyway(s) is an exception to this pattern, with a change from below towards -s, strongly conditioned by social standing. We also find evidence for lexicalization of forms without -s in phrasal verbs like to move forward. We explain these findings against the background of variationist sociolinguistic theory and principles of language change.

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