Olga Fischer

Negation in the History of English

Its coming again, the new collection that this site has. To complete your curiosity, we offer the favorite negation in the history of english book as the choice today. This is a book that will show you even new to old thing. Forget it; it will be right for you. Well, when you are really dying of negation in the history of english, just pick it. You know, this book is always making the fans to be dizzy if not to find.

From Sign to Signing

This volume, a sequel to Form Miming Meaning (1999) and The Motivated Sign (2001), offers a selection of papers given at the Third International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature (Jena 2001). The studies collected here present a number of new departures. Special consideration is given to the way non-linguistic visual and auditory signs (such as gestures and bird sounds) are represented in language, and more specifically in ‘signed’ language, and how such signs influence semantic conceptualization. Other studies examine more closely how visual signs and representations of time and space are incorporated or reflected in literary language, in fiction as well as (experimental) poetry. A further new approach concerns intermedial iconicity, which emerges in art when its medium is changed or another medium is imitated. A more abstract, diagrammatic type of iconicity is again investigated, with reference to both language and literature: some essays focus on the device of reduplication, isomorphic tendencies in word formation and on creative iconic patterns in syntax, while others explore numerical design in Dante and geometrical patterning in Dylan Thomas. A number of theoretically-oriented papers pursue post-Peircean approaches, such as the application of reader-response theory and of systems theory to iconicity.

On the status of grammaticalisation and the diachronic dimension in explanation

The purpose of this paper is to consider how grammaticalisation, which is generally considered to be a diachronic process, can be fitted into a theory of language change that is based on the idea that change is brought about by the speaker, and hence is essentially a synchronic matter. First the question of the relation between explanation, the theory of grammar and the theory of change will be discussed, on the basis of which a number of guidelines will be suggested which should direct empirical research in the area of language change. In the second part of the paper, one particular case of grammaticalisation will be investigated, namely the development of have to in English from a possessive, full verb to a modal semi-auxiliary. It will be shown that this case contains both diachronic and synchronic aspects, which need to be kept apart. In keeping them apart, this particular case of grammaticalisation can be seen to accord with the principles of language change argued for in the first part.

The status of 'to' in Old English 'to'-infinitives: A reply to Kageyama

In this paper, the A. discuss a number of problems he had with the interpretation of Old English to in to-infinitives as described by Taro Kageyama. The main part of his argument will be to show that the presence (or absence) of to does make a difference semantically. For this purpose, he will look at a number of constructions in which both to and zero infinitives occur, shows how they differ, and how this can be stated in syntactic terms

Iconicity: literary texts

This article defines the nature of iconicity from a semiotic and linguistic point of view and discusses the three types of icons that form part of iconicity: images, diagrams and metaphors. The discussion concentrates on images and diagrams (metaphors are discussed in a separate entry) that play a role in literary texts and includes a short history of the critical discussion of iconicity since the 1940s. Images depend on aural/oral and visual phenomena and are therefore discussed on the phonetic and the typographic level only. Diagrams are of a more abstract nature and occur also on the morphosyntactic and discourse level. The discussion of the various types on each linguistic level is illustrated with many examples, mainly from English literature, to show the effect and function of iconicity, and how it adds meaning to the text.

Dimensions of Iconicity

This volume addresses five different Dimensions of Iconicity. While some contributions examine the phonic dimensions of iconicity that are based on empirical, diachronic and theoretical work, others explore the function of similarity from a cognitive point of view. The section on multimodal dimensions takes into account philosophical, linguistic and literary perspectives in order to analyse, for example the diagrammatic interplay of written texts and images. Contributions on performative dimensions of iconicity focus on Buddhist mantras, Hollywood films, and the dynamics of rhetorical structures in Shakespeare. Last but not least, the volume also addresses new ways of considering iconicity, including notational iconicity, the interplay of iconicity, ambiguity, interpretability, and the iconicity of literary analysis from a formal semanticist point of view.

Is There Life Beyond Generative Syntax

Unmittelbaren Anstoss für diesen Artikel gab das Erscheinen von Blackwells fünfbändigem Handbuch zur Syntax, in dem die Erträge von inzwischen fast fünf Jahrzehnten generativer Forschung bilanziert werden. Die Autorin nimmt dies zum Anlass für eine grundsätzliche Reflexion des Verhältnisses von generativer Linguistik und historischer Linguistik. Wo und inwiefern können historische Sprachwissenschaftler von den Erkenntnissen der generativen Syntaxforschung profitieren? Aber auch: An welchen Stellen könnte bzw. müsste die generative Forschung verstärkt auch Einsichten und/oder Konzepte der historischen Sprachwissenschaft heranziehen, um den hohen explanativen Anspruch einzulösen zu können, den sie für sich formuliert. Die Autorin illustriert dies sehr anschaulich an mehreren konkreten Beispielen, die in Blackwells Handbuch ausführlich behandelt werden – darunter eine Reihe von Phänomenen wie A.c.i., PPA etc., die auch für die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Deutschen von Interesse sind.

[Review of: J. Fisiak, M. Krygier (1998) Advances in English historical linguistics (1996)]

The papers in this volume, four in number, all concentrate on Old English writings. The main title is also that of the first and last contributions. The first, by Professor R.I. Page, then continues: ‘Some Thoughts on Editing Old English Texts’ (texts, not manuscripts, the distinction is important); the second, by the General Editor, ‘Some Problems in the Physical Descriptions of the Parker Chronicle’. Professor Page takes issue with Professor Lapidge, who had claimed that editors of Old English verse looked too much to the manuscripts and too little to the text. The tenor of Professor Page’s argument is, rather, that if the text is to be properly understood, closer attention should be given to such details of the manuscripts as word division, punctuation, and so on, in short, to the non-verbal aspects of communication. Professor Sato does very much the same thing with the Parker Chronicle, carefully analyzing the minutiæ of preparation and presentation to allow of a more accurate view of what the Parker Chronicle really is. In between, Timothy Graham surveys ‘The Beginnings of Old English Studies: Evidence from the Manuscripts of Matthew Parker’, and Tadao Kubouchi analyzes ‘The Decline of the S.Noun O.V. Element Order: The Evidence from Punctuation in Some Transition-Period Manuscripts of Ælfric and Wulfstan’. The beginnings of Old English studies were surveyed by Eleanor Adams in 1917, but she mainly confined herself to the beginnings in print. The present study examines the evidence of the manuscripts: the traces left in them by the sixteenth-century scholars who first became aware of them (like John Leland, Robert Talbot, Robert Recorde, John Joscelyn) and the transcripts and other reflexes of them that they produced, as well as their reasons for doing so. Professor Kubouchi’s contribution, on a level of abstraction well beyond that of the other three, examines the fate of the S.noun O.V. construction in the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan that continued to be copied, corrected and annotated throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries. His conclusion is that by the mid-eleventh century the SOV order had for some speakers become so restricted in use even in a C-type main clause and a dependent clause, at least on the speech level, that a scribe, afraid that confusion might arise there, might find it necessary to mark the pause after the pre-verbal noun object. Several