A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: the value of texts surviving in more than one version

Laing, Margaret

doi:10.1515/9783110877007.566

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The literature provides little detail of the historical origin, current distribution or use of complex demonstratives. The construction is not attested in the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (Laing 2013) and therefore seems not to have occurred in this period 1150–1325 (M. Laing p.c.). The earliest example cited in the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED 1989) dates from the late fourteenth century just after the Early Middle English period.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

Rupp

Tagliamonte

2017

English Language and Linguistics

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The English variety spoken in York provides a unique opportunity to study the evolution of the English determiner system as proposed in the Definiteness Cycle (Lyons 1999). York English has three vernacular determiners that appear to represent different stages in the cycle: the zero article, reduced determiners and complex demonstratives of the type this here NP (Rupp 2007; Tagliamonte & Roeder 2009). Here, we probe the emergence and function of demonstratives in the cycle from the joint perspective of language variation and change, historical linguistics and discourse-pragmatics. We will argue that initially, the demonstrative reduced in meaning (Millar 2000) and also in form, resulting in Demonstrative Reduction (DR) (previously known as Definite Article Reduction (DAR)). This caused it to become reinforced. Data from the York English Corpus (Tagliamonte 1996–8) and historical corpora suggest that the use of complex demonstratives was subsequently extended from conveying ‘regular’ deictic meanings to a new meaning of ‘psychological deixis’ (Johannessen 2006). We conclude that survival of transitory stages in the cycle by several historical demonstrative forms, each in a range of functions, has given rise to a particular sense of ‘layering’ (Hopper 1991). Our analysis corroborates the idea that grammaticalization trajectories can be influenced by discourse-pragmatic factors (Epstein 1995; Traugott's 1995subjectification).

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

Rupp

Tagliamonte

2017

English Language and Linguistics

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“…by Wallage 2005: 68–9), and this is of course partly a function of the available material. Nevertheless, investigation of other sources such as those contained in the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME; Laing & Lass 2008) corpus might be able to round out the picture as regards the crucial early periods, and this is a desideratum for future research.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Null subjects in Middle English

Walkden¹,

Rusten²

2016

English Language and Linguistics

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This paper investigates the occurrence and distribution of referential null subjects in Middle English. Whereas Modern English is the textbook example of a non-null-subject language, the case has recently been made that Old English permits null subjects to a limited extent, which raises the question of what happens in the middle period. In this paper we investigate Middle English using data drawn from the Penn Parsed Corpus of Middle English Prose and the new Parsed Corpus of Middle English Poetry, aiming to shed light on the linguistic and extralinguistic factors conditioning the alternation between null and overt subjects. Generalized mixed-effects logistic regression and random forests are used to assess the importance of the variables included. We show that the set of factors at play is similar to that found for Old English, and we document a near-complete disappearance of the null subject option by the end of the Middle English period.

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“…The input used for its compilation are the localised texts used in the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME; McIntosh et al 1986), as well as those in its early ME (eME) counterpart (LAEME; Laing & Lass 2007). Some drawbacks regarding this corpus may also be mentioned.…”

Section: Middle English Grammar Project Corpus (Meg-c) 19mentioning

confidence: 99%

A descriptive approach to computerised English historical corpora in the 21<sup>st</sup> century

Vázquez¹,

Segura²,

Aguado³

2011

ijes

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Historical corpora offer many potentialities for linguistic research. Thus, the present article provides an overview of the major English historical corpora compiled or being compiled both in Spain and abroad. They include different types such as tagged and parsed corpora, and their main features will be outlined. As for the organisation of the article, after the introductory section, the historical corpora created abroad will be presented. Then, those being constructed in Spain (Coruña, Las Palmas, Málaga, Salamanca, Santiago and Sevilla) will be discussed. Some final remarks and the references close the article.KEYWORDS: historical corpora, Old English, Middle English, Modern English, diachrony, annotated corpus, lemmatisation. RESUMENLos corpus históricos ofrecen múltiples posibilidades para la investigación lingüística. En el presente artículo se proporciona una visión general de los corpus históricos ingleses más importantes, compilados o que están en proceso de compilación, a nivel nacional e internacional. Los corpus considerados incluyen distintos tipos, entre los que se encuentran los analizados morfológica y sintácticamente, de los que se esbozan las principales características. En cuanto a la estructura del trabajo, tras la introducción, se presentan los corpus creados en el extranjero y seguidamente se tratan aquellos que se están recopilando en España (La Coruña, Las Palmas, Málaga, Salamanca, Santiago y Sevilla). Cierran el estudio algunas consideraciones finales y las referencias bibliográficas.

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A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: the value of texts surviving in more than one version

Cited by 15 publications

References 4 publications

This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

Null subjects in Middle English

A descriptive approach to computerised English historical corpora in the 21<sup>st</sup> century

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