Adverbials and inversion in early english scientific writing

From a historical perspective, the English language shifted from being basically verb final in the Old English period (Traugott 1992: 274) to verb non-final from the Middle English period onwards (Fischer 1992: 371), that is, from SOV to SVO. The layout of the constituents within the clause, however, may be occasionally inverted (from SV to VS) in certain contexts, which "have been qualified as innovations by some scholars and as true verb-second fossils by others" (Nevalainen 1997: 203). From a diachronic point of view, while inversion in Old English is possible whenever the first constituent position is occupied by an object, an adverbial or a PP, inversion in Middle English is just witnessed when the first constituent is a wh-element or, later on, a negative constituent (van Kemenade 1987: 180). Interestingly enough, research on the topic have demonstrated that instances of inversion after adverbials in first constituent position have been found in the early Modern English period, where the remainders of the old verb-second rule can be attested (Nevalainen 1997: 213; Bækken 2000: 393). In my opinion, there is still a gap in the literature since the phenomenon has not been tested in scientific writing yet. All this considered, the present paper has been conceived with the following objectives: 1) to analyse the occurrence of inversion when adverbials (then, therefore, yet, thus and locative PPs) or negative constituents (ne, never, neither and nor) occupy the first constituent position both in main and subordinate clauses; 2) to plot the diachronic development of inversion in the period under study; 3) to investigate the proliferation of the phenomenon across the different text-types; and 4) to evaluate the contribution of conditioning factors such as the typology of the subject or the typology of the clause. 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 Tec

The vernacularization of non-native items in early english medical writing

Early Modern English is characterised by an extraordinary lexical growth motivated by two main linguistic processes, borrowing and word-formation (Nevalainen 1999: 332). Within affixation, prefixation grew more than suffixation in early Modern English, probably because prefixes have fewer word-class restrictions and do not change the word-class of the base (Nevalainen 1999: 335). Thus, native and non-native forms competed to achieve a position in the lexicon. This not only increased the English vocabulary, but also modified the traditional derivational system of the language by the introduction of foreign affixes. As far as we have investigated, the topic has been discussed in Present-Day English and in the history of English. However, the literature is still in need of quantitative and qualitative research in the field of early English medical writing. Therefore, the present paper pursues the following objectives: 1) to analyse the use of the native prefix un- and the non-native dis-, in- and non- in early English medical writing; 2) to assess the distribution of these prefixes across genres; 3) to calculate the morphological productivity of the negative prefixes under study; and 4) to evaluate the contribution of qualitative factors, i.e. the origin of the bases, the different word-classes, and the competion among the different negative prefixes. The data come from the Corpus of Early English Medical Writing.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

by way of vs. by means of: On the Expression of Instrumentality in Middle English and Early Modern English

Grammaticalization is defined as “a process whereby a lexical item, with full referential meaning, develops grammatical meaning” (Fischer and Rosenbach 2000: 2; see also Hopper 1991; Diewald and Wischer 2002). According to Rissanen, grammaticalization may occur both with native and borrowed items at any stage of the History of English, being developed from one single lexical item or a group of words (2000: 152). This is the case of by way of and by means of that, according to the OED, were first attested in English at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Their prepositional function is the result of a process of grammaticalization undergone by way and mean, which evolved from noun to preposition in these contexts. Once established in the language, they coexisted until the end of the seventeenth century, the moment when by way of was progressively obliterated as a result of the on-going difffusion of by means of in these environments. Therefore, 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 for the expression of instrumentality; 2) to analyse the use and distribution of by way of and by means of in the History of English; 3) to investigate the distribution of these competing forms in terms of gender and social class. The source of evidence comes from the Helsinki Corpus of English, the Corpus of Early English Correspondence and the Old Bailey Corpus.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Quantized gravitomagnetic charges from WIMT: cosmological consequences

Using the formalism of Weitzenb\"ock induced matter theory (WIMT) we calculate the gravito-magnetic charge on a topological string which is induced through a foliation on a five-dimensional (5D) gravito-electromagnetic vacuum defined on a 5D Ricci-flat metric, which produces a symmetry breaking on an axis. We obtain the resonant result that the quantized charges are induced on the effective four-dimensional hypersurface. This quantization describes the behavior of a test gravito-electric charge in the vicinity of a point gravito-magnetic monopole, both geometrically induced from a 5D vacuum. We demonstrate how gravito-magnetic monopoles would decrease exponentially during the inflationary expansion of the universe.Comment: Final version to be published in Can. J. Phy

Gravitomagnetic currents in the inflationary universe from WIMT

Using the Weitzenb\"ock representation of a Riemann-flat 5D spacetime, we study the possible existence of primordial gravito-magnetic currents from Gravito-electromagnetic Inflation (GEMI). We found that these currents decrease exponentially in the Weitzenb\"ock representation, but they are null in a Levi-Civita representation because we are dealing with a 5D Riemann-flat spacetime without structure or torsion.Comment: Version to be published in European Phys. J.

First record of predation on a seed beetle (Coleoptera: Bruchidae) by a checkered beetle (Coleoptera: Cleridae)

A new relationship, that of predator and prey, between the coleopteran families Cleridae and Bruchidae is presented

Inappropriate use of proton-pump inhibitors and fragility fracture risk. A preliminary study

Introducción: Los inhibidores de la bomba de protones (IBP) son fármacos ampliamente utilizados, si bien esto conlleva a un sobreuso que no es acorde con las indicaciones aceptadas en España y en el resto de Europa. Por otro lado, algunos autores han establecido una posible implicación de los IBP en el riesgo de fractura. Con este trabajo hemos pretendido efectuar una primera aproximación al conocimiento del consumo de IBP en nuestro medio y analizar para qué indicación son prescritos, a la vez que estudiar su posible asociación con un mayor riesgo de fractura por fragilidad entre sus consumidores. Material y método: Estudio observacional, transversal, abierto, descriptivo, en el que se entrevistó aleatoriamente a un número de pacientes que fueron atendidos en diferentes ámbitos sanitarios: consultas externas hospitalarias, servicios de urgencias, consulta de Atención Primaria y pacientes ingresados en planta hospitalaria. Resultados: De los 411 pacientes entrevistados, el 54% de los pacientes recibían IBP, y cuya edad media era de 63,3 años, frente al 46% que no los tomaban y que eran más jóvenes, con una edad media de 50,9 años. La distribución por sexos fue similar. La principal razón de utilizar el IBP era como “protector gástrico”, en el 39,8% de los pacientes, indicación no existente en la ficha técnica de este grupo de fármacos. Los consumidores de IBP tenían una mayor prevalencia de todas las fracturas por fragilidad. Conclusiones: Más de la mitad de la población encuestada consume IBP, y de ella cerca del 40% sin una indicación médica correcta. Por esto, unido a la mayor prevalencia de fracturas por fragilidad que presentan –que nos hace pensar en un posible mayor riesgo de fractura entre sus usuarios– consideramos la necesidad de un uso más racional de estos fármacos. Estas conclusiones son preliminares pero, a la vista de estos resultados, creemos que puede ser interesante realizar más estudios dirigidos a comprobar de manera más firme la relación entre los IBP y el riesgo de fractura osteoporótica.Sociedad Canaria de Osteoporosi

‘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