A bird’s eye view of the English subjunctive

2020 ◽  
pp. 202-240
Author(s):  
Lilo Moessner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Adverbial Clause ◽  
Historical Periods

This chapter analyses subjunctive use in the construction types main clause, relative clause, noun clause, and adverbial clause in three synchronic cuts through the periods Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Early Modern English (EModE). They are followed by a condensed history of the English subjunctive from the earliest documents to the beginning of the 18th century. The first three sections trace the frequency development of the subjunctive and its competitors in the relevant period and establish the linguistic and extralinguistic parameters which influence their distribution. The last section additionally gives an overview of the role that the simplification of the verbal syntagm, the individual construction types, the different text categories, and the expression of modality played in subjunctive use across the historical periods.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Lilo Moessner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Computational Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Present Book ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

This chapter sets the present book off against previous studies about the English subjunctive in the historical periods Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Early Modern English (EModE). The aim of the book is described as the first comprehensive and consistent description of the history of the present English subjunctive. The key term subjunctive is defined as a realisation of the grammatical category mood and an expression of the semantic/pragmatic category root modality. The corpus used in the book is part of The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, comprising nearly half a million words in 91 files. The research method adopted is a combination of close reading and computational analysis.

The subjunctive in noun clauses

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-152
Author(s):  
Lilo Moessner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Matrix Verb ◽  
Function Matrix

This chapter explores the frequency development of the subjunctive and its competitors, namely indicatives and modal constructions, in noun clauses in a corpus covering the historical periods Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Early Modern English (EModE). Furthermore, it discusses the influence of the parameters date of composition, text category, prose vs poetry, noun clause function, matrix verb, and noun clause type on their distribution in the individual periods. The corpus analysis of about 2.3 thousand noun clauses attests a more or less steady frequency decrease of the subjunctive from the OE period onwards. Text category STA with legislative texts, subjunctive verbal syntagms in the matrix clause, and the clause type that-clause are identified as the factors which contributed most to the preservation of the subjunctive.

2. Origins

2018 ◽  
pp. 12-32
Author(s):  
Simon Horobin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Language ◽  
French Language ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Language Origins ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Late Modern

Where does the English language come from? While English is distantly related to both Latin and French, it is principally a Germanic language. ‘Origins’ provides a brief history of the English language, highlighting a number of substantial changes, which have radically altered its structure, vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling. It begins with Old English (AD 650–1100), then moves on to Middle English (1100–1500), which saw the impact of the French language after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Early Modern English period (1500–1750) witnessed the biggest impact of Latin upon English, while Late Modern English (1750–1900) resulted in an expansion of specialist vocabulary using Latin and Greek.

The subjunctive in adverbial clauses

2020 ◽  
pp. 153-201
Author(s):  
Lilo Moessner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Adverbial Clause ◽  
Matrix Verb

This chapter explores the frequency development of the subjunctive and its competitors, namely indicatives and modal constructions, in the adverbial clauses of a corpus covering the periods Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Early Modern English (EModE). It also describes the influence of the parameters text category, adverbial clause type, and matrix verb on the realisation of the verbal syntagm of adverbial clauses. The corpus analysis shows that subjunctive frequency is surpassed by indicative frequency already in OE, whereas it keeps its ground against modal constructions until EModE. The biggest shares of subjunctives are found in the text categories STA (legislative texts) and IS (secular instruction texts), in clauses of condition and concession, and in matrix clauses with verbal syntagms realised by subjunctives and imperatives.

The subjunctive in adjectival relative clauses

2020 ◽  
pp. 58-94
Author(s):  
Lilo Moessner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Root Modality

This chapter deals with the frequency development of the subjunctive and its competitors, namely indicatives and modal constructions, in adjectival relative clauses in the historical periods Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Early Modern English (EModE). Additionally, it discusses the linguistic and extralinguistic parameters influencing their distribution across these periods. The analysis of a corpus comprising nearly 3,000 relative clauses reveals that the subjunctive in adjectival relative clauses died out in the 16th century, that it was best preserved in text category STA containing legislative texts, and that it was favoured in combination with wh-relative markers and in constructions characterized by modal harmony, i.e. in combination with matrix clauses with verbal syntagms expressing root modality.

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.

Verbo-nominal constructions of necessity with þearf n. and need n.: competition and grammaticalization from OE to eModE

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUCÍA LOUREIRO-PORTO
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Semantic Competition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Early English ◽  
Nominal Sets

The evolution of verbs expressing necessity in the history of English, such as *þurfan and need, has been studied in detail, especially their semantic competition and their grammaticalization (see Molencki 2002, 2005; Taeymans 2006; Loureiro-Porto 2009). However, analogous verbo-nominal expressions involving the morphologically related nouns þearf and need and the verbs be and have have received little attention, despite their relevance as semantic competitors of the verbs and their subsequent fossilization in high-frequency expressions such as if need be and had need. The current article fills this gap by studying the development of verbo-nominal expressions with þearf and need from Old to early Modern English, and asks: (i) whether the verbs and the verbo-nominal expressions undergo similar processes of grammaticalization, and (ii) whether there is any connection between the evolution of the verbal and the verbo-nominal sets. Analysis of these verbo-nominal constructions in a 4.1 million-word corpus (including the Helsinki Corpus and fragments of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, the Lampeter Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler) shows that, firstly, both idiomaticization and grammaticalization are relevant in the development of verbo-nominal constructions; secondly, their evolution is key to the understanding of the development of the necessity verbs *þurfan and need; and finally, the competition between constructions with þearf and need calls into question the well-known hypothesis that phonological confusion with durran caused the disappearance of *þurfan in the ME period (see Visser 1963–73: 1423, §1343).

The discourse markerwellin the history of English

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas H. Jucker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Partial Answer ◽  
Reported Speech ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
History Of ◽  
Face Threat ◽  
Interpersonal Level

The discourse markerwellhas four distinct uses in Modern English: as a frame it introduces a new topic or prefaces direct reported speech; as a qualifier it prefaces a reply which is only a partial answer to a question; as a face-threat mitigator it prefaces a disagreement; and as a pause filler it bridges interactional silence.In Old Englishwellwas used on an interpersonal level as an emphatic attention-getting device (similar to Old Englishhwæt‘listen’, ‘behold’, or ‘what’). In Middle English,wellalways functioned as a frame on a textual level. In Early Modern English, and particularly in the plays by Shakespeare, the uses ofwelldiversified considerably and adopted interpersonal uses again.

scholarly journals In the service of secrecy: An enveloped history of priority, proof and patents

2021 ◽  
pp. 135918352110288
Author(s):  
Eva Hemmungs Wirtén
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Property System ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Propriété Industrielle ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Double Envelope ◽  
Double Compartment

This article is about an everyday paper object: an envelope. However, as opposed to most other flat paper containers, the enveloppe Soleau can only be bought from L’Institut national de la propriété industrielle (INPI) in Paris. At the cost of €15 you get a perforated, double-compartment envelope allowing you to constitute proof of creation and assign a precise date to your idea or project. But the enveloppe Soleau is something much more than just a simple and cheap way by which you can prove priority in any creative domain. It is a material footprint anchored to centuries of practices associated with disclosure and secrecy, a gateway into the infrastructure of the intellectual property system and its complicated relationship to the forms of knowledge it purports to hold. The purpose of this article is to consider the making of the enveloppe Soleau as a bureaucratic document, a material device performing a particular kind of legal paperwork. In four different vignettes, the article tracks the material becoming of the enveloppe Soleau as an evidentiary receptacle, beginning by going back to early modern practices of secrecy and priority, continuing with its consolidation in two patents (from 1910 and 1911) to the inventor Eugène Soleau (1852–1929), and ending up, in 2016, dematerialized in the e-Soleau. As a bureaucratic document, the enveloppe Soleau shows just how much work a mundane paper object can perform, navigating a particular materiality (a patented double envelope); formalized processes of proof (where perforations have legal significance); the practices of double archiving (in an institution and with the individual) and strict temporal limitations (a decade). Ultimately, the enveloppe Soleau travels between the material and immaterial, between private and public, between secrecy and disclosure, but also between what we perceive of as the outside and inside of the intellectual property system.

Positive and negative face as descriptive categories in the history of English

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 178-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas H. Jucker
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
General Trend ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Negative Face

Studies in the history of politeness in English have generally relied on the notions of positive and negative face. While earlier work argued that a general trend from positive politeness to negative politeness can be observed, more recent work has shown that in Old English and in Middle English face concerns were not as important as in Modern English and that, in certain contexts, there are also opposing tendencies from negative to positive politeness. In this paper, I focus in more detail on the notions of positive and negative face and follow up earlier suggestions that for negative face a clear distinction must be made between deference politeness and non-imposition politeness. On this basis, I assess the usefulness of the notions of positive and negative face for the development of politeness in the history of English.

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