Logical Relations between Necessity and Possibility: Evidence from Old and Middle English

[Abstract] The definition and classification of modality has been paid much attention in the literature (Lyons 1977, Palmer 1986, Coates 1983, Sweetser 1990, Bybee et al. 1994, etc.) and, although scholars do not agree as for a single classification, they do coincide in the recognition of necessity and possibility as the two basic modal meanings. It is the relation between these meanings that constitutes the main concern in this study. From Lyons (1977) onwards, the logical relations between necessity and possibility have been taken for granted: ‘if X is not possible, not-X is necessary, and if X is not necessary, not-X is possible’. These relations establish that one of the meanings may develop from the other. While Van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) claim that such a development may be bidirectional, i.e. necessity may stem from possibility and possibility may stem from necessity, Traugott and Dasher (2002) claim that only necessity can stem from possibility. In this scenario, this paper aims at 1) finding empirical evidence for the logical relations between necessity and possibility, and 2) confirming whether the development of these meanings is bidirectional or not. The empirical support consists of the analysis of German modal verb dürfen (as found in Van derAuwera and Plungian, 1998) and English tharf (<OE þurfan) andneed, as found in a 2.4 million-word corpus, comprising theHelsinki Corpus, the Dictionary of Old English Corpus and the Corpusof Middle English Prose and Verse (from the Middle English Compendium)

Democratization of Englishes : Synchronic and diachronic approaches

The term democratization has been used in recent linguistic research to describe how specific linguistic changes can be linked to changes in sociocultural norms. This broad definition, however, does not fully capture the essence of this phenomenon or explain how it differs from other processes of language change. Other key issues in this area of research include what the cause-effect relationship is between linguistic change and social change, and how empirical corpus linguistic studies can contribute to current knowledge. In this opening contribution to the special issue New perspectives on democratization: Evidence from English(es), we address some of these key issues by reviewing previous synchronic and diachronic work studies on democratization in different varieties of English, and introduce new studies that take evidence from different linguistic corpora. By placing the linguistic changes into their specific socio-historical contexts, these studies yield interesting results, showing that variationist linguistic methodology may significantly contribute to disentangling the complex relationship between language change and social and societal changes. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe

Language contact in Gibraltar English: A pilot study with ICE-GBR

The variety of English used in Gibraltar has been in contact with a number of European languages, such as Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Arabic (Moyer, 1998: 216; Suárez-Gómez, 2012: 1746), for more than 300 years. Studies of this variety have traditionally been based on interviews and observation (e.g. Moyer, 1993, 1998; Cal Varela, 1996; Levey, 2008 2015; Weston, 2011, 2013, etc.), and a detailed morphosyntactic description is yet to be published. In this context, the compilation of a reliable Gibraltar corpus using the standards of the International Corpus of English (ICE) will constitute a landmark in the analysis of this lesser known variety of English. In the present paper we describe the ICE project and the current state of the compilation of ICE-GBR. In addition, we present a detailed comparison between the section on press news reports of ICE-GB (standard British English) and ICE-GBR, with the aim of identifying morphosyntactic features that reveal the influence of language contact with Spanish in this territory. We explore variables such as the choice of relativizer (assuming a higher preference for that in GBR, in agreement with Spanish que, the most frequent relativizer, Brucart, 1999: 490), the use of titles and pseudo-titles preceding proper names (which, as shown by Hundt and Kabatek, 2015, are very frequent in English journalese and extremely infrequent in Spanish), and the frequency of the passive voice (expected to be lower in ICE-GBR), among others. A preliminary analysis of these variables reveals that the influence of Spanish on the variety of English used in the Gibraltarian press, at the morphosyntactic level, is almost non-existent, limited to occasional cases of code-switching between the two varieties. We hypothesize that a possible explanation for this strong exonormative allegiance to British English, at least in press news reports, can be found in a strong editorial pressure to reflect the prestigious parent-variety.The authors gratefully acknowledge the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grants FFI2014-53930-P and FFI2014-51873-REDT)

The semantic predecessors of "need" : from old to early modern English

The analysis of the corpus examples is twofold. Firstly, I will offer a synchronic analysis of each verb in each chronological period (Old, Middle and early Modern English), paying special attention to their semantic, syntactic and morphological features, especially to those which may be indicative of their degree of grammaticalization, modal meanings and impersonal nature. Secondly, I will adopt a diachronic perspective and offer a historical account of the features of each verb. By combining the synchronic and the diachronic points of view, I intend to provide a panchronic analysis of the semantic predecessors of need

Mapping the Americanization of English in Space and Time

As global political preeminence gradually shifted from the United Kingdom to the United States, so did the capacity to culturally influence the rest of the world. In this work, we analyze how the world-wide varieties of written English are evolving. We study both the spatial and temporal variations of vocabulary and spelling of English using a large corpus of geolocated tweets and the Google Books datasets corresponding to books published in the US and the UK. The advantage of our approach is that we can address both standard written language (Google Books) and the more colloquial forms of microblogging messages (Twitter). We find that American English is the dominant form of English outside the UK and that its influence is felt even within the UK borders. Finally, we analyze how this trend has evolved over time and the impact that some cultural events have had in shaping it.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Published versio

The fate of bilingualism in a model of language competition

The original publication is available at Springer website: http://www.springer.com/computer/mathematics/book/978-4-431-73150-4.In the general context of dynamics of social consensus, we study an agent based model for the competition between two socially equivalent languages, addressing the role of bilingualism and social structure. In a regular network, we study the formation of linguistic domains and their interaction across the boundaries. We analyse also a small world social structure, in order to capture the effect of long range social interactions. In both cases, a final scenario of dominance of one language and extinction of the other is obtained, but with smaller times for extinction in the latter case. In addition, we compare our results to our previous work on the agent based version of Abrams-Strogatz model.We acknowledge financial support from the MEC (Spain) through project CONOCE2 (FIS2004-00953). X. C. also acknowledges financial support from a Ph.D. fellowship of the Govern de les Illes Balears (Spain). L. L-P. also acknowledges financial support from the Autonomous Government of Galicia (PGIDIT05PXIC20401PN), and the MEC (Spain) and the ERDF (HUM2004-00940).http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-73167-

Democratization and gender-neutrality in English(es)

"Democratization" and "gender-neutrality" are two concepts commonly used in recent studies on language variation. While both concepts link linguistic phenomena to sociocultural changes, the extent to which they overlap and/or interact has not been studied in detail. In particular, not much is known about how linguistic changes related to democratization and gender-neutrality spread across registers or varieties of English, as well as whether speakers are aware of the changes that are taking place. In this paper we review the main theoretical issues regarding these concepts and relate them to the main findings in the articles in this issue, all of which study lexical and grammatical variation from a corpus-based perspective. Taken together, they help unveil some of the conscious and unconscious mechanisms that operate at the interface between democratization and gender-neutrality.Peer reviewe

Pragmatic markers in World Englishes. 'Kind of' and 'Sort of' as a case in point

This book contributes to the field of pragmatic variation in World Englishes by analysing the pragmatic markers ‘kind of’ and ‘sort of’. After a general review of their history and current use, the book offers a contrastive study of their frequency, semantics and pragmatic values in four varieties of English, as represented in the GloWbE corpus. These are, on the one hand, the two most influential inner circle varieties of English, those spoken in the United States and Great Britain, and, on the other, two outer circle varieties spoken in former colonies of these two countries, namely the Philippines and Singapore respectively. The results strengthen the understanding of the effects of global processes such as Americanization and glocalization on pragmatic variation and illustrate phenomena of linguistic convergence and divergence across space.Este libro contribuye al campo de la variación pragmática en las lenguas inglesas del mundo analizando los marcadores pragmáticos “kind of” y “sort of”. Tras una revisión general de su historia y su uso actual, se ofrece un estudio contrastivo de su frecuencia, semántica y valores pragmáticos en cuatro variedades de inglés, representadas en el corpus GloWbE. Se trata, por un lado, de las dos variedades más influyentes del inglés del círculo interno, las habladas en Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña, y, por otro, de dos variedades del círculo externo habladas en antiguas colonias de estos dos países, Filipinas y Singapur, respectivamente. Los resultados refuerzan la comprensión de los efectos de procesos globales como la americanización y la glocalización en la variación pragmática e ilustran fenómenos de convergencia y divergencia lingüística a través del espacio

The Translation of the Songs in Disney's Beauty and the Beast: An Example of Manipulation

The aim of this paper is to analyse the translation of the songs in Disney's Beauty and the Beast taking into account translation norms as defined by Toury (1995). The paper is divided into two main parts. The first part reviews some works on Translation Studies and manipulation theory, as our theoretical framework or background for the corpus-based part of the paper. The translation shows important regularities in the shifts brought about by cultural differences between the source and the target community, as well as those that reveal some kind of manipulation of the text towards a more naïve presentation. Examples of shift such as substitution material (concrete for abstract vocabularity, for instance) or total deletion of all traces of slang/vulgar language are provided as evidence of a rather standardised and conventional translation. In view of this evidence, it is hypothesized that the translator's intention might have been to make the text more suitable for children, even though the original text was intended for a wider audience.