Includes bibliographical references (pages [271]-294) and index.
Contents:
Approaching change in 18th-century English / Terttu Nevalainen -- Society and culture in the long 18th century / Terttu Nevalainen -- Range of writers in the CEECE / Terttu Nevalainen -- Polite society & rhetoric / Arja Nurmi and Minna Nevala -- Grammar writing in the eighteenth century / Nuria Yanez-Bouza -- The Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE) / Samuli Kaislaniemi -- Data retrieval / Mikko Hakala -- Quantifying change / Terttu Nevalainen -- Basic methods for estimating frequencies / Terttu Nevalainen -- Methods for studying changes lacking a variable / Tanja Saily, Arja Nurmi and Anni Sairio -- "Ungenteel" and "rude": On the use of thou in the eighteenth century / Minna Nevala -- Going to completion: The diffusion of verbal -s / Terttu Nevalainen -- Periphrastic do in eighteenth-century correspondence: Emphasis on no social variation / Arja Nurmi -- Indefinite pronouns with singular human reference: Recessive and ongoing / Mikko Laitinen -- Ongoing change: The diffusion of the third-person neuter possessive its / Minna Palander-Collin -- Incipient and intimate: The progressive aspect / Anni Sairio -- Change or variation? Productivity of the suffixes -ness and -ity / Tanja Saily -- Normalised frequencies of the phenomena studied / Tanja Saily -- Google Books: A shortcut to studying language variability? / Mikko Laitinen and Tanja Saily -- Conservative and progressive individuals / Tanja Saily -- From incipient to mid-range and beyond / Minna Palander-Collin, Mikko Laitinen, Anni Sairio and Tanja Saily -- From nearing completion to completed / Terttu Nevalainen, Mikko Laitinen, Minna Nevala and Arja Nurmi -- A wider sociolinguistic perspective / Terttu Nevalainen.
Summary:
"Eighteenth-century English is often associated with normative grammar. But to what extent did prescriptivism impact ongoing processes of linguistic change? The authors of this volume examine a variety of linguistic changes in a corpus of personal correspondence, including the auxiliary do, verbal -s and the progressive aspect, and they conclude that direct normative influence on them must have been minimal. The studies are contextualized by discussions of the normative tradition and the correspondence corpus, and of eighteenth-century English society and culture. Basing their work on a variationist sociolinguistic approach, the authors introduce the models and methods they have used to trace the progress of linguistic changes in the "long" eighteenth century, 1680-1800. Aggregate findings are balanced by analysing individuals and their varying participation in these processes. The final chapter places these results in a wider context and considers them in relation to past sociolinguistic work. One of the major findings of the studies is that in most cases the overall pace of change was slow. Factors retarding change include speaker evaluation and repurposing outgoing features, in particular, for certain styles and registers"-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
Advances in historical sociolinguistics (AHS), 2214-1057 ; volume 8
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.