Complexity in national legislation of the Early Modern English period

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anu Lehto
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Genre Studies ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Systematic Method ◽  
National Legislation ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Early English

This paper concentrates on Early Modern English statutes printed in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The study considers the development of complexity and the rise of modern writing conventions by following the diachronic pragmatic view. The analysis also draws on genre studies and underlines the sociohistorical impact on linguistic changes. Complexity is assessed by a systematic method that observes the textual structure and syntax. The material consists of legislative documents in Early English Books Online; six of the documents were transcribed and compiled into a small-scale corpus. The results indicate that complexity was a common feature in the Early Modern English period: coordination and subordination are frequently used, and the sixteenth-century documents have an increasing tendency to favour subordination. During the sixteenth century, legislative sentences and text type structure become more regular and correspond to present-day practices.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Related Material ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Early English

Mythographies were books that collected, explained, and interpreted myth-related material. Extremely popular during the Renaissance, these works appealed to a wide range of readers. While the European mythographies of the sixteenth century have been utilized by scholars, the short, early English mythographies, written from 1577 to 1647, have puzzled critics. The first generation of English mythographers did not, as has been suggested, try to compete with their Italian predecessors. Instead, they made mythographies into rhetorical instruments designed to intervene in topical debates outside the world of classical learning. Because English mythographers brought mythology to bear on a variety of contemporary issues, they unfold a lively and historically well-defined picture of the roles myth was made to play in early modern England. Exploring these mythographies can contribute to previous insights into myth in the Renaissance offered by studies of iconography, literary history, allegory, and myth theory.

scholarly journals THE STYLISTIC FUNCTIONING OF SCRIPTURAL ALLUSIONS IN AN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH PLAY “JOHAN BAPTYSTES PREACHYNGE” BY J. BALE

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1001-1007
Author(s):  
A.A. Khavronich
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Semantic Expansion ◽  
Early English ◽  
The Given ◽  
Selection Of

The given article analyzes the peculiarities of the stylistic functioning of allusions to the Holy Scripture within one religious play belonging to the modern early English period, namely “Johan Baptystes Preachynge” produced by a dramatist J. Bale. The analysis is performed from the standpoint of linguopoetics. We consider stylistic features via the correlation of form and meaning, dissection of the conceptual component, juxtaposition with medieval plays representing adaptations of the same scriptural plot. Within the framework of this analysis we identify and assess elements performing the function of impact incorporated into the scriptural allusions and estimate their role in the selection of other lexical units, construction of extended metaphors, syntactic shaping of particular fragments of the play. We draw a conclusion that via the extension of scriptural metaphorical complexes the author brings about a meaningful focus shift to ensure a protestant reinterpretation of the included biblical theses. A substantial share of stylistically marked elements undergoes semantic expansion and develops adherent connotations since they relate to the pivotal elements of the allusions.

scholarly journals Middle and Early Modern English Medical Recipes: Some Notes on Specialised Terminology

2018 ◽  
pp. 89-101
Author(s):  
Marta Sylwanowicz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Early Modern English

One of the text-type features of a recipe is a certain degree of technical lexicon (cf. Görlach 2004). The aim of the present study is to compare the use and distribution of selected group of terms, here references to medical preparations, in Middle and Early Modern English recipe collections. Particular attention will be given to the factors responsible for the choice of terms. Also, we will concentrate on the rivalry between native and foreign lexical units.

scholarly journals Suffixes in Competition

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-183
Author(s):  
Marta Pacheco-Franco ◽  
Javier Calle-Martín
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
American English ◽  
Quantitative Distribution ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Early English

This paper presents a corpus-driven analysis of the linguistic competition between the suffixes -our/-or in Early Modern English. It is conceived as a state of the art to provide an explanation of the development and distribution of these competing suffixes in Early Modern English. The study is based on the distribution of the most common set of words with alternative spellings in the period to investigate the development and the standardisation of the -our and -or groups. The study offers the quantitative distribution of the suffixes in the period corroborating the participation of phenomena such as linguistic extinction, specialisation, blocking and lexicalisation in the configuration of the contemporary morphological paradigm. The source of evidence comes from the corpus of Early English Books Online (Davies, 2017) for the period 1470–1690. In addition to this, the study also relies on sources such as the Evans Corpus (2011), the Corpus of Historical American English (Davies, 2010) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008).

scholarly journals Supralocalisation Processes in Early Modern English Urban Vernaculars

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-66
Author(s):  
Moragh Gordon ◽  
Tino Oudesluijs ◽  
Anita Auer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Linguistic Variables ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Unique Distribution ◽  
Internal And External Factors ◽  
Insight Into

This article contributes to existing studies that are concerned with standardisation and supralocalisation processes in the development of written English during the Early Modern English period. By focussing on and comparing civic records and letter data from important regional urban centres, notably Bristol, Coventry and York, from the period 1500–1700, this study provides new insight into the gradual emergence of supralocal forms. More precisely, the linguistic variables under investigation are third person indicative present tense markers (singular and plural). The findings of this study reveal that each urban centre shows a unique distribution pattern in the adoption of supralocal -(V)s singular and plural zero. Furthermore, verb type as well as text type appear to be important language internal and external factors respectively.

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.

Making Murder Public

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.J. Kesselring
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Formal Distinction

Homicide can seem timeless, somehow, determined by unchanging human failings. But a moment’s reflection shows this is not true: homicide has a history. In early modern England, that history saw two especially notable developments: one, the emergence in the sixteenth century of a formal distinction between murder and manslaughter, made meaningful through a lighter punishment than death for the latter in most cases, and two, a significant reduction in the rates of homicides individuals perpetrated on each other. This book explores connections between these two changes. It demonstrates the value in distinguishing between murder and manslaughter, or at least in seeing how that distinction came to matter in a period which also witnessed dramatic drops in the occurrence of homicidal violence. Focused on the ‘politics of murder’, the book examines how homicide became more effectively criminalized from c. 1480 to 1680, with chapters devoted to coroners’ inquests, appeals and private compensation, duels and private vengeance, and print and public punishment. The English had begun moving away from treating homicide as an offence subject to private settlements or vengeance long before other Europeans, at least from the twelfth century. What happened in the early modern period was, in some ways, a continuation of processes long underway, but intensified and refocused by developments from the late fifteenth to late seventeenth centuries. Exploring the links between law, crime, and politics, bringing together both the legal and social histories of the subject of homicide, the book argues that homicide became more fully ‘public’ in these years, with killings seen to violate a ‘king’s peace’ that people increasingly conflated with or subordinated to the ‘public peace’ or ‘public justice’.

“Saying thes woordes or the lyke”

2020 ◽  
pp. 183-211
Author(s):  
Mel Evans
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Reporting Practices ◽  
Speech Representation ◽  
Letter Writer ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Early English ◽  
Communicative Context

This chapter examines the forms and functions of speech representation in Early Modern English correspondence using corpus-based methods. It considers how the sociopragmatic properties of speech representation are shaped by the communicative context of letter-writing, and identifies key similarities and differences with speech representation in other early modern genres. Using a sixteenth-century subset of the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence, the analysis focusses on speech representation framed by the two most frequent quotatives: SAY and ANSWER. The results suggest that speech representation in letters anticipates the practices of later written genres, such as news reporting, as well as displaying characteristics associated with speech representation in spoken genres, such as conversation. Speech representation in correspondence has a predominantly interpersonal function, linked to values associated with report faithfulness, dramaticality, and the source authority. Reporting practices are informed both by the conventions of the genre and the immediate situation of the letter-writer.

scholarly journals The Advice Genre (1400-1599). Genre and Text Type Conventions

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivalla Barrera
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Early Modern English

The Advice Genre (1400-1599). Genre and Text Type Conventions The aim of this paper is to characterize the advice text as a genre in the late medieval and early modern English periods. This genre is very popular during this time and is usually found within medical remedy books. For this reason, it has been generally studied within the scope of medieval recipes in historical discourse analysis. In this paper my intention is to show the independent status of the advice text as a genre. A first step for this lies in the characterization of the linguistic features pertaining to the sections that compound this genre and its comparison with the recipe genre. The corpus for this study has been collected from several sources, both edited and unedited. The description of the text type features will be illustrated with examples taken from this corpus. As I show in the conclusion, the advice text is an independent genre with a clear communicative purpose and addressed to an intended audience.

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