scholarly journals Lexicalization and grammaticalization

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tinne Van Rompaey ◽  
Kristin Davidse ◽  
Peter Petré
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Purpose Clauses ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Theoretical Reflection

In this article we show that verbo-nominal expressions be on the/one’s way/road emerged as lexical composite predicates in Old English. These templates came to be elaborated by directional adjuncts, adjuncts describing states or events, and purpose clauses. In Late Modern English, the structure with a to-infinitive was functionally reinterpreted as a secondary auxiliary + lexical head, whose core sense is imminential aspect. On the basis of this case study, we develop a theoretical reflection on the differences between lexicalization and grammaticalization, as they emerge within a functional-constructional approach. On the syntagmatic axis, we adopt Boye & Harder’s (2007, 2012) principles for distinguishing lexicalized from grammaticalized uses on the basis of their having primary or secondary status in discourse usage. On the paradigmatic axis, we rethink the neo-Firthian distinction between lexis and grammar in diachronic terms. Individual lexical items are defined by their collocations (Sinclair 1991) and grammatical values by their systemic interdependencies (Halliday 1992). Lexicalization is then characterized by the development of distinctive collocational networks and grammaticalization by the acquisition of the defining interdependencies with values from related grammatical systems.

ESP corpus design: compilation of the Veterinary Nursing Medical Chart Corpus and the Veterinary Nursing Wordlist

Corpora ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-140
Author(s):  
Yukiko Ohashi ◽  
Noriaki Katagiri ◽  
Katsutoshi Oka ◽  
Michiko Hanada
Keyword(s):  
Word List ◽  
English For Specific Purposes ◽  
Regular Expressions ◽  
Annotation Scheme ◽  
Corpus Design ◽  
As Species ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Access To Data ◽  
General Service

This paper reports on two research results: ( 1) designing an English for Specific Purposes (esp) corpus architecture complete with annotations structured by regular expressions; and ( 2) a case study to test the design to cater for creating a specific vocabulary list using the compiled corpus. The first half of this study involved designing a precisely structured esp corpus from 190 veterinary medical charts with a hierarchy of the data. The data hierarchy in the corpus consists of document types, outline elements and inline elements, such as species and breed. Perl scripts extracted the data attached to veterinary-specific categories, and the extraction led to creating wordlists. The second part of the research tested the corpus mode, creating a list of commonly observed lexical items in veterinary medicine. The coverage rate of the wordlists by General Service List (gsl) and Academic Word List (awl) was tested, with the result that 66.4 percent of all lexical items appeared in gsl and awl, whereas 33.7 percent appeared in none of those lists. The corpus compilation procedures as well as the annotation scheme introduced in this study enable the compilation of specific corpora with explicit annotations, allowing teachers to have access to data required for creating esp classroom materials.

Habemus Corpora: Reapproaching Philological Problems in the Age of ‘Big’ Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-127
Author(s):  
Mark Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Language ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
British Library ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Major Task ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
Primary Focus

Abstract This paper demonstrates the potential of new methodologies for using existing corpora of medieval English to better contextualise linguistic variants, a major task of philology and a key underpinning of our ability to answer major literary-historical questions, such as when, where and to what purpose medieval texts and manuscripts were produced. The primary focus of the article is the assistance these methods can offer in dating the composition of texts, which it illustrates with a case study of the “Old” English Life of St Neot, uniquely preserved in the mid-twelfth-century South-Eastern homiliary, London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.xiv, fols. 4–169. While the Life has recently been dated around 1100, examining its orthography, lexis, syntax and style alongside that of all other English-language texts surviving from before 1150 using new techniques for searching the Dictionary of Old English Corpus suggests it is very unlikely to be this late. The article closes with some reflections on what book-historical research should prioritise as it further evolves into the digital age.

Reduplication Revisited

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet B. Klein
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Treatment Approach ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Longitudinal Case Study ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Monosyllabic Words ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Case Study Data

This case study considers the phonological forms of early lexical items produced by 1 normally developing boy, from 19 to 22 months of age, who began to produce all monosyllabic words as bisyllabic. In order to link this empirical data (the apparent creation of increased complexity) with universal tendencies (motivated by the reduction of complexity), the functions of reduplication were revisited. Phonological processes (i.e., reduplication and final consonant deletion) are viewed as repairs motivated by 2 interacting constraints (i.e., constraints on monosyllabic words and on word-final consonants). These longitudinal case study data provide further evidence for a relationship between final consonant deletion and reduplication. A possible treatment approach for similar patterns demonstrated clinically is recommended.

Language Contact in Early Medieval Britain: Settlement, Interaction, and Acculturation

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-89
Author(s):  
Martin Findell ◽  
Philip A. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Written Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
First Case ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
English Spelling

This chapter explores language contact in early medieval Britain, focusing on the methodological problems involved in studying historical language contact in situations where records of the languages involved are sparse. Two case studies then look at linguistic evidence for contact situations, one addressing the uses of the term wealh in Old English and especially in the Laws of Ine, while the other explores the influence of Latin on the development of Old English spelling. The first case study argues that the term wealh in early Old English (as in Continental Germanic) usage identified groups and individuals as Roman, as distinct from the identification with Celtic languages that developed later in the period. The second case study shows how spellings of the reflex of pre-Old English *[ɡɡj] developed through the engagement of Old English speakers with Latin, demonstrating the interactions between developments in the spoken and written language.

E-Migration

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nihil Olivera
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Information Society ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Information Goods ◽  
Integration Policies ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Theoretical Reflection

Communication and social practices of migrants are changing the dynamics of integration policies. Terms like globalization or transnationalization denote (apparently) an increased flow of information, goods, and capital across nation-state borders. However, borders are open for transactions, not for people. Located in the research thematic area of the Information Society, this article presents some technological, geographical, and social (TGS) characteristics that create a space the author calls e-migration, where the intervention of technology in society produces changes never seen before. This article is a theoretical reflection that discussed a case study of integration and immigration policies of French e-migrants (from the European Union, EU) and Ecuadorians (non-EU) in Catalonia, Spain. The article concludes with a discussion of some implications for future empirical research on e-migration.

scholarly journals Translating the Gospel in Viking Age England: The Evidence from Two Old Norse Loan Translations from Old English

2019 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-560
Author(s):  
Nikolas Gunn
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Biblical Translation

Abstract A recent resurgence of interest in Old Norse linguistic borrowings in Old English has greatly expanded our knowledge of the contact situation between these two speech communities in the early medieval period and beyond. However, there are a significant number of words that have been considered borrowings in the “other” direction, i. e. from Old English to Old Norse, which have not attracted the same amount of attention in current scholarship. Much of this material requires reassessment and this paper provides a case study of two parallel compound formations in both languages – OE bærsynnig [mann]/ON bersynðugr [maðr] (‘one who is openly sinful; publican’), and OE healsbōc/ON hálsbók (‘phylactery, amulet’, lit. ‘neck-book’) – that have traditionally been considered loan translations from Old English to Old Norse with little evidence other than their formation from cognate elements. In the absence of clear-cut linguistic criteria for identifying loan translations between these two closely related languages, this paper draws on a range of literary evidence to argue for a strong likelihood of a relationship between the two compounds. Both words offer important evidence for biblical translation practices, and contribute to our knowledge about the Christianisation of Norse speaking peoples and Anglo-Norse language contact in Viking Age England.

Greening Religion in Facebook: Can Digital Media Bridge the Gap Between Religion and Modernity?

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-81
Author(s):  
Oriol Poveda
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Environmental Processes ◽  
Religion And Modernity ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Empirical Material

Through a case study of the Facebook page of a Jewish Orthodox environmental project based in Germany, this paper explores the ways in which religion and modernity might be made compatible and what role digital media plays in such interaction. On the basis of the empirical material gathered for this paper, the author presents a typology of religious-environmental processes of hybridization. The analysis draws from the concepts of multiple modernities, public religions and religious branding in order to discuss whether the combination of religion and modernity is enabled or compromised by the collapsing of boundaries between the public sphere and the marketplace in late modern societies. The findings suggest that Facebook and its affordances make possible the particular intersections of religion and environmentalism, of public sphere and marketplace, that are characteristic of the case under study.

Daily jottings: Preposition placement in English diaries and travel journals from 1500 to 1900

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 281-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuria Yáñez-Bouza
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Similar Frequency ◽  
Register Variation ◽  
Preposition Stranding ◽  
Late Modern

Abstract This paper explores register variation in diaries and travel journals during the early and late Modern English periods (1500–1900), based on the case study of preposition placement, specifically preposition stranding (which I refer to) and preposition pied piping (to which I refer). Findings show that diaries and travel journals in general have a similar frequency of stranded and pied-piped prepositions, but that sharp differences emerge in their diachronic evolution. The trends suggest that the two registers generally follow the same historical drift towards oral styles previously observed in non-specialised registers, albeit at different rates and with only a moderately oral-like pattern in the nineteenth century. Also of note is that the frequency of stranded prepositions in diaries is lower than expected. I will argue that, although norms on ‘proper’ style and eighteenth-century prescriptive norms of ‘correct’ English play an important role, especially in the second half of the eighteenth century, one should also take into account register-specific characteristics such as the topic and purpose of the text, the setting in which it is produced (private/public), the participants involved and the production circumstances of the text. Likewise, idiolectal differences should not be underestimated, since they can on occasions skew results.

On the idiomatic nature of unproductive morphology

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Karen De Clercq ◽  
Guido Vanden Wyngaerd
Keyword(s):  
Classical Case ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Formal Relationship ◽  
Lexical Items

Abstract We present a case study in the marking of the negative prefix in French gradable adjectives, where the productive marker iN- alternates with a number of unproductive prefixes, like dé(s)-, dis-, mal-, mé(s)-. We treat this as a classical case of allomorphy, and present an account of the distribution of these allomorphs in terms of the nanosyntactic mechanism of pointers, by which lexical items may point to other, existing, lexical items in the postsyntactic lexicon. We claim that unproductive lexical items are not directly accessible for the spellout mechanism, but only indirectly, via pointers. We show how the analysis accounts for lexicalised semantics in derivations, as well as cases where the formal relationship between derivational pairs is not concatenative, but substitutive.

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