Studies in Early Modern English

517 Pages·1994·13.486 MB·English

by  Dieter Kastovsky (ed.)

Studies in Early Modern English
Topics in English Linguistics
13
Editor
Herman Wekker
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Studies in
Early Modern English
Edited by
Dieter Kastovsky
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York 1994
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
Studies in early modern English / edited by Dieter Kastovsky.
p. cm. — (Topics in English linguistics ; 13)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 3-11-014127-2 (cloth : acid-free) :
I.English language— Early modern, 1500 — 1700 —
Grammar.
I. Kastovsky, Dieter, 1940- . II. Series.
PE821.S78 1994
425'.0903—dc20 94-17971
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Studies in early modern English / ed. by Dieter Kastovsky. —
Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1994
(Topics in English linguistics ; 13)
ISBN 3-11-014127-2
NE: Kastovsky, Dieter [Hrsg.]; GT
© Copyright 1994 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 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.
Contents
Introduction 1
Dieter Kastovsky
Initial adverbials and word order in English with special reference 11
to the Early Modern English period
Leiv Egil Breivik — Toril Swan
Are Shakespeare's agent nouns different from Chaucer's? — On the 45
dynamics of a derivational sub-system
Christiane Dalton-Puffer
The construction be going to + infinitive in Early Modern English 59
Andrei Danchev — Merja Kytö
"Sumer is icumen in": the seasons of the year in Middle English 79
and Early Modern English
Andreas Fischer
The place-name evidence for the distribution of Early Modern 97
English dialect features: The voicing of initial /f/
Jacek Fisiak
Text deixis in Early Modern English 111
Udo Fries
On phrasal verbs in Early Modern English: Notes on lexis and style 129
Rist ο Hiltunen
The use of thou and you in Early Modern spoken English: Evidence 141
from depositions in the Durham ecclesiastical court records
Jonathan Hope
Orthoepists and reformers 153
Veronika Kniezsa
vi Contents
Vocalisation of "post-vocalic r": an Early Modern English 167
sound change?
Angelika Lutz
From stress-timing to syllable-timing: Changes in the prosodic 187
system of Late Middle English and Early Modern English
Manfred Markus
Lexical semantics and the Early Modern English lexicon: 205
The case of antonymy
Arthur Mettinger
Early Modern English passive constructions 217
Lilo Moessner
Infi in Early Modern English and the status of to 233
Stephen J. Nagle
Aspects of adverbial change in Early Modern English 243
Terttu Nevalainen
Periodisation in language history: Early Modern English 261
and the other periods
Herbert Penzl
Degree adverbs in Early Modern English 269
Hans Peters
The ugly sister — Scots words in Early Modern English dictionaries 289
Clausdirk Pollner
The development of the compound pronouns in -body and -one in 301
Early Modern English
Helena Raumolin-Brunberg
Social conditioning and diachronic language change 325
Helena Raumolin-Brunberg — Terttu Nevalainen
The position of not in Early Modern English questions 339
Matti Rissanen
Contents vii
William Turner and the English plant names 349
Mats Ryden
The history of the English language and future English teachers 371
Viktor Schmetterer
You that be not able to consyder thys order of things: Variability and 379
change in the semantics and syntax of a mental verb in
Early Modern English
Edgar Schneider
The expression of deontic and epistemic modality 403
and the subjunctive
Dieter Stein
Any as an indefinite determiner in non-assertive clauses: 413
evidence from Present-day and Early Modern English
Gunnel Tottie
Loss of postvocalic r. Were the orthoepists really tone-deaf? 429
Michael Windross
Early Modern London business English 449
Laura Wright
The mystery of the modal progressive 467
Susan Wright
Index of subjects and languages 487
Index of names 499

Introduction1
Dieter Kastovsky
Early Modern English as a separate period in the history of English is a
relatively recent addition to the original tripartite division into Old
English, Middle English and Modern English (cf. Penzl, this volume:
261). It started out merely as a subdivision of Modern English, cf.
Zachrisson's (1913) distinction between early and late Modern English,
or Luick's (1921-1940: §§470, 556) "frühneuenglische" and "spät-neuen-
glische Periode" (note the lower case initial of "early" and "früh"!). This
still is its status in the classical handbooks and introductions to the
history of English. But more recently it has been elevated to the position
of a separate linguistic period, cf., e. g., the capital initials in Görlach's
Einführung ins Frühneuenglische (1978) and Introduction to Early Modern
English (1991), and the fact that the forthcoming Cambridge History of
the English Language devotes a separate volume to this period. That this
development is justified is very convincingly argued for by Herbert Penzl
in his contribution to this volume, where he also points out parallels with
the development of the periodisation of German. Nevertheless, compared
to Old and Middle English, Early Modern English is still an underre-
searched area, so that Görlach's (1988) epithet "Cinderella of historical
English linguistics", which he had intended to refer merely to the study
of regional variation in Early Modern English, might well be applied to
the period as a whole. This does not mean, of course, that there are no
areas within this period which would have attracted the special attention
of anglicists. Thus, the Great Vowel Shift (cf. the Stockwell —Minkova/
Lass controversy in Bauer — Kastovsky 1988 for a summary of the ex-
tended discussion of this topic), the rise of the obligatory ifo-periphrasis
and the word-order change to SVO (cf. the contributions in Kastovsky
1991), to mention just a few, have received extensive coverage over the
years. They are, therefore, not dealt with in this volume, because its
editor had, in his invitation to EMEC (Early Modern English Conference,
Tulln, Austria, July 7 — 11, 1991), specifically asked that the participants
should stay away from these belaboured topics, and they did. Which
brings me to the genesis of this volume.
The Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik of the University of
Vienna is one of the oldest of its kind in central Europe, and scholars