Focusing on speech-related genres in Early Modern English, this book offers insights into the nature of spoken interaction during that era. It delves into historical communication practices, helping readers understand how language was used in conversation and the social dynamics at play. Through its analysis, the book sheds light on the evolution of spoken discourse and its significance in shaping communication in earlier times.
This collection reflects Minoji Akimoto’s concern with studies of change in English that are theoretically-informed, but founded on substantial bodies of data. Some of the contributors focus on individual texts and text-types, among them literature and journalism, others on specific periods, from Old English to the nineteenth century, but the majority trace a linguistic process – such as negation, passivisation, complementation or grammaticalisation – through the history of English. While several papers take a fresh look at manuscript evidence, the harnessing of wideranging electronic corpora is a recurring feature methodologically. The linguistic fields treated include word semantics, stylistics, orthography, word-order, pragmatics and lexicography. The volume also contains a bibliography of Professor Akimoto’s writings and an index of linguistic terms.
This study of diachronic variation addresses two topics, the development of modal auxiliaries can (could), may (might), shall (should) and will (would), and the emergence of early American English as a new variety in the seventeenth century. Within the framework of socio-historical variation analysis, the author aims at accounting for diachronic change by examining the interplay of various linguistic and extra-linguistic factors in the light of evidence drawn from various corpora. The study concentrates on the language spoken and written in the New England area between 1620 and 1720, but to widen the scope in time and region, counterparts for comparison are found in the material included in the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. The results indicate a gradual change (rather than a sudden re-structuring) in the system of the English modals from early stages on. Cumulative evidence is found for the rise of the forms can and will ; in early American English conservative (rather than innovative) tendencies characterize the development.