Text Types and the History of English
Text Types and the History of English

Author: Manfred Görlach

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-08-22

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 3110197162

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The history of modern European languages has been largely determined by the range of functions they have acquired, particularly after 1500. This development necessitated a notable expansion of their syntax and lexis, but is most characteristically reflected in the conventionalization of text types. Starting from the German concept of Textsorte as developed from the 1960s onwards, the present account is a first comprehensive attempt at charting the field for the history and present-day situation of the English language. In text types, a designation is linked with a more or less stable form which guides the writer’s production as well as the reader's expectation, permitting one to recognize straightforward uses as well as deliberate misuses. Some two thousand of such designations are here listed with minimal definitions and dates for first occurrences. The discussion then concentrates on selected types, which are seen as especially illustrative for English: book dedications, cooking recipes, advertisements, church hymns, lexical entries, and jokes. Their functions and development over time are treated in correlation with their specific linguistic characteristics and adaptations to different period styles and social changes in the readership. The functional range of text types in traditions outside England and the consequences of the export of English categories are exemplified by the history of Scots/Scottish English and of English in India. The arguments are accompanied by a lavish supply of textual excerpts and more than fifty pages of facsimiles, which are especially relevant for insights derived from typographical features. A full bibliography and indices are provided at the end. The book will prove useful for decisions on the constitution of representative text corpora and stimulate research into a greater number of individual text types as well as contrastive analyses at least among European languages.

Text Types and the History of English
Text Types and the History of English

Author: Manfred Görlach

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 3110173727

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The book comprises methodological reflexions on form, content and function in a comprehensive description of text types/genres. These considerations are then exemplified in detail by analyses of individual types such as cooking recipes, book dedications, advertisements, jokes, and church hymns. The transfer of types and the range of existing types are described for Scotland and for India. The description is completed by a summary list of some 2100 text types with definitions and their documentation in the history of English.

A Brief History of English Syntax
A Brief History of English Syntax

Author: Olga Fischer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-06-08

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0521768586

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An accessible, up-to-date account of the major changes in English syntax since its beginnings up to the present day.

Studies in the History of the English Language VIII
Studies in the History of the English Language VIII

Author: Peter Grund

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-11-09

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 3110639858

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume collects essays that approach notions of creating, maintaining, and crossing boundaries in the history of the English language. The concept of boundaries is variously defined within linguistics depending on the theoretical framework, from formal and theoretical perspectives to specific fields and more empirical, physical, and perceptual angles. The contributions to this volume do not take one particular theoretical or methodological approach but, instead, explore how examining various types of boundaries—linguistic, conceptual, analytical, generic, physical—helps us illuminate and account for historical use, variation, and change in English. In their exploration of various topics in the history of English, contributions ask a range of questions: what does it mean to set up boundaries between time periods? When do language varieties have distinct boundaries and when do they overlap? Where do language users draw up clausal, constructional, semantic, phonetic/phonological boundaries? Thus, the chapters explore not only how boundaries illustrate synchronic and diachronic features in the history of the English language but also what we can discover by questioning perceived or actual boundaries.

Text Type and Texture
Text Type and Texture

Author: Gail Forey

Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781845539122

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Texture - the quality that makes a text 'hang together' as a text - is a key focus of investigation in discourse analysis. This volume provides a systematic overview of recent research on textual resources that are used to construct texture, and on the ways in which these resources are deployed differently in different text types. Theme is the major resource that is explored in the first part of the book. The opening papers set out the current understanding of Theme and explore aspects of the concept which remain controversial in the field. This is followed by an examination of thematic choices in a range of text types. Issues raised include the different kinds of meanings appearing in Theme which are particularly significant for each genre, the ways in which these relate to the broader socio-cultural context, and the ways in which thematic choices interact with other kinds of texturing. In the second part of the collection, the scope widens to include an examination of other resources, particularly the contribution to texture made by patterns of interpersonal choices, in Theme and more broadly across texts as a whole. The volume closes with an overview and illustration of a methodological approach by which our understanding of texturing can be further extended.

The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics
The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics

Author: Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-02-15

Total Pages: 708

ISBN-13: 111825726X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Written by an international team of leading scholars, this groundbreaking reference work explores the nature of language change and diffusion, and paves the way for future research in this rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field. Features 35 newly-written essays from internationally acclaimed experts that reflect the growth and vitality of the burgeoning area of historical sociolinguistics Examines how sociolinguistic theoretical models, methods, findings, and expertise can be used to reconstruct a language's past in order to explain linguistic changes and developments Bridges the gap between the past and the present in linguistic studies Structured thematically into sections exploring: origins and theoretical assumptions; methods for the sociolinguistic study of the history of languages; linguistic and extra-linguistic variables; historical dialectology, language contact and diffusion; and attitudes to language

English Historical Linguistics 2008
English Historical Linguistics 2008

Author: Hans Sauer

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2012-08-09

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 902727357X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The fifteen papers selected for Volume II of English Historical Linguistics 2008 have a different emphasis than those in Volume I (CILT 314, Lenker et al. 2010). Nine concentrate on the development of the English vocabulary and six on historical text linguistics, including the development of text-types and of politeness strategies. Of those in the former group, three have their emphasis on etymology, three on semantic fields, and three on word-formation, although some cover more than one of these areas. The topics include: the treatment of etymological problems in the OED; deverbal derivations formed from native verbs and from loan-verbs; the role of metaphor and metonymy in the evolution of word-fields. The field of historical text linguistics is introduced by a general survey, which is followed by more specific studies focussing on 15th-century legal and administrative texts from Scotland, on early 15th-century women’s mystical writings, on medical recipes from the 16th to the 18th centuries and on pauper letters from 18th-century Essex. The book should appeal to scholars interested in English etymology, the history of semantic fields and of word-formation, as well as in historical text linguistics, politeness strategies and standardization. It provides not only theoretical considerations but also a wealth of case studies.

Sounds, Words, Texts and Change
Sounds, Words, Texts and Change

Author: Teresa Fanego

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2002-07-18

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 902729772X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume and its companion one (English Historical Syntax and Morphology, CILT 223) offer a selection of papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics held at the University of Santiago de Compostela. From the rich programme (over 130 papers were given during the conference), the present thirteen papers were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in the field of English historical linguistics. The areas represented in the volume are lexis and semantics, text-types, historical sociolinguistics and dialectology, and phonology. Many of the articles tackle questions of change and linguistic periodization through the use of methodological tools like corpora, linguistic atlases, thesauri and historical dictionaries. The theoretical frameworks adopted include, among others, multi-dimensional analysis, systemic-functional grammar, Communication Accommodation Theory, historical discourse analysis and Optimality Theory.

Developments in English Historical Morpho-Syntax
Developments in English Historical Morpho-Syntax

Author: Claudia Claridge

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2019-06-15

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9027262470

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Spanning the time from Old English to modern American English, this volume provides fresh perspectives on core issues and theories in the morphosyntactic history of English nominal, verbal and adverbial constructions. The contributions discuss the loss, rise and restructuring of morphonological marking, periphrastic verbal constructions, auxiliary variation and evolution, as well as changing word order options. Favouring corpus-linguistic, frequency-based and statistical approaches, the studies are firmly empirically grounded. The book is aimed at scholars interested in the history of the English language and in language variation and change.