scholarly journals A corpus-based study of abbreviations in early English medical writing

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-130
Author(s):  
Javier Calle-Martín
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Medical Writing ◽  
Handwritten Documents ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Early English

The Early Middle English period witnessed the massive borrowing and adoption of the Latin system of abbreviations in England. Mediaeval writers appropriated those symbols that were directly transferable from Latin exemplars, especially suspensions and brevigraphs, while contractions and superior letters were incorporated somewhat later. The existing accounts of abbreviations in handwritten documents are fragmentary as they offer the picture of the literary compositions of the period, which have been traditionally taken as the source of evidence for handbooks on palaeography. In addition to this, most of these accounts are limited to the description of their use and typology in independent witnesses, being in many cases impossible to extrapolate the results beyond the practice of individual scribes. The present paper takes that step beyond individuality and pursues the study of abbreviations from a variationist perspective with the following objectives: a) to analyse the use and distribution of abbreviations in Late Middle English and Early Modern English (1350–1700), and b) to evaluate the relevance of these abbreviations across different text types of medical writing. The data used as source of evidence come from The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose, both the Late Middle English and the Early Modern English components (1350–1500 and 1500–1700, respectively).

scholarly journals Punctuation in Early Modern English Scientific Writing: The Case of Two Scientific Text Types in Gul, Ms Hunter 135

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Jesús Romero Barranco
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Medical Writing ◽  
Scientific Writing ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Scientific Text ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractAmong the different topics studied by palaeography, punctuation has traditionally been disregarded by scholars for being considered arbitrary and unsystematic (Salmon 1988: 285). However, some studies carried out over the last few decades have demonstrated that the English punctuation system underwent a process of standardisation which started in the Middle English period, from a purely rhetorical to a grammatical function. Moreover, it was towards the sixteenth century when a set of punctuation marks was introduced (i.e. the semicolon), a fact that restricted the functions of major punctuation marks up to that time, such as the period and the comma (Salmon 1999: 40). The present paper analyses the punctuation system in Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 135 (ff. 34r–121v), a volume that is most suitable for such a study as it contains two different text types belonging to the genre of medical writing: a surgical treatise and a collection of medical recipes. The results confirm that the different punctuation marks are unevenly distributed in the texts under study and, more importantly, their main functions are found at different levels within the text.

scholarly journals Linguistic Complexity across Two Early Modern English Scientific Text Types

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-71
Author(s):  
Jesús Romero-Barranco
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Scientific Text ◽  
Language Typology ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Early English

In linguistics the concept of complexity has been analysed from various perspectives, among them language typology and the speech/writing distinction. Within intralinguistic studies, certain key linguistic features associated with reduced or increased complexity have been identified. These features occur in different patterns across various registers and their frequency is an indicator of the level of complexity of different kinds of texts. The concept of complexity has not, to date, been evaluated in early English medical writing, especiallyin terms of different text types. Thus, the present article analyses linguistic complexity in two Early Modern English medical texts, a surgical treatise (ff. 34r-73v) and a collection of medical recipes (ff. 74r-121v) housed as MS Hunter 135 in Glasgow University Library. Since they represent two different types of medical text, they can be productively compared in terms of linguistic complexity. The results obtained confirm that the surgical treatise is more complex than the collection of medical recipes owing to the higher presence of linguistic features denoting increased complexity in the former and of those indicating reduced linguistic complexity in the latter.

scholarly journals Object-Verb in Early Modern English: Modelling Markedness

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Pérez-Guerra
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Statistical Modelling ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Related Text ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
Early English ◽  
Order Pattern

Abstract Although Verb-Object (VO) is the basic unmarked constituent order of predicates in Present-Day English, in earlier stages of the language Object-Verb (OV) is the preferred pattern in some syntactic contexts. OV predicates are significantly frequent in Old and Middle English, and are still attested up to 1550, when they “appear to dwindle away” (Moerenhout & van der Wurff 2005: 83). This study looks at OV in Early Modern English (EModE), using a corpus-based perspective and statistical modelling to explore a number of textual, syntactic, and semantic/processing variables which may account for what by that time had already become a marked, though not yet archaic, word-order pattern. The data for the study were retrieved from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (1500–1710) and the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (c.1410–1695), the largest electronic parsed collections of EModE texts. The findings reveal a preference for OV in speech-related text types, which are less constrained by the rules of grammar, in marked syntactic contexts, and in configurations not subject to the general linearisation principles of end-weight and given-new. Where these principles are complied with, the probability of VO increases.

scholarly journals Changes in argument structure in Early Modern English with special reference to verbs of DESIRE: A case study of lust

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 129-154
Author(s):  
Noelia Castro-Chao
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Early English

In Old and Middle English, several verbs of DESIRE could be found in impersonal constructions, a type of morphosyntactic pattern which lacks a subject marked for the nominative case controlling verbal agreement. The impersonal construction began to decrease in frequency between 1400 and 1500 (van der Gaaf 1904; Allen 1995), a development which has been recently investigated from the perspective of the interaction between impersonal verbs and constructional meaning by Trousdale (2008), Möhlig-Falke (2012) and Miura (2015). This paper is concerned specifically with the impersonal verb lust (< ME lusten) as a representative of Levin’s (1993) class of verbs of DESIRE, some of which developed into prepositional verbs in Present-day English. The main aim here is to explore the changes undergone by lust during the two centuries after it ceases to appear in impersonal constructions, as well as to reflect upon some of the possible motivations for such changes. The data are retrieved from Early English Books Online Corpus 1.0, a 525-million-word corpus, and the examples are analysed manually paying attention to the range of complementation patterns documented in Early Modern English (1500–1700).

scholarly journals “When That Wounds Are Evil Healed”: Revisiting Pleonastic That in Early English Medical Writing

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Javier Calle Martín
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Medical Writing ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Progressive Decline ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early English

Abstract The origin of pleonastic that can be traced back to Old English, where it could appear in syntactic constructions consisting of a preposition + a demonstrative pronoun (i.e., for py pat, for pæm pe) or a subordinator (i.e., op pat). The diffusion of this pleonastic form is an Early Middle English development as a result of the standardization of that as the general subordinator in the period, which motivated its use as a pleonastic word in combination with many kinds of conjunctions (i.e., now that, if that, when that, etc.) and prepositions (i.e., before that, save that, in that) (Fischer 1992: 295). The phenomenon increased considerably in Late Middle English, declining rapidly in the 17th century to such an extent that it became virtually obliterated towards the end of that same century (Rissanen 1999: 303-304). The list of subordinating elements includes relativizers (i.e., this that), adverbial relatives (i.e., there that), and a number of subordinators (i.e., after, as, because, before, beside, for, if, since, sith, though, until, when, while, etc.). The present paper examines the status of pleonastic that in the history of English pursuing the following objectives: (a) to analyse its use and distribution in a corpus of early English medical writing (in the period 1375-1700); (b) to classify the construction in terms of genre, i.e., treatises and recipes; and (c) to assess its decline with the different conjunctive words. The data used as source of evidence come from The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, i.e., Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT for the period 1375-1500) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT for the period 1500-1700). The use of pleonastic that in medical writing allows us to reconsider the history of the construction in English, becoming in itself a Late Middle English phenomenon with its progressive decline throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.

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 Affirmatives in Early Modern English

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-264
Author(s):  
Jonathan Culpeper
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Negative Questions

Abstract This study examines the affirmatives yes, yea and ay in Early Modern English, more specifically in the period 1560 to 1760. Affirmatives have an obvious role as responses to yes/no questions in dialogues, and so this study demanded the kind of dialogical material provided by the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. I examine the meanings and contexts of usage of each affirmative: their distribution across time and text-types, their collocates and their occurrence after positive and negative questions. The results challenge a number of issues and claims in the literature, including when the “Germanic pattern” (involving yes and yea after positive or negative questions) dissolved, whether yea or ay were dialectal, and the timing of the rise of ay and the fall of yea.

From ‘quickly’ to ‘fairly’: on the history ofrather

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTI RISSANEN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Type I ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
Syntactic Development

In this article I describe the semantic and syntactic development of the moderatorratherfrom Old to Present-day English using a variationist approach.Ratheroriginates in an Old English comparative adverb indicating speed, and hence time, but the loss of the indication of speed and movement can already be traced in the Old English period. In Middle English the ‘preferential’ senses ofrather(e.g. the type ‘I would rather do X than Y’) become more common than the temporal senses. This contrastive meaning constitutes the unmarked use ofratherin Early Modern English, but it gradually weakens in the course of the Modern English period. The moderator use becomes popular in the second half of the eighteenth century. The semantic development outlined above goes hand in hand with a syntactic development from an original adjunct into a subjunct and conjunct, and finally into a modifier of adjectives and adverbs.

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