Suffixes in Competition: On the Use of -our and -or in Early Modern English

Política de acceso abierto de la revista: https://revistas.um.es/ril/about/submissionsThis paper presents a corpus-driven analysis of the linguistic competition between the suffixes -our/-or in Early Modern English. It is conceived as a state of the art to provide an explanation of the development and distribution of these competing suffixes in Early Modern English. The study is based on the distribution of the most common set of words with alternative spellings in the period to investigate the development and the standardisation of the -our and -or groups. The study offers the quantitative distribution of the suffixes in the period corroborating the participation of phenomena such as linguistic extinction, specialisation, blocking and lexicalisation in the configuration of the contemporary morphological paradigm. The source of evidence comes from the corpus of Early English Books Online (Davies, 2017) for the period 1470–1690. In addition to this, the study also relies on sources such as the Evans Corpus (2011), the Corpus of Historical American English (Davies, 2010) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008)

"When that wounds are evil healed”: Revisiting pleonastic that in early English medical writing

The origin of pleonastic that can be traced back to Old English, where it could appear in syntactic constructions consisting of a preposition + a demonstrative pronoun (i.e., for þy þat, for þæm þe) or a subordinator (i.e., oþ þat). The diffusion of this pleonastic form is an Early Middle English development as a result of the standardization of that as the general subordinator in the period, which motivated its use as a pleonastic word in combination with many kinds of conjunctions (i.e., now that, if that, when that, etc.) and prepositions (i.e., before that, save that, in that) (Fischer 1992: 295). The phenomenon increased considerably in Late Middle English, declining rapidly in the 17th century to such an extent that it became virtually obliterated towards the end of that same century (Rissanen 1999: 303–304). The list of subordinating elements includes relativizers (i.e., this that), adverbial relatives (i.e., there that), and a number of subordinators (i.e., after, as, because, before, beside, for, if, since, sith, though, until, when, while, etc.). The present paper examines the status of pleonastic that in the history of English pursuing the following objectives: (a) to analyse its use and distribution in a corpus of early English medical writing (in the period 1375–1700); (b) to classify the construction in terms of genre, i.e., treatises and recipes; and (c) to assess its decline with the different conjunctive words. 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). The use of pleonastic that in medical writing allows us to reconsider the history of the construction in English, becoming in itself a Late Middle English phenomenon with its progressive decline throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.The present research has been funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant number FFI2014-57963-P), and by the Autonomous Government of Andalusia (grant number P11-HUM7597)

'No cat could be that hungry!’ This/that as Intensifiers in American English

Estudio léxico-semántico de los intensificadores this y that como modificadores de adjetivos y adverbios en inglés americano, la variedad del círculo interno donde este fenómeno se detecta con mayor protagonismo. El estudio cualitativo concluye, en primer lugar, la existencia de un proceso de gramaticalización de los demostrativos that y this en la segunda mitad de los siglos XIV y XV, respectivamente, a partir de su función deíctica y locativa en expresiones de cantidad del tipo as much as that o as far as that, que dan lugar a la función intensificadora en that much o that far, cuyo significado depende del contexto referencial de los hablantes al conservar parte de su función deíctica y locativa tras la gramaticalización. El análisis cuantitativo, por su parte, revela que la intensificación con this y that permanece de manera residual en el sistema hasta principios del siglo XIX, momento en el que se produce su difusión en inglés, alcanzando su máxima expresión en las dos primeras décadas del siglo XX y manteniendo su frecuencia desde entonces. El estudio variacional, en tercer lugar, pone de manifiesto que este tipo de intensificación es, por su componente deíctico, un recurso típico del inglés hablado así como de aquellos textos caracterizados por su menor nivel de formalidad, como la ficción o los textos periodísticos. Finalmente, el estudio léxico-semántico confirma que el fenómeno se inicia en el siglo XIX en compañía de adjetivos graduables y evoluciona ya en la segunda mitad del siglo XX hacia un modelo conceptual menos restrictivo con la adopción de a) adjetivos de distinta naturaleza semántica (adjetivos perfectivos y elativos) y b) adjetivos no graduables.Proyecto de investigación nacional titulado “Desarrollo, difusión, publicación y explotación del corpus electrónico de referencia de prosa científica inédita de inglés moderno temprano”, con referencia FFI2017-88060-P (2018-2020)

From the manuscript to the screen: Implementing electronic editions of mediaeval handwritten material

This paper describes the electronic editing of the Middle English material housed in the Hunterian Collection at Glasgow University Library (GUL), a joint project undertaken by the universities of Málaga, Glasgow, Oviedo, Murcia and Jaén which pursues the compilation of an electronic corpus of mediaeval Fachprosa in the vernacular (http://hunter.filosofia.uma.es/manuscripts). The paper therefore addresses the concept of electronic editing as applied to The corpus of Late Middle English scientific prose with the following objectives: (a) to describe the editorial principles and the theoretical implications adopted; and (b) to present the digital layout and the tool implemented for data retrieval. A diplomatic approach is then proposed wherein the editorial intervention is kept to a minimum. Accordingly, features such as lineation, punctuation and emendations are every now and then accurately reproduced as by the scribe’s hand whilst abbreviations are yet expanded in italics. GUL MS Hunter 497, holding a 15th-century English version of Aemilius Macer’s De viribus herbarum, will be used as a sample demonstration (Calle-Martín – Miranda-García, forthcoming).The present research has been funded by the Autonomous Government of Andalusia (project P07-HUM–02609) and by the Spanish Ministry of Education (project FFI2008-02336)

On the rise and diffusion of new intensifiers: this/that in some asian varieties of english

Estudio léxico-semántico de los intensificadores this y that como modificadores de adjetivos y adverbios en cuatro variedades del inglés asiático. El estudio cuantitativo confirma, por un lado, la influencia del inglés americano en la difusión del fenómeno en estas variedades a la vista de la escasa repercusión del mismo en inglés británico. En las variedades estudiadas, Singapur y Filipinas lideran el uso de este modelo de intensificación, que contrasta con la actitud conservadora de India y Hong Kong, lo que se justifica a tenor del origen americano del inglés de Filipinas y de la propia evolución del inglés de Singapur que, a diferencia de las otras, se encuentra en la fase de diferenciación de acuerdo con el modelo de Schneider (2007). El estudio cualitativo, por otro lado, confirma un distinto nivel de gramaticalización de this y that como resultado del mayor repertorio de colocados de that al aceptar, a diferencia de this, adverbios de lugar, tiempo, cantidad, frecuencia y modo. El análisis de los adjetivos, por su parte, constata el incipiente proceso de gramaticalización de estos intensificadores en estas variedades, dado que this/that aparecen exclusivamente en compañía de adjetivos graduables, sin mostrar síntomas de evolución, como en el inglés americano, hacia un modelo conceptual menos restrictivo con la adopción de adjetivos de distinta naturaleza semántica (adjetivos perfectivos y elativos) o adjetivos no graduables.Proyecto de investigación nacional titulado “Cambio lingüístico, variación morfosintáctica y compilación de recursos para el estudio del inglés moderno tardío”, con referencia PID2021-126496NB-I00 (2021-2024)

‘What’s done can’t be undone’: Verbal Contractions in Modern English.

The habit of contracting words originates in the intrinsic tendency of languages to assimilate the pronunciation of two neighbouring sounds. In Present-day English, this phenomenon is most plainly observed in the so-called ‘telescoped phrases’, a term that refers to all those cases of elision affecting auxiliary verbs, as exemplified by it’s and doesn’t (Peters, 2004, p. 126). Among these, there are, on the one hand, the contractions featured in operators, i.e., “the larger class containing the NICE [i.e. negation, inversion, code and emphasis] verbs in all their uses” (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p. 104n, our emphasis). In these cases, the element contracted is a verb, either in its functional or lexical uses, and the elision takes place at the beginning of the word, as in it’s for it is or they’ve for they have. On the other hand, the negative adverb not may also be contracted to n’t when it modifies an operator, thereby losing its mid-word vowel and its free-word status in the process. The examples doesn’t for does not and isn’t for is not illustrate this phenomenon, with the exception of the negative modal can’t, which stands for the univocal full form cannot. Today, contractions are typically employed in colloquial registers, whether they be spoken or written. However, it remains unclear when these structures first became widespread in the language and how they became an index of informal English.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

‘The night before beg'd ye queens's pardon and his brother's’: the apostrophe in the history of English

The apostrophe was introduced into the English orthographic system by the mid sixteenth century as a printer's mark especially designed ‘for the eye rather than for the ear’ (Sklar 1976: 175; Little 1986: 15). Whereas the uses of the apostrophe today are limited to the Saxon genitive construction (the woman's book), to verbal contractions (you'll ‘you will’ or you're ‘you are’) and to other formulaic expressions (o'clock), its early uses also included other cases of elision and some abbreviated words (Parkes 1992: 55‒6; Beal 2010a: 58). Among this plethora of uses, perhaps one of the most distinctive functions of this symbol is the indication of the genitive construction, which has no full form in Present-day English after the progressive extinction of the genitive case affix. Such a development could have also happened in the regular past morpheme, but its outcome differed, as it continues to be spelled out today. The present article is then concerned with the standardisation of the apostrophe in the English orthographic system in the period 1600–1900 and pursues the following objectives: (a) to study the use and omission of the apostrophe in the expression of the past tense, the genitive case and the nominative plural in the period; (b) to assess the relationship between the three uses and their likely connections; and (c) to evaluate the likely participation of grammarians in the adoption and the rejection of each of these phenomena in English. The source of evidence for this corpus-based study comes from A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers (ARCHER 3.2, Denison & Yáñez-Bouza 2013), sampling language use in different genres and text types in the historical period 1700–1900. Additionally, the Early English Books Online corpus (EEBO, Davies 2017) has also been used as material to investigate the early uses of the possessive apostrophe in the late sixteenth century...Funding for open Access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA. This workwas supported by theMinistry of Science and Innovation under grant number PID2021-126496NB-I00; by the Autonomous Government ofAndalusia under grant numbers PY18-2782 and UMA18-FEDERJA-129; and by the Ministry of Universities under grant number FPU19/05104. These fundings are hereby gratefully acknowledged. We are also very grateful to the responsible editor of English Language and Linguistics and to the two anonymous reviewers, whose thoughtful comments have substantially improved the final version of this article

'A very pleasant, safe, and effectual medicine’: The Serial Comma in the History of English.

Política de acceso abierto tomada de: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/4990Estudio ortográfico de la coma serial –también denominada coma de Oxford o coma de Harvard por ser un rasgo característico del estilo de estas dos editoriales– en la historia de la lengua inglesa para indagar en las circunstancias que han motivado su progresivo retroceso en el transcurso del siglo XX. El estudio diacrónico concluye, en primer lugar, que la difusión de la coma serial es un fenómeno acontecido en el siglo XVII, impulsado en primera instancia por los impresores de la época, conscientes de su necesidad en sintagmas de tres o más elementos; y, en segundo lugar, que la estandarización de este signo de puntuación se produciría durante los siglos XVIII y XIX, especialmente en este último, como resultado de la defensa del mismo por parte de los gramáticos de la época y del impulso recibido por publicaciones de prestigio como el Diccionario de Oxford o la Enciclopedia Británica. El estudio variacional revela, por su parte, una mayor tendencia al empleo de la coma serial en los recetarios, quizás por la propia naturaleza de este tipología textual a la hora de listar los remedios para una cura determinada. El estudio sincrónico confirma, en segundo lugar, el cambio de actitud acontenido a comienzos del siglo XX, que provoca en el progresivo abandono de este signo de puntuación, posiblemente como resultado de la transición hacia un estilo de puntuación más abierto y la progresiva simplificación de los usos de la coma en ese mismo siglo

On the Use of the Oxford Comma in Early Modern English Scientific Writing

Punctuation has traditionally been disregarded in the literature due to its suggested arbitrariness and inconsistency in pre-modern English. Some of the factors that have contributed to this neglect are the lack of systematisation and correspondence to modern punctuation and the overlapping functions of punctuation symbols (Lucas 1971, 19; Mitchell 1980, 412; Calle-Martín and Miranda-García 2005, 28). The Renaissance stands out as the transitional period towards the consolidation of the English system of punctuation, the establishment of the printing press contributing to the standardisation of both the inventory of marks of punctuation and the functions attributed to them. The study of historical punctuation has been mainly concerned with Old and Middle English. Even though the early Modern English system of punctuation has also received editorial attention, most of the studies are concerned with literary compositions, while the other text types have been hitherto disregarded, scientific texts in particular. The unexplored condition of punctuation is even more significant in the particular case of early Modern printed texts, despite their active participation in the process of standardisation. Curiously enough, no studies have focused on the use of the Oxford comma in the history of English. The Oxford comma (also known as serial comma) refers to the existence of a pause immediately before the conjunctions and/or in a series of three or more elements in a clause. The present paper assesses the use of the so-called Oxford comma in early Modern English handwritten and printed documents. In the light of this, this paper pursues the following objectives: a) to study the use and distribution of the Oxford comma in the period 1500-1700; and b) to evaluate the distribution of this punctuation mark in the two types of writing, i.e. handwriting and printing.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

La naturaleza como aula de aprendizaje en una escuela rural desde un enfoque interdisciplinar

En este Trabajo de Fin de Grado (TFG) se muestra y evalúa una intervención educativa desde el área de Educación Física en un centro rural y la importancia de establecer relaciones interdisciplinares entre las distintas áreas que componen el currículo en Educación Primaria. Mostraremos en nuestro trabajo como las Actividades Físicas en el Medio Natural (AFMN) son el eje vertebrador de las relaciones interdisciplinares establecidas entre el área de EF, con otras áreas como conocimiento del medio, expresión artística y lengua castellana. Estas actividades por tanto no son entendidas como fin en si mismas sino como medio de aprendizaje, valorando así las grandes posibilidades educativas del entorno y del medio natural como aula para el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. Además destacaremos también que las AFMN son un instrumento magnifico para conseguir un aprendizaje significativo y motivante así como para el desarrollo de temas transversales del currículo como la educación ambiental y la educación en valores.Grado en Educación Primari