David Denison

Phonology and morphology

Introduction Overview and prospect The period 1476–1776 covers the end of Middle English, what is generally known as Early Modern English, and the early stages of indisputably ‘modern’, if somewhat old-fashioned, English. At the beginning, the language looks more Middle than Modern, and sounds partly both; at the end it looks and sounds quite, if not fully, modern. I illustrate with two short texts and some comment: A. Letter of Sir Thomas Wyatt to his son, 1532 I doubt not but long ere this tyme my lettres are come to you. I remember I wrate you in them that if you read them oftin it should be as tho I had written oftin to you: for al that I can not so content me but stil to cal apon you with my lettres. I wold not for al that that if any thing be wel warnid in the other, that you should leaue to remember it becaus of this new, for it is not like with aduertisements as it is with apparel that with long wering a man castith away when he hath new. Honest teching neuir were onles they were out of his remembrans that shold kepe and folow them to the shame and hurt of him self. (Muir 1960: 248ff) B. Letter of Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, 1774 I am ashamed to think that since I received your letter I have passed so many days without answering it. I think there is no great difficulty in resolving your doubts. The reasons for which you are inclined to visit London, are, I think, not of sufficient strength to answer the objections. I need not tell you what regard you owe to Mrs. Boswell’s entreaties; or how much you ought to study the happiness of her who studies yours with so much diligence, and of whose kindness you enjoy such good effects. Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions. She permitted you to ramble last year, you must permit her now to keep you at home. (Boswell’s Life , Saturday 5 March 1774)

A history of the English language

1. Overview David Denison and Richard Hogg 2. Phonology and morphology Roger Lass 3. Syntax Olga Fischer and Wim van der Wurff 4. Vocabulary Dieter Kastovsky 5. Standardization Terttu Nevalainen and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade 6. Names Richard Coates 7. English in Britain Richard Hogg 8. English in North America Edward Finegan 9. English worldwide David Crystal.

The language of the Southey–Coleridge Circle

Abstract In this joint paper the Southey–Coleridge circle is looked at from two points of view. The first part of the paper, written by Pratt, employs a literary-historical approach in order to establish the boundaries of the network and to explore its complex social and textual dynamics. Concentrating on both the public and private identities of the Southey–Coleridge circle, it reveals the complex nature of literary and political culture in the closing years of the eighteenth century. The second part, written by Denison, examines a linguistic innovation, the progressive passive, and relates it to usage by members of the circle acting as a social network. A brief conclusion draws both parts together.

Retrieving relatives from historical data

Variation and change in relativization strategies has been well documented (e.g. Ball 1996: 46, Biber and Clark 2002, Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan 1999, Johansson 2006, Lehmann 2002). Certain types of relative clause, namely that-relatives and zero relatives, were difficult to retrieve from plain-text corpora. Studies therefore either relied on manual extraction of data or a subset of possible relativization strategies. In some text types, however, the zero relative is an important member of the class of possible relativizers. Recent advances in syntactic annotation should have made that-relatives and zero relatives more accessible to automatic retrieval. In this article, we test precision and recall of searches on a modest-sized corpus, i.e. scientific texts from ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers), as a preliminary to future work on the large corpora which are increasingly becoming available. The parser retrieved some false positives and at the same time missed some relevant data. We discuss structural reasons for both kinds of shortcoming as well as the possibilities and limitations of parser adaptation.

A corpus of late eighteenth-century prose

The Corpus of Late Eighteenth-Century Prose is made up of unpublished letters transcribed from originals, about 300,000 words in all, and offered in plain text and HTML versions. The letters, held by the John Rylands University Library, date from the period 1761–90. The project was made possible by funding from the John Rylands Research Institute, which allowed Linda van Bergen and Joana Soliva to work part-time on the transcription of the material.

Analysing older English

Is historical linguistics different in principle from other linguistic research? This book addresses problems encountered in gathering and analysing data from early English, including the incomplete nature of the evidence and the dangers of misinterpretation or over-interpretation. Even so, gaps in the data can sometimes be filled. The volume brings together a team of leading English historical linguists who have encountered such issues first-hand, to discuss and suggest solutions to a range of problems in the phonology, syntax, dialectology and onomastics of older English. The topics extend widely over the history of English, chronologically and linguistically, and include Anglo-Saxon naming practices, the phonology of the alliterative line, computational measurement of dialect similarity, dialect levelling and enregisterment in late Modern English, stress-timing in English phonology and the syntax of Old and early Modern English. The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students in English historical linguistics.

Analysing Older English: Syntax in older English

Is historical linguistics different in principle from other linguistic research? This book addresses problems encountered in gathering and analysing data from early English, including the incomplete nature of the evidence and the dangers of misinterpretation or over-interpretation. Even so, gaps in the data can sometimes be filled. The volume brings together a team of leading English historical linguists who have encountered such issues first-hand, to discuss and suggest solutions to a range of problems in the phonology, syntax, dialectology and onomastics of older English. The topics extend widely over the history of English, chronologically and linguistically, and include Anglo-Saxon naming practices, the phonology of the alliterative line, computational measurement of dialect similarity, dialect levelling and enregisterment in late Modern English, stress-timing in English phonology and the syntax of Old and early Modern English. The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students in English historical linguistics.

Analysing Older English: Metrics and onomastics in older English

Is historical linguistics different in principle from other linguistic research? This book addresses problems encountered in gathering and analysing data from early English, including the incomplete nature of the evidence and the dangers of misinterpretation or over-interpretation. Even so, gaps in the data can sometimes be filled. The volume brings together a team of leading English historical linguists who have encountered such issues first-hand, to discuss and suggest solutions to a range of problems in the phonology, syntax, dialectology and onomastics of older English. The topics extend widely over the history of English, chronologically and linguistically, and include Anglo-Saxon naming practices, the phonology of the alliterative line, computational measurement of dialect similarity, dialect levelling and enregisterment in late Modern English, stress-timing in English phonology and the syntax of Old and early Modern English. The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students in English historical linguistics.

Analysing Older English: Writing practices in older English

Is historical linguistics different in principle from other linguistic research? This book addresses problems encountered in gathering and analysing data from early English, including the incomplete nature of the evidence and the dangers of misinterpretation or over-interpretation. Even so, gaps in the data can sometimes be filled. The volume brings together a team of leading English historical linguists who have encountered such issues first-hand, to discuss and suggest solutions to a range of problems in the phonology, syntax, dialectology and onomastics of older English. The topics extend widely over the history of English, chronologically and linguistically, and include Anglo-Saxon naming practices, the phonology of the alliterative line, computational measurement of dialect similarity, dialect levelling and enregisterment in late Modern English, stress-timing in English phonology and the syntax of Old and early Modern English. The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students in English historical linguistics.

Analysing Older English: Dialects in older English

Is historical linguistics different in principle from other linguistic research? This book addresses problems encountered in gathering and analysing data from early English, including the incomplete nature of the evidence and the dangers of misinterpretation or over-interpretation. Even so, gaps in the data can sometimes be filled. The volume brings together a team of leading English historical linguists who have encountered such issues first-hand, to discuss and suggest solutions to a range of problems in the phonology, syntax, dialectology and onomastics of older English. The topics extend widely over the history of English, chronologically and linguistically, and include Anglo-Saxon naming practices, the phonology of the alliterative line, computational measurement of dialect similarity, dialect levelling and enregisterment in late Modern English, stress-timing in English phonology and the syntax of Old and early Modern English. The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students in English historical linguistics.