Developments in English: Expanding Electronic Evidence (Studies in English Language)

Cambridge University Press, 10/31/2014
EAN 9781107038509, ISBN10: 1107038502

Hardcover, 322 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English

The history of the English language is a vast and diverse area of research. In this volume, a team of leading historians of English come together to analyse 'real' language, drawing on corpus data to shed new light on long-established issues and debates in the field. Combining synchronic and diachronic analysis, the chapters address the major issues in corpus linguistics – methodological, theoretical and applied – and place special focus on the use of electronic resources in the research of English and the wider field of digital humanities. Topics covered include polemical articles on the optimal use of corpus linguistic methods, macro-level patterns of text and discourse organisation, and micro-features such as interjections and hesitators. Covering Englishes from the past and present, this book is designed specifically for graduate students and researchers working in fields of corpus linguistics, the history of the English language, and historical linguistics.

1. English in the digital age. General introduction Irma Taavitsainen, Merja Kytö, Claudia Claridge and Jeremy Smith
Part I. Linguistic Directions and Crossroads
Mapping the Routes Merja Kytö
2. Corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches to linguistic analysis
one and the same? Charles F. Meyer
3. Quantitative corpus approaches to linguistic analysis
seven or eight levels of resolution and the lessons they teach us Stefan Th. Gries
4. Profiling the English verb phrase over time
modal patterns Bas Aarts, Sean Wallis and Jill Bowie
Part II. Changing Patterns Claudia Claridge
5. On the functional change of desire in relation to hope and wish Minoji Akimoto
6. From medieval to modern
on the development of the adverbial connective considering (that) Matti Rissanen
7. Spoken features of interjections in English dialect (based on Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary) Manfred Markus
Part III. Pragmatics and Discourse Irma Taavitsainen
8. Interjection-based delocutive verbs in the history of English Laurel J. Brinton
9. Uh and um as planners in the Corpus of Historical American English Andreas H. Jucker
10. Religious discourse and the history of English Thomas Kohnen
Part IV. World Englishes Jeremy Smith
11. History, social meaning and identity in the spoken English of postcolonial white Zimbabweans Susan Fitzmaurice
12. Singapore weblogs between speech and writing Andrea Sand
13. Mergers, losses and the spread of English Raymond Hickey
14. Complex systems in the history of American English William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.