scholarly journals Some (critical) questions for diachronic construction grammar

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sune Gregersen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
Convincing Case ◽  
Early Modern English

Abstract The paper critically reviews a recent volume on Diachronic Construction Grammar. It is argued that a more convincing case for the diachronic construction grammar approach could have been made by more explicitly comparing it to other approaches to historical linguistics, and that a number of central notions, such as “constructionalization”, are not applied consistently throughout the volume. In addition, an analysis of the constructionalization of English be going to presented in the volume is examined and shown not to be supported by the Early Modern English data.

The growth of the transitivising Reaction Object Construction

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Bouso
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Traditional Form ◽  
Historical Trend ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
Early Modern English

Abstract This paper explores the growth of the Reaction Object Construction (ROC) as in Pauline smiled her thanks, offering new insights into its characterisation and historical development from the perspective of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2019) and its application to patterns of language change (Hilpert 2013; Traugott & Trousdale 2013). It is argued that the modern ROC qualifies as a traditional form-meaning pairing and, at a deeper level, as a polysemous construction that follows the path of development of other transitivising constructions such as the way-construction (Israel 1996), and of processes of constructionalisation in general. Once the ROC imposes a coreferential constraint on its object argument, acquiring in this way its status as a form-meaning pairing over the Early Modern English period (1500–1700), the construction increases its productivity and schematicity; at the same time it decreases its compositionality since the link between the form/syntax and the overall meaning of the construction becomes less transparent, as in The door jingled a welcome. The ROC can thus be argued to be part and result of a broader development in the grammar of English, namely the historical trend towards transitivisation.

scholarly journals Guidelines for normalising Early Modern English corpora: Decisions and justifications

ICAME Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Archer ◽  
Merja Kytö ◽  
Alistair Baron ◽  
Paul Rayson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Textual Data ◽  
Do So

Abstract Corpora of Early Modern English have been collected and released for research for a number of years. With large scale digitisation activities gathering pace in the last decade, much more historical textual data is now available for research on numerous topics including historical linguistics and conceptual history. We summarise previous research which has shown that it is necessary to map historical spelling variants to modern equivalents in order to successfully apply natural language processing and corpus linguistics methods. Manual and semiautomatic methods have been devised to support this normalisation and standardisation process. We argue that it is important to develop a linguistically meaningful rationale to achieve good results from this process. In order to do so, we propose a number of guidelines for normalising corpora and show how these guidelines have been applied in the Corpus of English Dialogues.

Register in historical linguistics

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merja Kytö
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
English Language ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Electronic Evidence ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Development Of Language ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract Merja Kytö is Professor of English Language at Uppsala University. In this article, she provides a detailed accounting of the role of register in research on the historical development of language. Her substantial body of work has focused on both the historical development of specific registers, as well as how historical change has been mediated by register. Her research has encompassed a range of time periods (from Early Modern English to the 19th century) and registers (for example, depositions, Salem witchcraft records, and dialogues). Her many edited collections have brought historical linguists together into comprehensive and rigorous volumes, including the Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics (Kytö & Pahta 2016, Cambridge University Press), English in Transition: Corpus-Based Studies in Linguistic Variation and Genre Styles (Rissanen, Kytö, & Heikkonen 1997, De Gruyter), and Developments in English: Expanding Electronic Evidence (Taavitsainen, Kytö, Claridge, & Smith 2014, Cambridge University Press). She has been a key contributor to the development of principled historical corpora, such as the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts project, which represents a range of registers from Old and Middle English to Early Modern English. Merja Kytö has long been a leader in demonstrating how systematic attention to register can result in rich profiles of historical development, and in addressing the inherent challenges involved in utilizing historical documents for linguistic research.

scholarly journals The Development of long in Early Modern English: Impersonal Verbs of Desire in Focus

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-132
Author(s):  
Noelia Chao-Castro
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
Early Modern English

The class of English verbs of Desire in Present-Day English comprises verbs such as long or thirst, several of which are attested in earlier English in impersonal constructions characterised by the lack of a grammatical subject. In English, the impersonal construction decreased in frequency between 1400 and 1500, and effectively went out of use during the sixteenth century. Previous research has suggested that there is a need for a corpus-based study of not just Middle English, but also Early Modern English, in order to explore the different path(s) of development followed by individual impersonal verbs. The present article, therefore, investigates the development of the impersonal verb long (< OE langian) with the following objectives: a) to determine when long ceases to occur in impersonal constructions; b) to provide a diachronic overview of the personal syntactic patterns that came to replace impersonal constructions in Early Modern English; and c) to identify, within the framework of Construction Grammar, factors that may account for the development of long as a prepositional verb.

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