Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of content

Part I. Language change

At the crossroads of language change, variation, and contact

1. The present volume

2. Structure of the volume

2.1 Part I (“Language change”)

2.2 Part II (“Language variation”)

2.3 Part III (“Variation and change in contact situations”)

Knitting and splitting information

1. Information structure and syntactic change: Introductory remarks

2. Medial placement of adverbials in the history of English

2.1 Positions of adverbs in Present-day English

2.2 Collocations (initial position) vs. medial position of adverbial connectors

2.3 Placement of adverbial connectors in the history of English

3. Medial placement of adverbials

3.1 Distinct positions

3.2 Different placement options: Contemporary accounts

4. Information structure and adverbial positions

4.1 Terminology

4.2 Adverbial placement and information structure: Initial position of adverbials

4.3 Adverbial placement and information structure: Medial placement of adverbials

5. Conclusions

References

Appendix

Positions (adapted from Greenbaum 1969, 78)

The order of adverbials of time and place in Old English

1. Introduction

2. The data

3. Monofactorial analysis

3.1 order based on semantics and number of elements in the cluster

3.2 clause pattern and verb-final versus verb-non-final

3.3 kind of lexical verb

3.4 position of the cluster in the clause and position of the cluster regarding the lexical verb

3.5 complexity and weight

3.6 obligatoriness

3.7 realization form

3.8 occurrence of other adverbials of time and place in the same clause and specific adverbials

3.9 Language external factors: genre, Latin translation and Old English period

3.10 Summary of the monofactorial analysis

4. The multifactorial analysis

5. Conclusion

References

Appendix

The demise of a preterite-present verb

1. Introduction

2. State of the art

3. Old English uses

4. Middle English uses

5. Conclusions

Data

References

Gradience in an abrupt change

1. Background

2. The effect of noun versus noun + verb frequency on diatonic pairs

3. Gradience

4. Conclusion

References

Vowels before /r/ in the history of English

1. Introduction

2. Historical background

2.1 The BIRD-TERM-NURSE merger

2.2 Pre-rhotic loss of vowel distinctions

2.3 The situation after the loss of rhoticity

3. Further developments with pre-rhotic vowels

3.1 HORSE – HOARSE

3.2 POOR – POUR

3.3 TOWER – TYRE

3.4 Other mergers with central vowels

3.5 MERRY – MARRY – MARY

4. Conclusion

References

Part II. Language variation

“Pained the eye and stunned the ear”

1. Introduction

2. Corpus-linguistic studies of the progressive passive

3. Comments on the progressive passive in the CNG

3.1 The CNG

3.2 Overview of comments on the progressive passive

3.3 Newspaper language

3.4 Has been being built

3.5 Is being, was being

3.6 Being built

3.7 Social criticism

4. Summary and outlook

Data

References

Watching as-clauses in Late Modern English

1. Introduction

2. Dickens vs. J.K. Rowling

3. The onomasiological approach used in COHA

4. Hypotactic integration and embedding across time

5. Conclusion

References

Data

Appendix

Colloquialization and “decolloquialization”

1. Introduction

2. A note on the corpus

3. Methodology

4. Results

5. Analysis and discussion

5.1 Medicine and science

5.1.1 Genre characteristics

5.1.2 Phrasal verbs in medicine and science

5.2 Sermons

5.2.1 Genre characteristics

5.2.2 Phrasal verbs in sermons

6. Concluding remarks

References

Letters of Artisans and the Labouring Poor (England, c. 1750–1835)

1. Introduction

2. The Letters of Artisans and the Labouring Poor Corpus (LALP), England, c. 1750–1835

3. Spelling acquisition and fossilization in LALP

4. Developing genre literacies

4.1 Local and translocal scales

4.2 Adapting to the new linguistic marketplace

5. Conclusion

References

New-dialect formation in medieval Ireland

1. Introduction

2. Medieval Ireland from 1169–1534

3. Theories on the development of new varieties of English

4. Methodology and sources

4.1 Irish English: The Kildare Poems (ca. 1330)

4.2 English English sources

4.3 Data analysis

5. New-dialect formation in medieval Irish English: Evidence of pre-modal verbs

5.1 Interdialect forms

5.2 Reallocation

5.3 Focusing

6. Conclusion

References

Tracing uses of will and would in Late Modern British and Irish English

1. Introduction

2. Classifications of will and would

3. Data and method

4. Would and will in Irish and British English

4.1 Would and will in contemporary Irish and British English

4.2 Will and would in the Late Modern Irish and British English corpus material

4.3 Would in the Late Modern English corpus

4.4 Comparison of will and would in the Late Modern English corpus data

5. Conclusion

References

Part III. Variation and change in contact situations

The subjunctive mood in Philippine English

1. Introduction

2. The diachronic study of PhilE

3. The subjunctive

4. Historical and regional variation in the subjunctive

5. Results and discussion: The mandative construction

5.1 The syntactic variants

5.2 The mandative subjunctive versus should-periphrasis

5.3 Suasive expressions and lexical conditioning

5.4 The mandative subjunctive and formality

5.4.1 The mandative subjunctive and text types

5.4.2 The mandative subjunctive and active vs passive voice

6. Results and discussion: The were-subjunctive in hypothetical clauses

6.1 Subjunctive were versus indicative was

6.2 Would in counterfactual subordinate clauses

6.3 Were-subjunctives and formality

7. Conclusion

References

Revisiting a millennium of migrations

1. Background

2. Early period

3. Fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

4. Domination and decimation: The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

5. Concluding remarks

References

or : A dilemma of the Middle English scribal practice