scholarly journals A dictionary of the English language : in which the words are deduced from their originals; and illustrated in their different significations, by examples from the best writers: together with a history of the language, and an English grammar

Author(s):  
Samuel Johnson ◽  
Henry John Todd
1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shana Poplack ◽  
Sali Tagliamonte

ABSTRACTThis article contributes to the understanding of the origin and function of verbal -s marking in the Black English grammar by systematically examining the behaviour of this affix in two corpora on early Black English. To ascertain whether the variation observed in (early and modern Black English) -s usage has a precedent in the history of the language, or is rather an intrusion from another system, we focus particularly on the linguistic and social contexts of its occurrence, within a historical and comparative perspective. Our results show that both third person singular and nonconcord -s are subject to regular, parallel environmental conditioning. The finding that both insertion and deletion are conditioned by the same factors suggests that verbal -s marking is a unitary process, involving both concord and nonconcord contexts. Moreover, the (few) variable constraints on verbal -s usage reported throughout the history of the English language remain operative in early Black English. These results, taken in conjunction with indications that -s marking across the verbal paradigm was a prestige marker in the dialect at some earlier point in time, lead us to hypothesize that the contemporary pattern might be a synchronic reflex of the constraint ranking on -s usage in the varieties of English that provided the linguistic model for the slaves. Many of the conditioning effects we report would have been subsequently overridden by the grammaticalization of -s as the Standard English agreement marker. We conclude that present-tense marking via verbal -s formed an integral part of the early Black English grammar.


Linguaculture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Daniela Doboș

If the history of the English language is the story of its written texts, the same holds true for the history of the Romanian language, and in both cases the first grammars played a major part in the shaping up of the respective vernaculars. The paper proposes a comparative approach to the beginnings of codified grammars in English and Romanian, with a focus on those that are deemed to be the first major works– Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) and Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Şincai’s Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae (1780). This approach considers topics such as why grammars might have been desirable in the eighteenth century (the political factor), and the functions of ‘grammars’, which are relevant in both cases; what language was actually codified, as well as the role of Latin in this enterprise, since it is worth noting that while English and Romanian belong in different language families, Latin was a formative element in both, ever since the territories of the two respective countries marked the North-Western and South-Eastern borders of the Roman Empire.


1930 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 16-18

The volumes are ponderous. The title-page in sonorous and dignified language informs one that this is “A Dictionary of the English Language in which the WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers, to which are prefixed, a history of the language, and an English grammar. By Samuel Johnson, A.M. In Two Volumes.” The page is then topped off in good Johnsonian style with a nine-line Latin quotation from Horace.


2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 97-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores Fernández Martínez

Abstract The eighteenth century was a crucial period in the process of codification of the English language and in the history of English grammar writing (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2008b). The need for grammars to provide linguistic guidance to the upper social classes, and to those who aspired to belong to them, led to an important increase in the output of English grammars. Since most of the grammar writers were clearly in competition with one another for a share of the market, they turned the prefaces to their grammars into highly persuasive instruments that tried to justify the need for that specific grammar. Priestley’s and Lowth’s grammars epitomized, respectively, the two main trends of grammatical tradition, namely descriptivism and prescriptivism. Taking a critical discourse analysis approach, this paper aims to examine how both writers claimed their authority through the presentation of the different individuals involved in the text, specifically, the author and any potential readers. We will examine how individuals are depicted both as a centre of structure and action through Martin’s (1992) identification systems and Halliday’s (2004 [1985]) transitivity structures. Such an approach fits in with Wicker’s (2006: 79) assessment of prefaces as textual networks of authority in which it is essential to interrogate how the readers who support and influence the texts are represented and addressed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 210 ◽  
pp. 21017
Author(s):  
Alina Sokolova ◽  
Julia Fedurko

This article deals with the question of whether English was subject to pidginization or not. Different points of view are presented but to answer the question definitely is not possible since there are no specific criteria to define a language as a contact one. However, the necessary external conditions for pidginization actually existed in the history of the English language, and a mechanism similar to the mechanism of the creolization process took place. This conclusion can be proved by the analysis of different elements of the English grammar. This article presents the results of the comparative diachronic research of non-finite verbal paradigm in the English language.


Author(s):  
David Hardiman

Much of the recent surge in writing about the practice of nonviolent forms of resistance has focused on movements that occurred after the end of the Second World War, many of which have been extremely successful. Although the fact that such a method of civil resistance was developed in its modern form by Indians is acknowledged in this writing, there has not until now been an authoritative history of the role of Indians in the evolution of the phenomenon.The book argues that while nonviolence is associated above all with the towering figure of Mahatma Gandhi, 'passive resistance' was already being practiced as a form of civil protest by nationalists in British-ruled India, though there was no principled commitment to nonviolence as such. The emphasis was on efficacy, rather than the ethics of such protest. It was Gandhi, first in South Africa and then in India, who evolved a technique that he called 'satyagraha'. He envisaged this as primarily a moral stance, though it had a highly practical impact. From 1915 onwards, he sought to root his practice in terms of the concept of ahimsa, a Sanskrit term that he translated as ‘nonviolence’. His endeavors saw 'nonviolence' forged as both a new word in the English language, and as a new political concept. This book conveys in vivid detail exactly what such nonviolence entailed, and the formidable difficulties that the pioneers of such resistance encountered in the years 1905-19.


Author(s):  
John G. Rodden

This is the first English-language study of GDR education and the first book, in any language, to trace the history of Eastern German education from 1945 through the 1990s. Rodden fully relates the GDR's attempt to create a new Marxist nation by means of educational reform, and looks not only at the changing institution of education but at something the Germans call Bildung--the formation of character and the cultivation of body and spirit. The sociology of nation-building is also addressed.


Author(s):  
George L. Parker

This chapter discusses the history of fiction publishing in Canada since 1950. It begins with the arrival of New York publisher Alfred Knopf in Canada in August 1955, a month after the Canadian Writers' Conference was held at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. During the conference, the sorry plight of the English-language book scene was tackled: bookstores, for example, were dominated by British and American authors, and Canadian literature was practically ignored in schools and universities. The chapter examines how many of these complaints were resolved by the 2000s. It considers changes in Canadian fiction from traditional realism towards modernism and postmodernism, and the importance of the New Canadian Library quality paperback series (1958). It also describes other significant developments that reshaped the Canadian book market, including the emergence of independent small presses, Harlequin Enterprises, the proliferation of international conglomerates, the marketing of e-books, and the rise of Amazon.


Volume Nine of this series traces the development of the ‘world novel’, that is, English-language novels written throughout the world, beyond Britain, Ireland, and the United States. Focusing on the period up to 1950, the volume contains survey chapters and chapters on major writers, as well as chapters on book history, publishing, and the critical contexts of the work discussed. The text covers periods from renaissance literary imaginings of exotic parts of the world like Oceania, through fiction embodying the ideology and conventions of empire, to the emergence of settler nationalist and Indigenous movements and, finally, the assimilations of modernism at the beginnings of the post-imperial world order. The book, then, contains chapters on the development of the non-metropolitan novel throughout the British world from the eighteenth to the mid twentieth centuries. This is the period of empire and resistance to empire, of settler confidence giving way to doubt, and of the rise of indigenous and post-colonial nationalisms that would shape the world after World War II.


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