The Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE)

Peer reviewe

Dynamic modelling of post-collisional magmatism

This study addresses the question of post-collisional magmatism and its production mechanisms, addressing especially the mantle processes involved. Numerical experiments are conducted to examine the effects of viscosity weakening by subduction related water content increase in the upper mantle and the resulting sub-lithospheric small-scale convection. The models presented incorporate parameterized and thermodynamic melting models, and take into account variable relationships between mantle water content, mantle strength, water extraction by partial melting and related depletion stiffening. The results demonstrate the possible importance of so called ”hydrous activation” of the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary: The post-collisional loss of the lithospheric mantle can be initiated and augmented by the elevated upper mantle water contents that enhances the sub-lithospheric small-scale convection, increases heat flow into the lithosphere, and produces localized lithosphere thin- ning. The irregular spatial and temporal melting patterns and the mantle melt volumes correspond to typical post-collisional mantle-derived magmatism. The small-scale convection can be localized into an edge-driven convection by significant lithosphere thickness gradients, e.g. craton edges. This helps to understand the uplift and volcanism observed in intraplate orogenic settings and implies the importance of these processes at other locations of lithosphere thickness gradients, e.g. recent collision zones. The lithospheric thinning produced by small-scale convection can initiate whole lithosphere mantle loss via positive feedback mechanisms: gradual thinning of the lithosphere causes partial melting in the lowermost crust, weakening the crust-mantle boundary and providing a detachment mechanism for the lithospheric mantle, leading to stronger lithosphere thinning and, finally, exposure of the lower crust to the hot asthenosphere. Small-scale convection and processes related to or initiated by it offer new insight and future research possibilities in studies of continental collision magmatism

"You Tempt me Grievously to a Mythological Essay": J. R. R. Tolkien’s Correspondence with Arthur Ransome

' "You Tempt me Grievously to a Mythological Essay": J. R. R. Tolkien’s Correspondence with Arthur Ransome', edits a letter from Tolkien to Ransome held in the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds. On December 13th 1937, the celebrated children’s author Arthur Ransome wrote to J. R. R. Tolkien with a few comments on Tolkien’s newly published book The Hobbit. Tolkien lost no time in replying, and his letter provides one of his earliest comments on his published fiction, and a relatively early explicit commentary on his mythic writing. This article publishes for the first time Tolkien’s response to Ransome in its entirety, and answers some of the questions regarding the chronology of Tolkien’s correspondence which arise. An analysis of the letter reveals that while, as many scholars have shown, the ‘sources’ and ‘inspirations’ of The Hobbit include the likes of Beowulf and the Poetic Edda, already in 1937—and contrary to his own later claims—Tolkien’s principal primary source for fleshing out his prose stories with characters, places, and references to historical events was the vast legendarium he had created himself

The beginning and spread of farming in Finland; and the subsistence in Iin Hamina, the Northern Ostrobothnian region

This work contributes to wider discussions of historical and prehistoric farming practices in marginal environments. In its origins, the process of adopting farming as a new mode of subsistence in Northern Europe was complicated, and its spread continued throughout Finland until the modern period. Farming can be an unreliable form of food production, and failures in cereal cultivation are still common. People's persistence in the face of such adversity allowed for cultivation practices to be adapted in a far northern climate Discussions of early farming studies in Finland have been dominated by the question of whether single pollen evidence can be considered as reliable evidence of farming. This is based on the assumption that all cereal-type pollens indicate the presence of cereals. This assumption is considerably problematic: Cereal-type pollen includes several wild grasses that are also very common in Finland and thus cannot be considered as a reliable proof of cereal cultivation. It is not possible to study small scale farming using pollen analysis alone, but such analyses are useful for exploring when farming became well-established. This study combines the radiocarbon dates obtained from cereal-type pollen that was present in quantities larger than a single-grain. Using this approach it was observed that population size proxy and early farming studies correlate strongly. This suggests that cereal cultivation started to affect population size from approximately the last millennium BC onward, although the majority of this spread is seen during Iron Age and later periods. In addition to improving the resolution of the earliest farming in Finland, this study also considers the impact these changes would have had upon diet. Protein intake can be studied using stable isotopes from human bone collagen if local background values are known. The Iin Hamina case study revealed that protein was mainly obtained from wild resources: According to the isotopic composition of human skeletal collagen, fish were a major dietary component. Moreover, reconstructions from incremental dentine analysis revealed that humans from Iin Hamina were well adapted to their environment. Many aspects of early subsistence practices in Finland remain unknown. However, this study demonstrates that prehistoric cultivation was a multidimensional phenomenon in northern latitudes, and that this is an area that requires more attention in order to be more fully understood

The burden of legacy : Producing the Tagged Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (TCEECE)

Special issue, Challenges of Combining Structured and Unstructured Data in Corpus Development, ed. by Tanja Säily & Jukka Tyrkkö.This paper discusses the process of part-of-speech tagging the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE), as well as the end result. The process involved normalisation of historical spelling variation, conversion from a legacy format into TEI-XML, and finally, tokenisation and tagging by the CLAWS software. At each stage, we had to face and work around problems such as whether to retain original spelling variants in corpus markup, how to implement overlapping hierarchies in XML, and how to calculate the accuracy of tagging in a way that acknowledges errors in tokenisation. The final tagged corpus is estimated to have an accuracy of 94.5 per cent (in the C7 tagset), which is circa two percentage points (pp) lower than that of present-day corpora but respectable for Late Modern English. The most accurate tag groups include pronouns and numerals, whereas adjectives and adverbs are among the least accurate. Normalisation increased the overall accuracy of tagging by circa 3.7pp. The combination of POS tagging and social metadata will make the corpus attractive to linguists interested in the interplay between language-internal and -external factors affecting variation and change.Peer reviewe

Thermal modelling of the Svecofennian orogeny overthrust on Archaean craton, Eastern Finland

This study reviews the thermophysical properties of rocks and the lithosphere and describes a one dimensional thermal numeric model of hypothetical 20 km thick overthrust plate obtruded on to the Archeaen craton in the Svecofennian orogeny (1.92-1.77 Ga). The objective is to find out if the overthrust plate and its radiogenic heat sources were able to produce the thermal effects observed on the current erosion level of the Archaean craton. Heat transfer in lithosphere is assumed conductive, and advective heat transfer due to melting and melt transfer is supposed negligible. The study area is located in the Eastern Finland, approximately current Kainuu and Northern Karelia regions, east from the most active orogenic belt (Raahe-Ladoga zone), so that orogenic magmatism can be neglected. Physical parameters and boundary conditions for the model are from different earlier published sources: deep seismic profiles (rock variation in depth), laboratory measurements (heat production and conductivity of rocks), field measurements (heat flow densities), and pT(t) estimations from the Finnish precambrian to estimate the size and thickness of the sheet. Comparison of the modelling results to previous K-Ar datings and other pTt estimations show, that the effect of the overthrust sheet has been adequate (max. T 450°C at 4 kbar) to produce the K-Ar resetting ages measured from the Archaean bedrock at current erosion level. No other kind of thermal activation in lithosphere is required. Results show possibly very minor partial melting in upper middle crust underneath the overthrust sheet.Tässä työssä luodaan katsaus kivien ja litosfäärin lämpöfysiikkaan sekä kootaan yksiulotteinen numeerinen terminen malli hypoteettisesta 20 km paksusta ylityöntölaatasta, joka on svekofennialaisessa orogeniassa (1,92 1,77 Ga) työntynyt arkeeisen kratonin päälle. Tavoitteena on selvittää, riittääkö ylityöntölaatan kuorta paksuntava ja mukanaan tuomien radiogeenisten lämmönlähteiden vaikutus aiheuttamaan arkeeisella kratonilla havaitut termiset ilmiöt. Malli olettaa lämmönsiirron litosfäärissä olleen konduktiivista ja mahdollisen sulanmuodostuksen olleen mitätöntä siten, että advektiivista lämmönsiirtoa ei ole tapahtunut. Mallin tarkastelualue sijoittuu aktiivisimman orogeniavyöhykkeen taakse, alueelle, jossa orogeniaan liittyvää magmatismi ei oletettavasti ole vaikuttanut, suunnilleen nykyisen Kainuun ja Pohjois-Karjalan alueelle. Mallin parametreina (muista tutkimuksista) on käytetty seismisten luotausten pohjalta arvioitua kuoren kivilajikoostumusta, eri kivilajeista mitattuja globaaleja ja kotimaisia kokoelmia lämmönjohtumisarvoja, laskemalla arvioituja ja arkeeisen kallioperän kivistä mitattuja lämmöntuottoarvoja sekä maksimipainearvioita Suomen kallioperän kivistä ylityöntölaatan paksuuden ja ulottuvuuden arvioimiseksi. Mallin tulosten vertailu kratonin kivistä muissa tutkimuksissa tehtyihin K-Ar-ikämäärityksiin sekä eräisiin muihin pTt-määrityksiin osoittavat, että ylityöntölaatan vaikutus on riittävä (maksimilämpötila noin 450C 4 kbar paineessa) tuottamaan arkeeisen kallioperän kivistä havaitut K-Ar-resetoitumisiät, eikä muunlaista litosfäärin termistä aktivoitumista tarvita. Tulokset osoittavat mahdollisesti hyvin vähäistä osittaista sulamista yläkeskikuoressa ylityöntölaatan alueella

Needless Lies? : Merchant Letters and Knowledge of Japan in Early Seventeenth-Century England

This MA thesis looks at Early Modern English merchant letters as an atypical subgenre of travel literature, and as an underused source for European perceptions of the Other. The thesis approaches letters by applying the three-dimensional model developed for discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough. In this study, the letters are placed in their historical, cultural and textual contexts. I first analyse the letters in relation to contemporary travel literature and ethnography, and give an account of Early Modern merchant letter-writing. Then, I conduct a close reading of the letters in their historical context, focussing on the events and persons described. The primary sources for this study are taken from the correspondence of the English East India Company trading post in Japan, 1613-1623. The texts studied are letters home (to England) written by ten different Company employees in Japan, about 50 in number. The texts are taken from the edition of the complete correspondence and other papers of the trading post (Anthony Farrington ed., "The English Factory in Japan 1613-1623", London: British Library, 1991). Although the papers of the trading post are quite unique, in containing the earliest accounts of the Far East written by secular Europeans, they have hitherto been largely neglected by scholars working on Early Modern travel. In the medieval and Early Modern periods, letters were seen to be a typical subgenre of travel literature. Yet merchant letters, being focussed on commerce, fell outside this categorisation. Any ethnographic descriptions of other cultures they contain can be taken to be incidental, and thus (relatively) unbiased. Yet descriptions of the Other found in merchant letters for the most part did not spread into the general consciousness. Merchant letters were usually not printed in published travel texts, and the East India Company was ultimately interested not in the collection of ethnographic information, but in trade.Tämä pro gradu-tutkielma tarkastelee uuden ajan alun englantilaisia kauppiaskirjeitä matkakirjallisuuden epätyypillisenä alagenrenä sekä aiemmin hyödyntämättömänä eurooppalaisen toiseudenkuvan lähteenä. Tutkimus lähestyy kirjeitä soveltamalla niihin Norman Faircloughin diskurssianalyysia varten kehittämää kolmiulotteista mallinetta. Kirjeet sijoitetaan niiden historialliseen, kulttuuriseen ja tekstuaaliseen viitekehykseen. Ensin kirjeitä tarkastellaan suhteessa matkakirjallisuuteen ja etnografiaan, sekä käydään läpi uuden ajan alun kauppiaskirjeenvaihdon muotoa. Seuraavaksi kirjeet sijoitetaan historiaan, keskittyen kirjeissä kuvattuihin tapahtumiin ja henkilöihin. Tutkimuksen materiaalina on Englannin Itä-Intian kauppakomppanian Japanissa vuosina 1613-1623 sijainneen kauppa-aseman kauppiaiden kotiin (eli Englantiin) lähettämät kirjeet, joita on säilynyt noin 50 kappaletta kymmeneltä eri kirjoittajalta. Kauppa-aseman säilynyt kirjeenvaihto kokonaisuudessaan on julkaistu Anthony Farringtonin editoimassa teoksessa "The English Factory in Japan 1613-1623" (Lontoo, 1991). Vaikka vastaavaa materiaalia, siis maallikoiden kynistä lähtöisin olevaa Kauko-Idän kuvausta, ei ole säilynyt uuden ajan alusta, toistaiseksi tätä kokoelmaa ei ole juurikaan käytetty kirjallisuuden ja maailmankuvan tutkimuksessa. Keskiajalla ja uuden ajan alussa kirjeet perinteisesti nähtiin varsin tyypillisenä matkakirjallisuuden alagenrenä. Kuitenkaan kauppiaskirjeet eivät noudata tavallisten matkakirjeiden muotoa, ollen keskittyneitä kaupankäyntiin. Näin ollen kauppiaskirjeet voidaan nähdä sisältävän vääristelemätöntä etnografiaa eli toiseuden kuvausta. Siitä huolimatta kauppiaskirjeiden sisältämien toiseuden kuvausten leviäminen yleiseen tietouteen oli varsin pienimuotoista. Kauppiaskirjeitä sisältävää matkakirjallisuutta julkaistiin vähän, ja kauppakomppaniaa ei viime kädessä kiinnostanut etnografisen tiedon keräys vaan kaupankäynti

Charting orthographical reliability in a corpus of English historical letters

Peer reviewe

Wrangling with non-standard data

Peer reviewe

The Thickness of the Mantle Lithosphere and Collision-Related Volcanism in the Lesser Caucasus

The Lesser Caucasus mountains sit on a transition within the Arabia–Eurasia collision zone between very thin lithosphere (<100 km) to the west, under Eastern Anatolia, and a very thick lithospheric root (up to 200 km) in the east, under western Iran. A transect of volcanic highlands running from NW to SE in the Lesser Caucasus allows us to look at the effects of lithosphere thickness variations on the geochemistry of volcanic rocks in this continental collision zone. Volcanic rocks from across the region show a wide compositional range from basanites to rhyolites, and have arc-like geochemical characteristics, typified by ubiquitous negative Nb–Ta anomalies. Magmatic rocks from the SE, where the lithosphere is thought to be thicker, are more enriched in incompatible trace elements, especially the light rare earth elements, Sr and P. They also have more radiogenic ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr, and less radiogenic ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd. Across the region, there is no correlation between SiO₂ content and Sr–Nd isotope ratios, revealing a lack of crustal contamination. Instead, ‘spiky’ mid-ocean ridge basalt normalized trace element patterns are the result of derivation from a subduction-modified mantle source, which probably inherited its subduction component from subduction of the Tethys Ocean prior to the onset of continent–continent collision in the late Miocene. In addition to the more isotopically enriched mantle source, modelling of non-modal batch melting suggests lower degrees of melting and the involvement of garnet as a residual phase in the SE. Melt thermobarometry calculations based on bulk-rock major elements confirm that melting in the SE must occur at greater depths in the mantle. Temperatures of melting below 1200°C, along with the subduction-modified source, suggest that melting occurred within the lithosphere. It is proposed that in the northern Lesser Caucasus this melting occurs close to the base of the very thin lithosphere (at a depth of ∼45 km) as a result of small-scale delamination. A striking similarity between the conditions of melting in NW Iran and the southern Lesser Caucasus (two regions between which the difference in lithosphere thickness is ∼100 km) suggests a common mechanism of melt generation in the mid-lithosphere (∼75 km). The southern Lesser Caucasus magmas result from mixing between partial melts of deep lithosphere (∼120 km in the south) and mid-lithosphere sources to give a composition intermediate between magmas from the northern Lesser Caucasus and NW Iran. The mid-lithosphere magma source has a distinct composition compared with the base of the lithosphere, which is argued to be the result of the increased retention of metasomatic components in phases such as apatite and amphibole, which are stabilized by lower temperatures prior to magma generation