Zero that-clauses in the history of English. A historical sociolinguistic approach (1424–1681)

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre ◽  
Javier Calle-Martín

AbstractThe present paper traces the history of zero and that as competing links for object clauses in the history of English from chronological and sociolinguistic perspectives. Even though the zero link is sporadically attested in Old English, the rise of the zero complementizer takes place in late Middle English and is well-established in the second half of the sixteenth century, becoming more frequent in speech-based text types (trials, sermons) or in texts representing the oral mode of expression (fiction, comedies). The use of this construction is then observed to diminish drastically in the eighteenth century, plausibly as a result of the prescriptive bias of grammarians (Warner 1982; Fanego 1990; Rissanen 1991, Rissanen 1999; Finegan and Biber 1995). Our analysis is based on five high frequency verbs, to know, to think, to say, to tell and to hope, and their syntactic behaviour in the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence, especially in the periods 1424–1499, 1500–1569, 1570–1639 and 1640–1681. Our approach aims at showing progress of the zero link along the S curve in these four periods, before it became thwarted in the eighteenth century. We also aim at plotting the diffusion of zero that-clauses against the social hierarchy of the period in order to detect (i) the existence of social stratification for this variant, and, if such be the case, (ii) the social group or groups that were leading the diffusion of the change in the different chronological stages, thus (iii) tracing the social origin and direction of the change as diffusing from below or from above in sociolinguistic terms.

In the early modern period, Catholic communities in Protestant jurisdictions were impelled to establish colleges for the education and formation of students in more hospitable Catholic territories. The Irish, English and Scots Colleges founded in France, Flanders, the Iberian peninsula, Rome and elsewhere are the best known, but the phenomenon extended to Dutch and Scandinavian foundations in southern Flanders and the German lands. Similarly colleges were established in Rome for various national communities, among whom the Maronites are a striking example. The first colleges were founded in the mid-sixteenth century and tens of thousands of students passed through them until their closure in late eighteenth century. Only a handful survived the disruption of the French Revolutionary wars to re-emerge in the nineteenth century. Historians have long argued that these exile colleges played a prominent role in maintaining Catholic structures by supplying educated clergy equipped to deal with the challenges of their domestic churches. This has ensured that the Irish, English and Scots colleges in particular have a rich historiography laid out in the pages of Archivium Hibernicum, the Records of the Scots Colleges or the volumes published under the aegis of the Catholic Record Society in England. Until recently, however, their histories were considered in isolating confessional and national frameworks, with surprisingly little attempt to examine commonalities or connections. Recent research has begun to open up the topic by investigating the social, economic, cultural and material histories of the colleges. Meanwhile renewed interest in the history of early modern migration has encouraged historians to place the colleges within the vibrant migrant communities of Irish, English, Scots and others on the continent. The Introduction begins with a survey of the colleges. It assesses their historiographies, paying particular attention to the research of the last three decades. The introduction argues that an obvious next step is to examine the colleges in transnational and comparative perspectives. Finally, it introduces the volume's essays on Irish, English, Scots, Dutch, German and Maronite colleges, which provide up-to-date research by leading historians in the field and point to the possibilities for future research on this exciting topic.


2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-329
Author(s):  
Retief Müller

Movements of reform and reformation have been highly significant in the history of Christianity for various reasons. Yet is it fair or appropriate to ascribe the term reformation to churches or groups not obviously belonging to the sixteenth-century series of events and movements usually associated with that term? This article engages with this question, especially in reference to the phenomenon of twentieth-century African Indigenous Christianity (AIC), which is often associated with terms such as African Initiated Christianity, and African Pentecostalism. I focus on South Africa as my context of reference. From this perspective I will more generally make the case that if the historical construct of reformation as a concept beyond sixteenth-century Northern and Western Europe could be useful at all, it will be in the ways in which one is able, or not, to draw parallels with some of the social consequences of those original movements. I am particularly interested in the relation between reformation and democracy. Therefore, my analysis of AIC history in South Africa is informed by the works of Witte, Woodberry, and McGrath.


Author(s):  
Susan E. Whyman

The introduction shows the convergence and intertwining of the Industrial Revolution and the provincial Enlightenment. At the centre of this industrial universe lay Birmingham; and at its centre was Hutton. England’s second city is described in the mid-eighteenth century, and Hutton is used as a lens to explore the book’s themes: the importance of a literate society shared by non-elites; the social category of ‘rough diamonds’; how individuals responded to economic change; political participation in industrial towns; shifts in the modes of authorship; and an analysis of social change. The strategy of using microhistory, biography, and the history of the book is discussed, and exciting new sources are introduced. The discovery that self-education allowed unschooled people to participate in literate society renders visible people who were assumed to be illiterate. This suggests that eighteenth-century literacy was greater than statistics based on formal schooling indicate.


Author(s):  
Matthew H. Birkhold

How did authors control the literary fates of fictional characters before the existence of copyright? Could a second author do anything with another author’s character? Situated between the decline of the privilege system and the rise of copyright, literary borrowing in eighteenth-century Germany has long been considered unregulated. This book tells a different story. Characters before Copyright documents the surprisingly widespread eighteenth-century practice of writing fan fiction—literary works written by readers who appropriate preexisting characters invented by other authors—and reconstructs the contemporaneous debate about the literary phenomenon. Like fan fiction today, these texts took the form of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. Analyzing the evolving reading, writing, and consumer habits of late-eighteenth-century Germany, Characters before Copyright identifies the social, economic, and aesthetic changes that fostered the rapid rise of fan fiction after 1750. Based on archival work and an ethnographic approach borrowed from legal anthropology, this book then uncovers the unwritten customary norms that governed the production of these works. Characters before Copyright thus reinterprets the eighteenth-century “literary commons,” arguing that what may appear to have been the free circulation of characters was actually circumscribed by an exacting set of rules and conditions. These norms translated into a unique type of literature that gave rise to remarkable forms of collaborative authorship and originality. Characters before Copyright provides a new perspective on the eighteenth-century book trade and the rise of intellectual property, reevaluating the concept of literary property, the history of moral rights, and the tradition of free culture.


1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-606
Author(s):  
John Villiers

The numerous and voluminous reports and letters which the Jesuits wrote on the Moro mission, as on all their missions in Asia, are perhaps of less interest to us now for what they reveal of the methods adopted by the Society of Jesus in this remote corner of their mission field or the details they contain about the successes and failures of individual missionaries, than for the wealth of information they provide on the islands where the Jesuits lived and the indigenous societies with which they came into contact through their work of evangelization. In other words, it is not theprimary purpose of this essay to analyse the Jesuit documents with a view to reconstructing the history of the Moro mission in narrative form but rather to glean from them some of the informationthey contain about the social and political conditions in Moro during the forty years or so in the sixteenth century when both the Jesuit missionaries and the Portuguese were active in the regio Because the Jesuits were often in close touch with local rulers and notables, whether or not they succeeded in converting them to Christianity, and because they lived among their subjects for long periods, depending upon them for the necessities of life and sharing their hardships, their letters and reports often show a deeper understanding of the social, economic and political conditions of the indigenous societies and, one suspects, give a more accurate and measured account of events and personalities than do the official chroniclers and historians of the time, most of whom never ventured further east than Malacca and who in any case were chiefly concerned to glorify the deeds of the Portuguese and justify their actions to the world.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP WITHINGTON

This review reconsiders the place and importance of urban political culture in England between c. 1550 and c. 1750. Relating recent work on urban political culture to trends in political, social, and cultural historiography, it argues that England's towns and boroughs underwent two ‘renaissances’ over the course of the period: a ‘civic renaissance’ and the better-known ‘urban renaissance’. The former was fashioned in the sixteenth century; however, its legacy continued to inform political thought and practice over 150 years later. Similarly, although the latter is generally associated with ‘the long eighteenth century’, its attributes can be traced to at least the Elizabethan era. While central to broader transitions in post-Reformation political culture, these ‘renaissances’ were crucial in restructuring the social relations and social identity of townsmen and women. They also constituted an important but generally neglected dynamic of England's seventeenth-century ‘troubles’.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander N. Demidov

Introduction. The article considers the publication of a unique source for the history of the Mordovian people, the “protective memory” dated by 1572 addressed to the princes and Murzes of Mordovia. The “protective memory” is considered in comparison with the “romadanovsky” list belonging to the descendants of the Mordovian prince Romadan, seeking the return of the nobility, the non-criminal record of the Temnik-Kadom Mordva, published in the XVIII century, similar to the records of Tatar Sovereigns to the Temnik-Kadom Mordva. Materials and methods. The author focused on studying the content of the source, revealing the identities of the recipients, analyzing the composition of the princes and Murz of Mordovian records, spelling of the names, origin, and family ties. The genealogy of the princes Edelevs is being reconstructed, the history of their kind is described together with the history of Mordovian Murzas and their representatives in the context of social and historical ties. Results and discussion. The article describes the social situation of Princes Edelevs, the features of land ownership, land use, property and ownership of serfs. The article discusses the history of the discovery and use of the source in the clerical work of the aristocratic deputies’ assemblies and the Governing Senate at the request of the descendants of Mordovian princes and Muzes from the Edelev family to restore the rights of the noble state. It poses the problem of studying the social stratification in Mordovian society, the typology and origin of the Mordovian aristocracy, the peculiarities of the titling and inheritance of power, its role in the historical and social development of the Mordovian people, as well as its legal status in the Russian Empire. It compares the situation of the Temnikov-Kadom Mordovian Tarkhans, Cossacks, White Field and Alatyr princes and Mordovian Murzes, serving Mordovians and Tatars. Conclusion. “Protective memory” indicates that in the XVI century there was a national Mordovian aristocracy, collaborating with Moscow and being in the service of Great Sovereigns, and subsequently becoming part of the nobility and other classes of Russian society. The choice of Mordovian princes ensured the relatively peaceful entry of Mordovian lands into the Russian Empire.


2020 ◽  
pp. 104-116
Author(s):  
Nelly Furman

Attraction, seduction, frustrated loves, crimes of passion, inform the plots of countless stories, films, and plays. These themes, while time worn, are also alluring challenges for creative artists. It explains the unending popularity of the story of Carmen and its modern remakes. Passion, once considered an illness, has since the eighteenth century gained acceptance and marriages of the heart are now commonplace and these have displaced the social stratification and sexual regulations that once defined marriage. The story of Carmen speaks to these societal changes in intimate human relations. Many of themes found in Bizet’s opera and Mérimée’s novella (seduction, sacrifice, law and lawlessness, racism, misogyny to name but a few) offer sources of inspiration to many artists. But the often-told story of Carmen also raises the question of originality in art.


Author(s):  
Gershon David Hundert

This chapter investigates the conditions in Jewish society in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The place of hasidism in the religious history of the eighteenth century ought to be reconsidered not only in light of the questions about the schismatic groups in the Orthodox Church raised by Ysander, but also in light of the general revivalist currents in western Europe. The social historian cannot explain hasidism, which belongs to the context of the development of the east European religious mentality in the eighteenth century. Social history does, however, point to some significant questions that ought to be explored further. One of these is the role of youth and generational conflict in the beginnings of the movement, and not only in its beginnings. A realistic recovery of the situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Jewry in the eighteenth century shows that neither the economic nor the security conditions were such as to warrant their use as causal or explanatory factors in the rise and reception of hasidism.


2013 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ramírez ◽  
William B. Taylor

Abstract Colonial inhabitants of Mexico City were accustomed to coping with natural disasters, including disease epidemics, droughts, floods, and earthquakes, which menaced rich and poor alike and stirred fervent devotion to miraculous images and their shrines. This article revisits the late colonial history of the shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, an image preserved miraculously on an adobe wall in the Indian quarter of Santiago Tlatelolco. The assumption has been that archiepiscopal authorities aiming to deflect public worship toward a more austere, interior spirituality suppressed activities there after 1745 because they saw the devotion as excessively Indian and Baroque. The shrine has served as a barometer of eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms even though its story has not been fully told. This article explores the politics of patronage in the years after the shrine’s closure and in the decades prior to the arrival on the scene of a new Spanish patron in 1776, revealing that Indian caretakers kept the faith well beyond the official intervention, with some help from well-placed Spanish devotees and officials. The efforts of the new patron, a Spanish tailor from the city center, to renovate the building and image and secure the necessary permissions and privileges helped transform the site into one of the most famous in the capital. Attention to earlier patterns of patronage and to the social response to a series of tremors that coincided with his promotional efforts helps to explain why a devotion so carefully managed for enlightened audiences was nevertheless cut from old cloth.


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