English in North America: Accounting for its Evolution

Author(s):  
Edgar W. Schneider

This chapter surveys the history of American English through the lenses of the Dynamic Model (DM) of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes and the Extra- and Intra-territorial Forces (EIF) Model. Proceeding chronologically through the five phases of the Dynamic Model as described in Schneider (2007), it identifies the most important forces which affected the evolution of the variety in each phase. Canadian English is also covered briefly. A summary section compares the two approaches. It finds that while the DM works well, the EIF Model highlights causes of developments. The paper suggests that socio-psychological forces (notably, identities and attitudes) need to be considered prominently and that apparently extra-territorial forces operate more strongly in early developmental phase while intra-territorial forces gain in importance in later phases.

Author(s):  
Stefan Dollinger

AbstractThe notion ‘drift’ plays an important role in the development of the modals have to and must in early Canadian English in relation to British and American English during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Have to is first found in texts that reflect informal usage, and for the period in question (1750–1849), have to is only attested with deontic readings; the data suggest that its rise was not exclusively conditioned by the defective paradigm of must. Must maintains its epistemic function in relation to its Late Modern English competitors. In early Canadian English, changes progress gradually, with individual variables following different directions. Canadian English epistemic must lags behind, while deontic have to has spread more quickly in North America, with Canadian English more progressive than British English varieties, but less so than American English. Within a more general drift towards have to, Canadian English shows independent development in successive periods.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Lieselotte Anderwald

This article challenges the accepted opinion that the American English perfect form HAVE gotten is a straightforward historical retention of an earlier British English form. Although HAVE gotten was presumably part of the settler input in North America, it (almost) died out in American English as well, but was then revived in the nineteenth century, as historical corpus data show. Contrary to expectations, this revival was not an innovation from below. Instead, the rise of HAVE gotten was promoted by careful writers who deliberately avoided the highly stigmatized stative HAVE got. This explains why perfect HAVE gotten appears in more formal text types first, and how it became specialized to dynamic contexts only. The morphological Americanism HAVE gotten is thus a curious case of an (unintended) side-effect of marginally successful prescriptivism.1


2017 ◽  
Vol 186 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-112
Author(s):  
Lukáš Laibl ◽  
Oldřich Fatka

This contribution briefly summarizes the history of research, modes of preservation and stratigraphic distribution of 51 trilobite and five agnostid taxa from the Barrandian area, for which the early developmental stages have been described.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
John H. Penn

<span>Microscale Chemistry has become the method of choice for the teaching laboratories in the United States. This introspective look at the development of microscale Chemistry details the advantages prornised by microscale Chemistry during the early developmental phase of microscale in the United States. These advantages are then compared to the current usage of microscale. This comparison is designed to highlight areas for potential development of the field.</span>


Zootaxa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4272 (4) ◽  
pp. 551
Author(s):  
ROY A. NORTON ◽  
SERGEY G. ERMILOV

Based on the study of type material, other historical specimens, and new collections, the adult of the thelytokous oribatid mite Oribata curva Ewing, 1907 (Galumnidae) is redescribed and the name is recombined to Trichogalumna curva (Ewing, 1907) comb. nov. A confusing history of synonymies and misidentifications is traced in detail, and their effect on published statements about biogeography is assessed. Reliable records of T. curva are only those from North America. The tropical mite Pergalumna ventralis (Willmann, 1932) is not a subspecies of T. curva. The widely-reported Trichogalumna nipponica (Aoki, 1966) and other similar species form a complex with T. curva that needs further morphological and molecular assessment. 


1873 ◽  
Vol 10 (111) ◽  
pp. 385-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Sterry Hunt

It is proposed in the following pages to give a concise account of the progress of investigation of the lower Palæozoic rocks during the last forty years. The subject may naturally be divided into three parts: 1. The history of Silurian and Upper Cambrian in Great Britain from 1831 to 1854; 2. That of the still more ancient Palæozoic rocks in Scandinavia, Bohemia, and Great Britain up to the present time, including the recognition by Barrande of the so-called primordial Palæozoic; fauna; 3. The history of the lower Palæozoic rocks of North America.


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