A Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English

Abstract

This chapter reports on the construction of a new resource, the Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (PLAEME). Prose is underrepresented in the period 1250-1350, which is why this period is also underrepresented in the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English (PPCHE). This data gap is unfortunate, as we know that the period is important for morphosyntactic change. PLAEME addresses that data gap by transforming material from the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME) into the same format as the PPCHE. The chapter present a detailed account of its construction, as well as three case studies replicating three recent studies of Middle English syntax: the establishment of not as the expression of sentential negation (Ecay and Tamminga 2017), the fixing of the syntax of the dative alternation (Bacovcin 2017), and the introduction of argumental headed wh-relative clauses (Gisborne and Truswell 2017). These case studies show that PLAEME allows these changes to be charted in much greater detail, and hence demonstrates how PLAEME fills an important data gap.

A quantitative model of verb–object order in Middle English with special reference to the prose–poetry distinction

“…Shorter, morphosyntactic features may be harder to manipulate consciously whereas longer, macrostructural patterns are easily exploited for poetic effect. This assumption could begin to explain why there is no marked genre-specific differential in the rise of when as a subordinator (Zimmermann 2020) or the development of Jespersen's Cycle (Truswell et al 2019), whereas the loss of null subjects (Walkden & Rusten 2017) or the change in the relative order of verb and object clearly proceed differently between prose and poetry.…”

Multiple Adjectival Modification in Old and Middle English: A Reconfiguration of a Constructional Network

“…The study of the ME period is based on the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition (PPCME2, Kroch, Taylor & Santorini 2000), a 1.2-million-word syntactically annotated database of ME texts of different genres and from different subperiods (labeled M1, M2, M3, and M4, and covering the periods of 1150-1250, 1250-1350, 1350-1420, and 1420-1500, respectively). In addition, to plug the textual gap in the period between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, I used A Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (PLAEME, Truswell, Alcorn, Donaldson & Wallenberg 2018), which follows the annotation of PPCME and comprises texts from between 1250 and 1325, numbering around 170,000 words. For the OE part, I relied on the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE, Taylor, Warner, Pintzuk & Beths 2003), a 1.5-million-word database, annotated syntactically in the spirit of the aforesaid ME corpora.…”

The Functions of Auxiliary Do in Middle English Poetry: A Quantitative Study

“…PCMEP is syntactically annotated according to the Penn treebank format established for historical English and employed in its sister corpora that include prose texts. Further data has been collected from another recent corpus, A Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1250-1325Truswell, Alcorn, Donaldson & Wallenberg 2018). From this source the following poems have been included: Cursor Mundi, Genesis and Exodus, Infancy of Christ, The Northern Homily Collection, and South English Legendary (though not included in its entirety, see note 4), for a total of 106,551 words.…”