Adverbials and inversion in early english scientific writing

From a historical perspective, the English language shifted from being basically verb final in the Old English period (Traugott 1992: 274) to verb non-final from the Middle English period onwards (Fischer 1992: 371), that is, from SOV to SVO. The layout of the constituents within the clause, however, may be occasionally inverted (from SV to VS) in certain contexts, which "have been qualified as innovations by some scholars and as true verb-second fossils by others" (Nevalainen 1997: 203). From a diachronic point of view, while inversion in Old English is possible whenever the first constituent position is occupied by an object, an adverbial or a PP, inversion in Middle English is just witnessed when the first constituent is a wh-element or, later on, a negative constituent (van Kemenade 1987: 180). Interestingly enough, research on the topic have demonstrated that instances of inversion after adverbials in first constituent position have been found in the early Modern English period, where the remainders of the old verb-second rule can be attested (Nevalainen 1997: 213; Bækken 2000: 393). In my opinion, there is still a gap in the literature since the phenomenon has not been tested in scientific writing yet. All this considered, the present paper has been conceived with the following objectives: 1) to analyse the occurrence of inversion when adverbials (then, therefore, yet, thus and locative PPs) or negative constituents (ne, never, neither and nor) occupy the first constituent position both in main and subordinate clauses; 2) to plot the diachronic development of inversion in the period under study; 3) to investigate the proliferation of the phenomenon across the different text-types; and 4) to evaluate the contribution of conditioning factors such as the typology of the subject or the typology of the clause. The data used as source of evidence come from The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, i.e. Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT for the period 1375–1500) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT for the period 1500–1700).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

The vernacularization of non-native items in early english medical writing

Early Modern English is characterised by an extraordinary lexical growth motivated by two main linguistic processes, borrowing and word-formation (Nevalainen 1999: 332). Within affixation, prefixation grew more than suffixation in early Modern English, probably because prefixes have fewer word-class restrictions and do not change the word-class of the base (Nevalainen 1999: 335). Thus, native and non-native forms competed to achieve a position in the lexicon. This not only increased the English vocabulary, but also modified the traditional derivational system of the language by the introduction of foreign affixes. As far as we have investigated, the topic has been discussed in Present-Day English and in the history of English. However, the literature is still in need of quantitative and qualitative research in the field of early English medical writing. Therefore, the present paper pursues the following objectives: 1) to analyse the use of the native prefix un- and the non-native dis-, in- and non- in early English medical writing; 2) to assess the distribution of these prefixes across genres; 3) to calculate the morphological productivity of the negative prefixes under study; and 4) to evaluate the contribution of qualitative factors, i.e. the origin of the bases, the different word-classes, and the competion among the different negative prefixes. The data come from the Corpus of Early English Medical Writing.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

by way of vs. by means of: On the Expression of Instrumentality in Middle English and Early Modern English

Grammaticalization is defined as “a process whereby a lexical item, with full referential meaning, develops grammatical meaning” (Fischer and Rosenbach 2000: 2; see also Hopper 1991; Diewald and Wischer 2002). According to Rissanen, grammaticalization may occur both with native and borrowed items at any stage of the History of English, being developed from one single lexical item or a group of words (2000: 152). This is the case of by way of and by means of that, according to the OED, were first attested in English at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Their prepositional function is the result of a process of grammaticalization undergone by way and mean, which evolved from noun to preposition in these contexts. Once established in the language, they coexisted until the end of the seventeenth century, the moment when by way of was progressively obliterated as a result of the on-going difffusion of by means of in these environments. Therefore, the present paper has been conceived with the following objectives: 1) to assess the grammaticalization process by which nouns such as way and mean developed prepositional functions for the expression of instrumentality; 2) to analyse the use and distribution of by way of and by means of in the History of English; 3) to investigate the distribution of these competing forms in terms of gender and social class. The source of evidence comes from the Helsinki Corpus of English, the Corpus of Early English Correspondence and the Old Bailey Corpus.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

That-clauses: Retention and Omission of Complementizer that in some Varieties of English

An OBJECT CLAUSE, also sporadically referred to as a COMMENT CLAUSE (Warner 1982: 169; Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 951), is that kind of clause functioning as the direct object of the matrix verb. In English, the most common type of object clause is introduced by the complementizer that, hence its traditional label that-clause (Quirk et al. 1985: 1049). Regarding its different usages when occurring in post-predicate position, these constructions are employed to report the speech (i.e. He said that nine indictments have been returned publicly in such investigations), thoughts (i.e. I think Stuart’s gone a bit mad) or attitudes (i.e. I was quite confident that it would stay in very well), among others (Biber et al. 1999: 660-661). As observed, the complementizer that can either be retained or omitted with no meaning alteration and Biber et al. (1999: 681-682) enumerated a series of discourse factors favouring that omission (the presence of co-referential subjects in the main clause and the that-clause, among others) and favouring that retention (the use of coordinated that-clauses, among others). Even though the topic has been extensively researched in British and American English (Biber 1999) and the history of English (Fanego 1990a, 1990b; Suárez-Gómez 2000; Calle- Martín and Romero-Barranco 2014), the academia is still in want of such studies in other varieties of contemporary English. This considered, the present paper will analyze that-clauses in Indian English, Hong Kong English and New Zealand English with the following objectives: 1) to analyze the distribution of that/zero in the mentioned varieties of English; 2) to assess the phenomenon in terms of register and the informants’ age and gender; 3) to classify the instances regarding the verb taking the that-clause (i.e. mental verbs, speech act verbs and other communication verbs); and 4) to evaluate the contribution of some factors favouring the omission and the retention of complementizer that in these environments. The source of evidence comes from the New Zealand, Indian and Hong Kong components of the International Corpus of English.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

‘I got into the room by means of a picklock key and found him’ Complex Prepositions in Early Modern English

English complex prepositions can be subdivided into two-word and three-word sequences, the former containing an adverb, adjective or conjunction together with a simple preposition (i.e. instead ADV of PREP ); and the latter being composed of a preposition + noun + preposition (i.e. by PREP means NOUN of PREP ) (Quirk et al. 1985: 669-670). The complex prepositions BY WAY OF and BY MEANS OF are the result of a process of grammaticalization in which they lost part of their lexical functions and later were reanalysed as functional elements expressing instrumentality (Hoffman 2005: 71-76). From an etymological point of view, these words have different backgrounds. The word WAY, on the one hand, can be traced back to the Old English period (c. 950), with the meaning of ‘road, path’ (OED). MEAN, on the other, is a French borrowing, first attested in 1374, with the meaning of ‘an intermediary agent or instrument’ (OED). As complex prepositions in English, BY WAY OF and BY MEANS OF were first attested in 1390 and 1427, respectively (OED). The present paper has been conceived with the following objectives: 1) to assess the grammaticalization process by which nouns such as WAY and MEAN developed prepositional functions meaning instrumentality; 2) to analyse the use and distribution of BY WAY OF and BY MEANS OF in the History of English; and 3) to determine any likely preference in terms of the informants’ gender and social class. The source of evidence comes from the the Corpus of Early English Correspondence and the Old Bailey Corpus.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Early modern english scientific text types: different levels of linguistic complexity?

Complexity was first defined by Simon as hierarchies of different elements originating from simplicity (1962: 468). In Linguistics, Givon (2009) has analysed syntactic complexity from the point of view of language typology; Dahl (2004) and Nichols (2009) have assessed grammatical complexity cross-linguistically; and Blankenship (1974), Chafe (1982) and Maas (2009) have studied the different levels of complexity in spoken and written registers. Furthermore, Lehto (2015) elaborated a diachronic analysis of the levels of complexity among different text types in early Modern English legal material, based on Biber’s works on linguistic complexity. Biber (1992) identified some key linguistic features associated with reduced complexity (i.e. that deletions, contractions or clause coordination, among others) and increased complexity (i.e. nominalizations, phrasal coordination or passive constructions, among others). These features occur in different patterns across different registers and the calculation of their frequency allows for the assessment of the level of complexity in different kinds of texts. In itself, the concept of complexity has not been hitherto evaluated in early English medical writing, especially considering its different text types. In the light of this, the present paper analyses the levels of linguistic complexity in two early Modern English medical treatises housed in Glasgow, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 135: a surgical treatise (ff. 34r-73v) and a recipe collection (ff. 74r-121v). These two treatises conform as the ideal input for this study inasmuch as they represent two text types of medical writing and, consequently, they allow for the comparison in terms of linguistic complexity. According to Pahta and Taavitsainen (2004), theoretical treatises were the most formal text type while remedybooks represented the popular medical knowledge, surgical treatises falling in-between these two. Therefore, the analysis sheds light on the differences between two of the branches of medical writing in early Modern English. The present study, therefore, has been conceived with the following objectives: a) to identify the complexity features present in these two witnesses; and b) to analyse the different levels of complexity in both text types. In order to carry out such an analysis, the linguistic features identified by Biber (1992) will be retrieved and their frequency calculated. Furthermore, textual organisation will be also analysed as it certainly contributes to the level of complexity of a particular text. On methodological grounds, the texts have been transcribed following semi-diplomatic conventions so that editorial intervention is kept to a minimum. After the transcription, the texts have been POS-tagged so that automatic searches could be carried out by way of a conventional concordancer. These texts are part of The Málaga Corpus of Early Modern English Scientific Prose (available at http://modernmss.uma.es), a corpus that aims to provide a sample of ca. 1,000,000 POS-tagged words of early Modern English scientific prose.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Punctuation in late Middle English Medical Writing: Constantinus Africanus’ Venerabilis Anatomia in London, Wellcome Library, MS Wellcome 290 (ff. 1r-41v)

Within the field of Palaeography, punctuation could be defined as the most rudimentary aspect, as it took an extremely long time to evolve. By the 13th century, the punctus and the inverted semicolon were the most widespread marks of punctuation in England, and it was not until the end of the 16th century that the whole inventory of contemporary punctuation marks fully developed (Petti 1977: 25). Notwithstanding the recent apparoaches to the study of historical punctuation (Alonso-Almeida 2001: 207; Calle-Martín and Miranda-García 2005: 95; Calle-Martín and Miranda-García 2007: 357-58), historical punctuation has been traditionally neglected by the academia in the assumption that it was meaningless and haphazard (Denholm-Young 1954: 77; Hector 1958: 45). The present study analyses the punctuation system found in a late Middle English anatomical treatise, Constantinus Africanus Venerabilis’ Anatomia, housed in London, Wellcome Library, MS Wellcome 290 (ff. 1r-41v). This paper is conceived with a threefold objective: a) to offer a description of the different uses and functions of punctuation symbols; b) to determine whether the scribe employed rhetoric or grammatical punctuation; and c) to offer the set of contemporary punctuation marks that would perform those functions nowadays. On methodological grounds, this research stems from the Málaga Corpus of Late Middle English Scientific Prose (http://hunter.uma.es), which contains a collection of hitherto unedited late Middle English Fachprosa displaying the lemma, word-class, accidence and meaning of every running word in the corpus, punctuation marks also included. The tool Text Search Engine (Miranda-García and Garrido-Garrido 2013) has then facilitated the automatic generation of the complete inventory of punctuation marks in the text, including the context and folio in which they occur.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A spatial contrast retina with on-chip calibration for neuromorphic spike-based AER vision systems

We present a 32 32 pixels contrast retina microchip that provides its output as an address event representation (AER) stream. Spatial contrast is computed as the ratio between pixel photocurrent and a local average between neighboring pixels obtained with a diffuser network. This current-based computation produces an important amount of mismatch between neighboring pixels, because the currents can be as low as a few pico-amperes. Consequently, a compact calibration circuitry has been included to trimm each pixel. Measurements show a reduction in mismatch standard deviation from 57% to 6.6% (indoor light). The paper describes the design of the pixel with its spatial contrast computation and calibration sections. About one third of pixel area is used for a 5-bit calibration circuit. Area of pixel is 58 m 56 m, while its current consumption is about 20 nA at 1-kHz event rate. Extensive experimental results are provided for a prototype fabricated in a standard 0.35- m CMOS process.Gobierno de España TIC2003-08164-C03-01, TEC2006-11730-C03-01European Union IST-2001-3412

Structure and Stability of 3He Droplets

We have studied the structure of 3He droplets at zero temperature using a density functional approach plus a configuration interaction calculation in an harmonic oscillator major shell. The most salient feature of open shell drops is that the valence atoms couple their spins to the maximum value compatible with Pauli's principle, building a large magnetic moment. We have determined that 29 atoms constitute the smallest self-bound droplet