"Of medicineз sedatyueз": Some notes on adjective position and oral register in Middle English medical texts

The position of adjectives in the English Noun Phrase is regarded as something quite fixed and pertaining to the level of syntax rather than to any other. In previous studies (Moskowich 2002; Moskowich – Crespo 2002; Lareo – Moskowich 2009), it has been shown, however, that there seem to be some other extra-syntactic variables at stake determining word-order patterns. This paper aims at analysing the word-order patterns of adjectives in the emerging scientific writing in the Middle Ages, particularly in medical texts written in English. To this end, several texts contained in MEMT (Middle English Medical Texts) will be analysed. As a first approach, samples belonging to the three different traditions included in the Corpus will be considered. This examination of samples from a surgical text, a specialised one and a remedy book will also help obtain some conclusions regarding the evolution in the use of the so called French type adjectives in the language

Personal Pronouns in CHET and CECheT: Authorial Presence and Other Nuances Revealed

[Abstract] This paper aims at presenting a portrait of late Modern English scientific writing by studying its use of first-person pronouns. Pronouns reveal authorial presence and their quantification may be helpful. Following previous research (Moskowich, 2017), I have now conducted a qualitative analysis in which pronouns are grouped according to five functions each of them with a different pragmatic value. My research questions include whether there is a tendency from author-centred to object-centred prose over time, whether female writers are more present in their writings than their male counterparts and whether texts belonging to the Humanities (represented here by the Corpus of History English Texts) are also more “subjective” than those belonging to the Hard Sciences (represented by the Corpus of English Chemistry Texts), generally regarded more “objective” and, therefore, more unlikely to contain a high amount of personal pronouns and more so with certain pragmatic functions. The use of variables such as time, sex of the author and discipline allow for a study of change on the one hand and of variation on the other.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; FFI2016-75599-

Morphologically complex nouns in english scientific: texts after empiricism

[Abstract] The present paper aims at providing a new viewpoint on the development of scientific writing as regards its lexicon following the introduction of the scientific method in England. Although it will not provide universally valid evidence, new vocabulary formations (in nouns) will be examined in order to ascertain whether the morphological processes in these special languages behave the same way across the different scientific disciplines and levels of formality of texts or if, on the contrary, each adapts to the needs of its particular type of users (intended audience). Samples of texts pertaining to the eighteenth-century disciplines of astronomy and medicine have been studied. The differences observed in morphological behaviour will be accounted for resorting to several extra-linguistic factors so that a vision of the scientific register as a non-monolithic entity can be offered.Xunta de Galicia; PGIDIT07PXIB104160P

Eighteenth century female authors: women and science in the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing

[Abstract] This paper explores the use of linguistic features characteristic of impersonal or personal style in scientific writing by female authors in the eighteenth century. Variables such as discipline, subject-matter and genre are used to assess the ways in which abstract thought and argumentation are expressed by women, given that, even when these works were accepted by the scientific establishment, such modes of expression were more typical of men and men's writing in the context of the Modern Age. Data from different genres and disciplines (History, Philosophy, Astronomy and Life Sciences) will be used in order to obtain more reliable findings

CETA as a tool for the study of Modern Astronomy in English

[Abstract] Modern culture can be said to depend on writing to such an extent that if scientific knowledge is not written it simply does not exist (Hyland, 1998). It is easy to observe, when glancing through any more or less old book, that conventions and practices have been subject to change, but such changes are not necessarily random. Hyland (1998: 18) claims that “The conventional linguistic practices for expounding and securing support for scientific knowledge are historical artefacts which date from the 1600s”. And some scholars of the time saw it necessary to establish such discursive rules (as Boyle and his colleagues did when they proposed to separate the exposition of hypotheses and that of proven facts). As a consequence of the application of such discursive patterns, a particular reading public appeared. The subtle negotiation of knowledge that may be observed from the seventeenth century onwards as never before in history is therefore reflected in language and discourse as a vehicle for such negotiation. Compiling a corpus of scientific writing in Modern English seems a plausible idea as a means to study the development of the English language as well as the development of Science. The Project Coruña Corpus: A Collection of Samples for the Historical Study of English Scientific Writing includes texts of a scientific character belonging to different fields of knowledge. The corpus has been conceived of as a collection of sub-corpora, one for each scientific discipline. The Coruña Corpus (CC) is a long- term project that will be coming out little by little, its first part being the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy (CETA)

Patterns of english scientific writing in the 18th Century: adjectives and other Building-blocks

[Abstract] It is often claimed that the written register tends to reflect a nominal style, in which nouns, phrases and adjectives abound, whereas a verbal style, containing higher proportions of verbs, complement clauses and adverbs, among others, is typical of the oral register (Sager et al, 1980; Biber, 2008). Another feature of the written register, and particularly of scientific writing, is that the vocabulary is in general characterised by its specificity and a tendency to have non-Germanic, classical origins (Moskowich, 2008). These two factors, the nominal style and the nature of the vocabulary, may be said to be typical of English scientific writing. This observation is usually made of present day English. It is the aim of this study to ascertain whether written scientific texts adhered to such a pattern in the past, looking at English astronomy texts produced throughout the 18th century and contained in CETA (Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy). My specific focus will be on attributive adjectives as elements indexical of that nominal style. At the same time, I will try to explore how this nominal style is reflected in the nature of adjectives as regards adjectival suffixation and the etymological origin of suffixes in scientific writing, as well as in the genres to which the different text samples have been assigned

Genre and change in the Corpus of History English Texts

[Abstract] This paper provides an overview of the Corpus of History English Texts, one of the component parts of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing (Moskowich and Crespo 2012), looking in particular at the communicative formats that it contains.. Among the defining characteristics of the Coruña Corpus are that it is diachronic in nature, and that it can be considered either as a single- or multi-genre corpus, according to the theoretical tenets adopted (Kytö 2010, McEnery and Hardie 2013). The corpus has been designed as a tool for the study of language change in English scientific writing in general, and more specifically in the different scientific disciplines which have been sampled in each subcorpus. All the texts compiled were published betweeen 1700 and 1900, thus offering a thorough view of late Modern English scientific discourse, a period often neglected in English historical studies (De Smer 2005). The analysis of this variety of English is also useful as a means of achieving a clear and detailed description of the origins of English as "the language of science"Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; FFI2016-75599-

El mito vikingo: el escandinavo como el "otro" en la Europa medieval

[Resumen]El presente trabajo ofrece una visión de los escandinavos bien diferente de la que ha llegado al resto de los europeos (y, por ende, de la Humanidad) desde la Edad Media. Habida cuenta que esa información vino siempre bien de boca de sus enemigos, bien de pueblos con valores culturales radicalmente distintos, no es de extrañar la imagen que de ellos tenemos aún en el siglo XXI. Además de los datos históricos recogidos en fuentes distintas a la Crónica Anglosajona, la evidencia lingüística sugiere que la relación entre los escandinavos y otros europeos fue mucho más íntima y menos violenta de lo que podemos pensar, al menos en el caso inglés.[Abstract]The present paper provides a vision of the Skandinavians which is certainly different from the one other Europeans have received from the Middle Ages. Since this information was obtained almost always from their enemies or else from peoples with radically different cultural values, the cliché still existing in the XXI century should not surprise us. Besides the historical data in sources different from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, linguistic evidence suggests that the relationship between the Scandinavians and other Europeans was much closer and less violent than we may think (at least in the case of Britain)