From demonstratives to degree words: on the origin of the intensifying function of this/that in american english

The intensifying function of this/that can be traced back to the 14th century, when they acquired their adverbial status as a result of a grammaticalization process that turned them from deictic demonstratives into degree adverbs with the meaning of ‘to this/that extent, so much, so’ (OED s.v. this/that adv.). These intensifiers have had different ups and downs in the history of English. In spite of their origin in Late Middle English, they are practically not attested from the 16th to the 18th centuries, starting to appear again from the beginning of the 19th century onwards. The actual rise of the construction, however, takes place at the beginning of the following century, even though the intensifier this is usually found to lag behind its counterpart that, both in terms of occurrence and collocational use. The present paper investigates the use and distribution of the intensifying function of this/that in American English with the following objectives: (a) to trace their origin and grammaticalization as degree words in English; (b) to evaluate their quantitative dimension from a historical perspective; and (c) to assess their distribution across speech, writing and text types; and (d) to cast light on the lexico-semantic structure of the right-hand collocates in terms of their mode of construal. The source of evidence comes from the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

On the Decline of Pleonastic that in Late Middle English and Early Modern English

The origin of pleonastic that can be traced back to Old English where it could appear in syntactic constructions consisting of a preposition + demonstrative pronoun (i.e. for þy þat, for þæm þe) or a subordinator (i.e. oþ þat). Its diffusion with other subordinators is considered an early Middle English development as a result of the standardization of this item as the general subordinator in the period, which motivated its use as a pleonastic word in combination with all kinds of conjunctions (i.e. now that, gif that, when that, etc.) and prepositions (i.e. before that, save that, in that) (Fischer 1992: 295). Its use considerably increased in late Middle English, reaching its climax in the 16th century. In the 17th century, however, its use rapidly declined, to such an extent that it was virtually obliterated at 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 decline of pleonastic that, however, is not a simultaneous process with all these subordinators insofar as the subordinator for seems to have retained this pleonastic item longer than other conjunctive words. In the light of this, the present paper has been conceived with the following objectives: a) to analyse the use and distribution of pleonastic that in a corpus of early English medical writing (in the period 1375–1700); b) to classify the construction in terms of the two different varieties of medical texts, i.e. treatises and recipes; and c) to assess the decline of the construction with the different conjunctive words. The data used as sources 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 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

The Intensifiers this/that in Some Varieties of English

The intensifiers this/that acquired their adverbial status as a result of a grammaticalization process by means of which the deictic demonstratives became degree adverbs with the meaning of ‘to this/that extent, so much, so’ (OED s.v. this/that adv). The intensifier use of that has been traced back to the second half of the 14th century, originally associated with expressions of quantity like as much as that, as far as that, as long as that and eventually developing into proper degree words like that much, that far and that long, respectively. The use of this, on the other hand, developed in the second half of the 15th century. The phenomenon disseminated in the early 19th century as a typical resource of spoken English and since then, these intensifiers have found their room in the written domain imposing a scalar construal on adjectives for which scale is not the default construal. These intensifiers have been hitherto ignored in the literature, perhaps as a result of an erroneous accusation of informality, and consequently so has been traditionally recommended in these contexts. Despite the intensifiers this/that are observed in practically all the varieties of English worldwide, it has a variable distribution. The present study, therefore, contributes to the study of the development of these intensifiers in some varieties of English worldwide with the following objectives: a) to analyse their use and compare their distribution in different varieties of English; and b) to cast light on the lexico-semantic structure of the right-hand collocates. The evidence comes from the New Zealand, Indian, Singaporean and Philippines components of the Corpus of Global Web- based English. This corpus contains 1.9 billion words from 340,000 websites in 20 different English-speaking countries using a random selection of web pages and blogs, thus becoming the appropriate input for the study of the phenomenon in the varieties of English worldwide.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

The Standardization of Punctuation in Early Modern English Legal Proclamations

Punctuation is historically noted to develop from the rhetorical to the grammatical, from the speaker to the reader, the Renaissance standing out as the transitional period with the adoption of syntactic and pragmatic functions to organize the written information. This standardization is elsewhere regarded as a consequence of the introduction of Caxton's printing press in England, the increasing activity of Westminster's Royal Chancery, and a growing number of professional scriveners engaged in the writing of all sort of documents, from guild's records to private letters. The study of historical punctuation, however, has been mostly based on Old and Middle English handwritten material, literary and scientific texts in particular. Unfortunately, the Early Modern English period has been an exception with the publication of a limited number of studies investigating the scribal attitudes in different text-types, the list including scientific, legal and literary texts, drama in particular (Calle-Martín and Miranda-García 2008: 356–360). The unexplored condition of Early Modern English punctuation is even more significant in the particular case of printed texts, despite their active participation in the process of standardization. Legal material is not an exception, proclamations being “one of the most overlooked categories of printed material in the field of early modern history” (Kyle 2015: 771). In the light of this, the present study therefore analyses the punctuation system in Early Modern English printed legal material with the following objectives: a) to provide the inventory of marks of punctuation in Early Modern English printed texts; b) to offer a detailed account of the use and pragmatic functions of these symbols; and c) to assess the level of standardization of punctuation in these sources. The present study relies on The Corpus of Early Modern English Statutes (compiled by Anu Lehto at the University of Helsinki), containing approximately 214,000 words for the historical period 1491-1707 (Lehto 2013: 239). The corpus is divided into 25-year sub-periods for diachronic comparison and they have been compiled to include two proclamations for each time period, with samples printed during the reign of each sovereign. Legal material has been chosen in view of a) its orality, written to be read aloud; b) its conservativeness, hostile to individual creativity in favour of the standard practice; and c) it complex syntax, requiring a complex set of marks for all kinds of syntactic relationships. This material has allowed us to gather conclusive data to ascertain a) the existence of an inventory of punctuation marks with a preconceived set of rules, corroborating an ongoing process of specialization at that time; and b) more importantly, the historical development of particular punctuation symbols, offering grounds as to the actual rise and fall of particular symbols and their functions in the history of English. Calle-Martín, Javier and Antonio Miranda-García. 2008. “The Punctuation System of Elizabethan Legal Documents: The Case of G.U.L. MS Hunter 3 (S.1.3)”. The Review of English Studies 59: 356–378. Kyle, Chris R. 2015. “Monarch and Marketplace: Proclamations as Use in Early Modern England”. Huntington Library Quarterly 78.4: 771–787. Lehto, Anu. 2013. “Complexity and Genre Conventions: Text Structure and Coordination in Early Modern English Proclamations”. In Andreas H. Jucker, Daniela Landert, Annina Seiler and Nicole Studer-Joho (eds.). Meaning in the History of Engish. Words and Texts in Context. Amsterdam, Phil: John Benjamins. 233–257.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Scribal punctuation of coordinate and subordinate clauses in Late Middle English and Early Modern English

The study of punctuation has traditionally focused on Old and Middle English handwritten material—literary and scientific texts in particular, while the early modern period has been left unexplored (Calle-Martín forthcoming). The existing approaches to the topic are, however, descriptions of the system of individual texts, which offer a detailed analysis of the choices and preferences of particular scribes. The diachronic approach has been frequently disregarded, perhaps on the erroneous assumption that punctuation lacks uniformity. The present paper, therefore, sets to analyse scribal punctuation from a diachronic perspective in late Middle and early Modern English in order to shed some new light on the standardisation of punctuation symbols in the expression of three types of clauses: coordinate clauses, adjectival clauses (defining and non-defining relative clauses) and conditional if-clauses. The study relies on handwritten material from The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose for the historical period 1300–1700. The corpus has been compiled to contain both theoretical treatises and recipe material written in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, which allows for a diachronic and variationist approach to the study of punctuation.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Finite Complementation in Early English Medical Writing: A case Study of Syntactic Constructions in Competition

Estudio de dos construcciones sintácticas en competición basado en corpora de Inglés Medio e Inglés Moderno Temprano.The present paper discusses the distribution of complement clauses in a corpus of early English medical writing, considering whether the object is introduced by the complementizer that (I have already promised that […]) or by a to-infinitive clause (I promised to do the best I could). Among others, the following two factors have been found to play a decisive role in the use of these constructions: i) the existence of intervening elements between the matrix verb and subordinate clause, favouring the more explicit finite variant; and ii) the use of an additional personal object, the finite variant again preferred (Rohdenburg 1996: 166-167). The present paper has been conceived with the following objectives: a) to analyze the use and distribution of finite and non-finite complement clauses in combination with the following object-controlling verbs: tell, order, promise, wish, and teach, among others; b) to classify the phenomenon in different text-types; and c) to evaluate if the above-mentioned factors condition the use of these constructions. 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 Tech

On the Use of make to vs. make ø in early English Medical Writing

OBJECT INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS are the most frequent type of non-finite complement clauses, in which the object infinitive may occur either marked (+TO) e.g. to-infinitive or unmarked (-TO) e.g. bare infinitive (Fischer 1992: 316). From a historical point of view, the bare infinitive is found to be the preferred form in Old English, the number of examples being comparatively small though. This picture changed drastically in Middle English, when the to-infinitive outnumbers the bare infinitive in this kind of clause (Visser 1973: 2235). In the early Modern English period, however, both constructions coexisted with the same set of verbs, even though there are conditioning factors triggering the use of a particular type of construction. Among others, the existence of intervening elements between the matrix verb and the object infinitive is found to play a decisive role in the choice of to- or the bare infinitive (Rissanen 1999: 286). The present paper aims to deal with object infinitive constructions in early Modern English with the following three objectives: a) to analyze the use and distribution of marked and unmarked infinitives in the following object-controlling verbs: cause, make, procure, send, entreat, let, suffer, wish, forbid and teach, among others; b) to classify the phenomenon in different text-types; and c) to evaluate if the following factors condition the use of these constructions, i.e. i) the presence of intervening elements between the matrix verb and the object infinitive; ii) the position of the infinitive clause with respect to the matrix clause, whether fronted or not; and iii) the use of coordinated infinitives (Rohdenburg 1996: 156). The data used as source of evidence come from the Electronic Text Edition of Depositions (1560-1760) and the Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, i.e. Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT for the period 1500-1700).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Evidence of charge carrier number fluctuations in InN thin films?

Due to its small band-gap and its high mobility, InN is a promising material for a large number of key applications like band-gap engineering for high efficiency solar cells, light emitting diodes, and high speed devices. Unfortunately, it has been reported that this material exhibits strong surface charge accumulation which may depend on the type of surface. Current investigations are conducted in order to explain the mechanisms which govern such a behavior and to look for ways of avoiding it and/or finding applications that may use such an effect. In this framework, low frequency noise measurements have been performed at different temperatures on patterned MBE grown InN layers. The evolution of the 1/f noise level with temperature in the 77 K-300 K range is consistent with carrier number fluctuations thus indicating surface mechanisms: the surface charge accumulation is confirmed by the noise measurements