History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics

801 Pages·1992·26.532 MB·English

by  Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen (eds.)

History of Englishes
Topics in English Linguistics
10
Editors
Jan Svartvik
Herman Wekker
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
History of Englishes
New Methods and Interpretations
in Historical Linguistics
Edited by
Matti Rissanen
Ossi Ihalainen
Terttu Nevalainen
Irma Taavitsainen
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York 1992
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the
ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
History of Englishes : new methods and interpretations in
historical linguistics / edited by Matti Rissanen ... [et al.].
p. cm. — (Topics in English linguistics : 10)
Includes index.
ISBN 3-11-013216-8 (acid-free paper)
1. English language — Grammar, Historical. 2. English
language—Research —Methodology. I. Rissanen, Matti.
II. Series.
PE1101.H5 1992
425'.09—dc20 92-31358
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging in Publication Data
History of Englishes : new methods and interpretations in
historical linguistics / ed. by Matti Rissanen ... — Berlin ;
New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1992
(Topics in English linguistics ; 10)
ISBN 3-11-013216-8
NE: Rissanen, Matti [Hrsg.]; GT
© Copyright 1992 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Typesetting and printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin.
Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin
Printed in Germany.
Preface
This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Sixth Inter-
national Conference on English Historical Linguistics. The conference
was held at the University of Helsinki in May 1990 as one of the events
of the 350th jubilee year of the University.
The topics of the papers accepted for inclusion clearly show the in-
creasing interest in geographical and social variation and in the detailed
study of texts in English historical linguistics. It is also interesting to note
that the former distinct borderline between historical linguistics and
philology is disappearing. Although the aims and methods of these two
approaches should not be confused, they clearly support each other and
scholars will benefit greatly from the mastery of the basic methodologies
of both in their attempts to describe and explain the past stages and
development of English.
All in all, it is not surprising that more than one-third of the papers
published in this volume can be conveniently grouped under the headings
Varieties and dialects and Text types and individual texts. This emphasis
does not, however, mean that other approaches to linguistic analysis
would have been neglected. A variety of models of description and levels
of abstraction is displayed by the contributions included in the other four
sections of this volume: Theory and methodology, Phonology and orthog-
raphy, Morphology and syntax, and Lexis and semantics.
The contributions of the four plenary speakers reflect the present focus
in the field: Labov discussed the evidence given by British English dialects
on sound change, Milroy the social model of change, and Romaine the
varying phonological system of Tok Pisin. Blake's paper represents the
revival of an important topic of study: translation as an influence on the
development of English.
The number of scholars attending ICEHL6, 180 participants in all,
graphically strengthened the feeling that the interest in the study of the
history of English has been rapidly growing in the last decade or two.
The organizers made a special effort to include in the programme all
papers submitted which were appropriate in content and of a high
scholarly standard, a total of 75 contributions in two parallel sections.
The length of the oral presentations varied, and short talks could be
supported by written versions of up to four pages in the book of abstracts.
vi Preface
One afternoon in the conference programme was reserved for the
introduction of ongoing and recently finished research projects in the
field of the history of English. During this session, seven projects were
introduced and discussed: The Dictionary of Old English; a Linguistic
Atlas of Early Middle English; The Catalogue of Incipits of Scientific
and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English; The Historical The-
saurus of English; the Hartlib Papers Project; The Shakespeare Database;
and The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, Diachronic and Dialectal.
Two papers based on these introductions (Laing and Smith) are included
in the present volume.
The sociolinguistic bias mentioned above can also be seen in the
Workshop on Standardization organized by Dieter Stein and Ingrid
Tieken-Boon van Ostade immediately before the conference. The papers
from this workshop will be published in a separate volume by Mouton
de Gruyter.
Organizing a conference is always an effort which demands good
cooperation between individuals and institutions and plenty of unselfish
voluntary work. The organizers would like to thank the staff members
and students of the English Department of the University of Helsinki for
their generous and enthusiastic help. We also wish to express our gratitude
to the Ministry of Education, the University of Helsinki, the British
Council, the United States Information Service, Finnair and Pohjola
Insurance Company for valuable financial support. Our thanks are due
to Mouton de Gruyter for accepting this volume for publication and for
the friendliness and efficiency of their editorial staff. We are grateful to
the readers who assessed the papers submitted for this volume, and,
finally, we wish to thank Miss Kirsi Heikkonen, who carried out the
numerous duties of the editorial secretary with great skill, accuracy and
good humour.
Helsinki, March 1992 Matti Rissanen
Ossi Ihalainen
Terttu Nevalainen
Irma Taavitsainen
Contents
I. Theory and methodology 1
Translation and the history of English 3
Norman F. Blake
The evidence for analytic and synthetic developments in English 25
Andrei Danchev
Evidence for regular sound change in English dialect geography 42
William Labov
A social model for the interpretation of language change 72
James Milroy
How to study Old English syntax? 92
Bruce Mitchell
II. Phonology and orthography 101
Exceptionality and non-specification in the history of English 103
phonology
John Anderson
The myth of "the Anglo-Norman scribe" 117
Cecily Clark f
Old English ABCs 130
Anne King
What, if anything, was the Great Vowel Shift? 144
Roger Lass
Lexical and morphological consequences of phonotactic change in 156
the history of English
Angelika Lutz
Lexical phonology and diachrony 167
April M. S. McMahon
viii Contents
Homorganic clusters as moric busters in the history of English: the 191
case of -Id, -nd, -mb
Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell
Middle English vowel quantity reconsidered 207
Nikolaus Ritt
III. Morphology and syntax 223
On explaining the historical development of English genitives 225
Hans Ulrich Boas
A touch of (sub-)class? Old English "preterite-present" verbs 241
Fran Colman
The information present: present tense for communication in the 262
past
David Denison
Structural factors in the history of English modals 287
Ans van Kemenade
Subordinating uses of and in the history of English 310
Juhani Klemola and Markku Filppula
The distribution of verb forms in Old English subordinate clauses 319
Willem F. Koopman
Relative constructions and functional amalgamation in Early 336
Modern English
Lilo Moessner
The use of to and for in Old English 352
Ruta Nagucka
Man's son)son of man: translation, textual conditioning, and the 359
history of the English genitive
Thomas E. Nunnally
Why is the element order to cwced him 'said to him' impossible? 373
Michiko Ogura
On the development of the ^-agent in English 379
Kirsti Peitsara
Contents ix
Pragmatics of this and that 401
Patricia Poussa
A valency description of Old English possessive verbs 418
Herbert Schendl
Who(m)l Constraints on the loss of case marking of w/z-pronouns 437
in the English of Shakespeare and other poets of the Early Modern
English period
Edgar W. Schneider
"I not say": bridge phenomenon in syntactic change 453
Masatomo Ukaji
IV. Lexis and semantics 463
The status of word formation in Middle English: approaching the 465
question
Christiane Dalton-Puffer
Post-dating Romance loan-words in Middle English: are the French 483
words of the Katherine Group English?
Juliette Dor
Rich Lake: a case history 506
Veronika Kniezsa
V. Varieties and dialects 517
The evolution of a vernacular 519
Guy Bailey and Garry Ross
Relativization in the Dorset dialect 532
Nadine van den Eynden
William Barnes and the south west dialect of English 556
Bernard Jones
A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: the value of texts 566
surviving in more than one version
Margaret Laing