Present-day English Research Articles

Speech act attenuation in the history of English: The case of apologies

This paper develops a new theoretical framework to describe the long diachrony of speech acts. Such an undertaking requires a careful reconsideration of some of the basic properties of the nature of speech acts. It requires a clear differentiation between the functional profile, or illocutionary potential, of a speech act, the range of expressions that are typically used to perform it, and the metacommunicative expressions that are used to talk about it. It also requires a clear understanding of the integrity of the speech act in order to make it comparable across different time periods. It is suggested that the diachronic development of speech acts is both a gradual process with limited short-term effects that – over a long period – lead to more substantial differences and a process of attenuation, i.e. a progressive weakening of its illocutionary force. As an example, this paper traces the long diachrony of apologies in the history of the English language, from Old English up to Present-day English. Apologies originate in Old English penitential acts and confessions to God which in the course of time underwent a process of attenuation that first turned them into secularized appeals to a human addressee for forgiveness, subsequently to expressions of regret and eventually to speech acts that are often no more than a token acknowledgement of some minor infraction. The final section gives an outline of how this new theoretical framework of speech act attenuation can be applied to other speech acts, such as promises and greetings.

SEMANTIC PROCESSES IN THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH POLYSEMANTIC VERBS WITH EMOTIVE AND EVALUATIVE LEXICO-SEMANTIC VARIANTS

The article deals with semantic structure of polysemantic verbs of present-day English. Polysemantic English verbs having evaluative lexico-semantic variants of meaning are analyzed in the article. It is underlined that lexico-semantic variants of meaning of a polysemantic English verb are joined in its structure with a common dominating semantic component; semantic variants with emotive and evaluative meaning play a significant role in the semantic structure of a polysemantic verb. It is stressed that the semantic variant of verb meaning with a certain evaluative content possesses an independent linguistic status and simultaneously plays an important role in the development of pragmatic meaning of a polysemantic verb. Emotive and evaluative components of meaning of the English verb were defined by means of linguistic definition analysis of meanings on the basis of definitions in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. The New English-Russian Dictionary edited by professor I.R. Galperin served as material for analysis in our research. Polysemantic English verbs have a great number of lexico-semantic variants of meaning including semantic variants implying evaluation of actions denoted by the verb. Ways of forming these meanings are analyzed in the article, the main ways of forming evaluative meanings of the English verb are considered to be semantic transfer. The most widespread type of semantic transfer of the English verb is change of the subject of the action denoted by the verb from an inanimate object to an animate person. Metaphoric transfer of meaning from denotation of a physical action towards a psychic one is also widespread among English polysemantic verbs. Further development of evaluative meaning of the English verb may be based on transfer of denotation of a concrete action towards an abstract one, simultaneously a referent is evaluated and this evaluation is absolute according to its type. New lexico-semantic variants may be added to the semantic structure of a polysemantic English verb as a result of linguistic process of enantiosemy, i.e. juxtaposition of evaluative meanings of opposite evaluative sign.

The basic valency orientation of Old English and the causativeja-formation: a synchronic and diachronic approach

The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without any consensus emerging so far. From a synchronic point of view, a key question is whether the pronounced tendency to labile coding in Present-day English can be traced back to the Old English period. In order to give a convincing answer, this article examines from a synchronic and diachronic point of view two of the procedures by which the basic valency of Old English has been assessed: computation of verbs and evaluation of the causativeja-formation. Concerning the former, it shows that the valency of whole verb classes in Old English is determined by previous processes of morphophonetic merger and cannot therefore be used as evidence for labilisation processes (transitivisation or detransitivation) taking place in OE itself. With respect to the latter, the article assesses whether the causativeja-formation is still a transitivising operation in Old English by examining the valency of all causativeja-pairs and incorporating recent research on the effectiveness of sound alternations as morphological markers. This article concludes that it is not, as it does not consistently signal an increase in valency. Rather, a tendency to labile coding is detected. In this respect, the article supports, with more conclusive evidence, previous research which advanced the same hypothesis.

Pretonic alphabetic o in Present-day English

This article is concerned with the question of why, when immediately preceding primary stress, orthographic o is as a rule phonetically realized not only as the diphthongs /əʊ/, /oʊ/ but also as the qualitatively reduced short monophthong /ə/. For example, l/əʊˈ/cation ∼ l/əˈ/cation. It is argued that the instability of alphabetic o in this position is mainly due to 1) its frequent occurrences in intertonic position (e.g., ˌcompoˈnential), in which it is surrounded by two stressed syllables; 2) derivation from forms in which stress occurs upon the short monophthongs /ɒ/, /ɑ/ (e.g., Roberta ← Robert + -a); 3) a relatively small number of formations such as co-sponsor or pro-choice, in which alphabetic o belongs to a semantically transparent prefix; and 4) frequent use of the single letter o (to orthographically represent alphabetic o) rather than a combination of letters such as, e.g., ow. Additionally, this paper argues that the American English diphthong /oʊˈ/ is in general more stable than the British English diphthong /əʊˈ/ because American English is in general a more conservative variety, which to a larger extent than British English respects the etymological history of a word.

Apologies in French and English: An insight into conventionalisation and im/politeness

This paper argues that a cross-linguistic study of the lexical semantics of terms used to apologise in English and French can shed light on the conventionalisation of (mock) politeness. Despite the long historical interdependence between the two languages, the linguistic forms most often used to say sorry in Present-Day English and French derive from different etymons. S'excuser and désolé((e)s) are most frequently used in French while ‘sorry’ is more commonly used in English. Both languages draw more rarely on ‘pardon’, and ‘regret’.The paper explores the semantico-pragmatics of apology and aims to identify norms and variations in the expression of apology intra- and interlinguistically. Tokens of SORRY, APOLOGI/ES/SE/ZE, DÉSOLÉ, EXCUSE, PARDON and REGRET were identified and analysed in a range of (mainly) spoken corpora of American, British and Canadian English and Canadian and French French. Distributional patterns highlight differences in the rates and pragmalinguistics of apologies across (different varieties of) English and French but, crucially, also across different genres.While SORRY and EXCUSE have acquired the same illocutionary meaning in English and French, respectively, denoting APOLOGY, ironic uses of apologetic IFIDs are very rare in the data, arguably not denotative, and rely on a pragmatic mismatch to do mock politeness.

(an:a)-lyzer: An interactive visualization of Google Books Ngrams with R and Shiny: Exploring a(n) historical increase in onset strength in a(n) huge database

Using the re-emergence of the /h/ onset from Early Modern to Present-Day English as a case study, we illustrate the making and the functions of a purpose-built web application named (an:a) lyzer for the interactive visualization of the raw n-gram data provided by Google Books Ngrams (GBN). The database has been compiled from the full text of over 4.5 million books in English, totalling over 468 billion words and covering roughly five centuries. We focus on bigrams consisting of words beginning with graphic preceded by the indefinite article allomorphs a and an, which serve as a diagnostic of the consonantal strength of the initial /h/. The sheer size of this database affords us the possibility to attain a maximal diachronic resolution, to distinguish highly specific groups of -initial lexical items, and even to trace the diffusion of the observed changes across individual lexical units. The functions programmed into the app enable us to explore the data interactively by filtering, selecting and viewing them according to various parameters that were manually annotated into the data frame. We also discuss limitations of the database, of the app and of the explorative data analysis. The app is publicly accessible online at https://osf.io/ht8se/.

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

espanolEn este articulo se analizan comparativamente las relaciones cualitativas existentes entre los patrones funcionales de las construcciones progresivas del ingles a lo largo de su desarrollo diacronico y los procesos de gramaticalizacion en que devienen estas estructuras. Para ilustrar estas relaciones, se presenta el analisis cualitativo-funcional de una serie de prototipos progresivos extraidos del conjunto de corpus York-Toronto-Helsinki-Penn, concretamente, de los generos textuales por periodo en los que se estima la existencia de estos fenomenos de cambio gramatical. Se lleva a cabo un analisis, segun el conjunto de rasgos que caracterizan estas construcciones en el ingles actual, que sugiere la presencia de tres gradientes progresivos: un gradiente estructural, uno funcional y otro de cambio gramatical. Asimismo, el estudio prueba la existencia de una relacion entre los procesos de subjetivacion que experimentan las estructuras progresivas y los fenomenos de gramaticalizacion primaria, asi como entre los fenomenos de objetivacion y los procesos de gramaticalizacion secundaria. EnglishIn this paper we examine comparatively the qualitative relations between the functional patterns of English progressive constructions in the course of their diachronic development and the grammaticalization processes undergone by these constructions. In order to illustrate these relations, we set out the qualitative-functional analysis of a number of progressive prototypes drawn from the family of corpora York-Toronto-Helsinki-Penn, specifically from the textual genres per period estimated to involve this type of grammatical change. We conduct an analysis on the basis of the host of features that characterise these constructions in present-day English which suggests the presence of three progressive gradients: a structural, a functional and a grammatical change gradient. In addition, the study demonstrates the existence of a relationship between subjectification processes experienced by progressive structures and primary grammaticalization phenomena, as well as between objectification phenomena and secondary grammaticalization processes.

Changes in argument structure in Early Modern English with special reference to verbs of DESIRE: A case study of lust

In Old and Middle English, several verbs of DESIRE could be found in impersonal constructions, a type of morphosyntactic pattern which lacks a subject marked for the nominative case controlling verbal agreement. The impersonal construction began to decrease in frequency between 1400 and 1500 (van der Gaaf 1904; Allen 1995), a development which has been recently investigated from the perspective of the interaction between impersonal verbs and constructional meaning by Trousdale (2008), Möhlig-Falke (2012) and Miura (2015). This paper is concerned specifically with the impersonal verb lust (< ME lusten) as a representative of Levin’s (1993) class of verbs of DESIRE, some of which developed into prepositional verbs in Present-day English. The main aim here is to explore the changes undergone by lust during the two centuries after it ceases to appear in impersonal constructions, as well as to reflect upon some of the possible motivations for such changes. The data are retrieved from Early English Books Online Corpus 1.0, a 525-million-word corpus, and the examples are analysed manually paying attention to the range of complementation patterns documented in Early Modern English (1500–1700).

Investigating the impact of structural factors upon that/zero complementizer alternation patterns in verbs of cognition: a diachronic corpus-based multifactorial analysis

This corpus-based study examines the diachronic development of the that/zero alternation with nine verbs of cognition, viz. think, believe, feel, guess, imagine, know, realize, suppose and understand by means of a stepwise logistic regression analysis. The data comprised a total of (n=5,812) think, (n=3,056) believe, (n=1,273) feel, (n=1,885) guess, (n=2,225) imagine, (n=1,805) know, (n=1,244) realize, (n=2,836) suppose and (n=3,395) understand tokens from both spoken and written corpora from 1580–2012. Taking our cue from previous research suggesting that there has been a diachronic increase in the use of the zero complementizer form from Late Middle / Early Modern to Present-day English, we use a large set of parallel spoken and written diachronic data and a rigorous quantitative methodology to test this claim with the nine aforementioned verbs. In addition, we also investigate the impact of eleven structural features, which have been claimed to act as predictors for the use or presence of the zero complementizer form for ‘panchronic’ (i.e. effects are aggregated over all time periods) and diachronic effects. The objectives of this study are to examine the following: (i) whether there is indeed a diachronic trend towards more zero use; (ii) whether the conditioning factors proposed in the literature indeed predict the zero form; (iii) to what extent these factors interact; and (iv) whether the predictive power of the conditioning factors becomes stronger or weaker over time. The analysis shows that, contrary to the aforementioned belief that the zero form has been on the increase, there is in fact a steady decrease in zero use, but the extent of this decrease is not the same for all verbs. In addition, the analysis of interactions with verb type indicates differences between verbs in terms of the predictive power of the conditioning factors. Additional significant interactions emerged, notably with verb, mode (i.e. spoken or written data) and period. The interactions with period show that certain factors that are good predictors of the zero form overall lose predictive power over time.

Ere and before in English historical corpora, with special reference to the Corpus of English Dialogues

Abstract In this paper, the use of two roughly synonymous temporal adverbial links, ere and before, will be discussed. The survey will cover the history of English, from Old to Present-day English. It is based on historical corpora, particularly on the Corpus of English Dialogues (1560–1760). Ere (Old English ær) was originally temporal, while before (Old English beforan) goes back to the spatial form. In Old English and Early Middle English ere is clearly more common than before; from Late Middle English on, before becomes the more favoured link. The Corpus of English Dialogues and later corpora indicate that the use of ere is remarkably restricted to informal and speech-related discourse.

English Phraseological Research on Until By/ Before Working as Complex Prepositions

This corpora-based study shows that until by and until before, which are newly observed phraseological units (PUs) in contemporary English, function as complex prepositions (CPs). As an interesting phenomenon of present-day English, two prepositions are put together with a single meaning. Specifically, the prepositions in and on co-occur with various other prepositions, and each resulting prepositional phrase becomes established as a new CP with a single meaning like in at or in on. The combinations until by and until before have not been widely acknowledged and have been regarded as mistakes in previous studies. This study shows the meanings of the two phrases, the process of their establishment as new CPs and the way they gained their new meanings. To this end, the study carries out the following research procedures: (i) showing the frequencies of until by and until before in corpora from the synchronic and diachronic perspectives; (ii) differentiating until by and until before by semantically and syntactically clear regarding how until by and until before are used in context; and (iii) showing the kinds of prepositions that are used with until to form PUs as well as CPs.

Attitudes to usage vs. actual language use: The case ofliterallyin American English

From a descriptive point of view,literallyis seen as ‘a case of semantic change in progress’ (Israel, 2002: 424), exemplified through the shift from uses such asThis word literally means ‘water’toThis book literally blew my mind. This process of change has been noticed and commented on by language commentators and usage guide writers. In other words, apart from being a case of change in progress,literallyis also a usage problem. Usage problems are ‘features of divided usage’, or ‘instances of usage that have attracted sociolinguistic controversy’ (Tieken–Boon van Ostade, 2015: 57; cf. Kostadinova, 2018). The case of the wordliterally, then, lends itself to an investigation of the relationship between prescriptive approaches to language use typically found in usage guides, and processes of language variation and change, as I will do in this paper. As a crucial aspect to this discussion, I will also address some of the attitudes speakers hold towards the newer uses ofliterally, as attitudes of speakers can help us better understand why prescriptivism may or may not influence language variation and change. In what follows, I will first discuss the variant uses ofliterallyfound in present-day English, and then consider findings on three perspectives on the variation in the use ofliterally, viz. the ‘usage guide’ perspective, the ‘actual use’ perspective and the ‘speakers’ attitudes’ perspective.

Adapting to survive

AbstractThis paper traces the semantic development of the English absolute construction from Old to Present-day English on the basis of extensive corpus data. It is observed that the absolute construction developed from a solely adverbial, strictly subordinate construction into a construction with a much larger range of functions, including quasi-coordinate constructions whose ‘addition’ function comes close to that ofand-coordinated finite clauses. This development involves an expansion of clausal status (from subordinate to anywhere between subordinate and quasi-coordinate) and a semantic expansion from typically adverbial meanings to any type of additional information. The process is claimed to have been facilitated by Middle English case loss and arguments for this facilitating role of case loss are adduced. It is then shown how these quasi-coordinate absolute constructions became more and more important as an absolute construction-function over time, as they were well-suited to the absolute construction’s high degree of syntactic independence. This evolution appears to have taken an opposite direction from the development of free adjuncts (Killie & Swann 2009: 339). This observation fits in well with the proposal that Englishing-clauses form a network (Fonteyn & van de Pol 2015) in which each member maintains its own functional niche, rather than engaging in competition with one another.

Nominal and verbal gerunds in present-day English: aspectual features and nominal status

In this paper, we want to add to the comparative description of Present-day English nominal and verbal gerundive nominalizations, by presenting the results of a quantitative, corpus-based analysis of their aspectual features. It will be shown that, in general, the claim that gerunds designate unbounded activities or activities that are in progress cannot be upheld—because a significant number of both nominal and verbal gerunds denote non-durative situations (achievements, semelfactives) or telic ones (accomplishments), and because most gerunds lack explicit markers of ‘completeness’ or ‘ongoingness’. As regards the distinction between nominal and verbal gerunds, it will be shown that nominal gerunds denote activities significantly more often and are more likely to occur in contexts which are explicitly marked for temporal bounding or for ongoingness. Verbal gerunds, on the other hand, represent significantly more often achievements or semelfactives and occur more often than nominal gerunds in neutral or unmarked contexts in terms of temporal bounding. These findings are shown to tie in with a number of recent functional-semantic accounts of the English gerund and shed new light on the categorial gradience between nominal and verbal gerunds.

Nice to Meet You or Nice Meeting You: Complementation Patterns of Emotive Adjectives

The current paper investigates the plausibility of the claim that the complementation patterns of an adjective can resemble that of a verb as well as its compliance with the rules of Present-Day English. The results of the research suggest that, as long noted in the case with verbs, the gerund complement is diff using over the to-infinitive in regressive contexts. The study also reveals additional factors which might infl uence a speaker’s choice of the respective complement type.

CORRELATION OF NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH AND BRITISH ENGLISH DIVERGENCIES IN LEXIS

The article focuses on the description of a special type of relationship that arises between lexical units within the corpus of English words in the framework of the sociolinguistic approach. Various ways of correlation between North American and British usages emerge in present-day English due to the action of two processes of the language development favoured by a set of historical, linguistic and sociolinguistic factors: divergence and convergence.
 The paper describes the most frequent forms of lexical correlation between North American English usage and British English usage. The research states that the semantic structure of the lexical unit or its register of usage can undergo changes under influences of the other variety. The lexemes, common to both national varieties with partial coincidence of the semantic structure and, sometimes, with shifts in the register of usage, are more affected by the process of convergence. The part of the English lexis less affected by convergent processes comprises common lexemes with the split in the semantic structure, the components of which are different or antonymic. The part of the present-day English lexis likely to be involved in the process of internal borrowing mostly includes lexemes specific to US English or British English with, or without lexical equivalents in the other variety.
 A special kind of correlation between lexical units of common origin can bring about usages functionally confined only to one variety. The functional predominance can contribute to the formation of different chains of synonyms actualized in each of the varieties. When lexemes have lexical equivalents specific to one of the national varieties of English, the so-called ''pseudo-synonymous relations” within the English lexical system can arise

"Absoluteness" of the Absolute Construction in Present-Day English: a Corpus-Based Analysis

The article focuses on the question of presence / absence of referential relations (coreference) between the unaugmented absolute construction and its matrix clause in Present-day English. Based on a representative sample from the corpus of the English language BYU-BNC, the traditional approach to the absolute construction as an "independent" structure that has no connection with the rest of the sentence is reconsidered. The analysis of referential relations between the unaugmented absolute construction and its matrix clause has established that cases of coreference (full and partial) significantly outweigh the cases of absence of coreference. These findings indicate that the construction is semantically / logically related to its matrix clause. Furthermore, the obtained data show that meronimic (part-whole) relations prevail in the analysed sample. More precisely, the relations of the types "component - integral object" and "member - collection" are the most numerous. The obtained results suggest that in Present-day English unaugmented absolute constructions compensate lack of syntactic connection with the matrix clause with closer semantic relations, explicitly expressed by complete or partial coreference. In our further research on the issue we intend to carry out a similar analysis for the English augmented absolute constructions in order to determine prevailing types of coreference between them and the matrix clause.

The FAIL TO construction: A contrastive perspective

This article considers the various senses of the English fail to construction in the light of its Norwegian translation correspondences. This construction has been alleged to be in the process of grammaticalising as a marker of negation in Present-day English. The paper tests the hypothesis that if fail to is in the process of grammaticalising as a marker of negation pure and simple, we should find it used to translate, or find it translated by, pure negation markers (the equivalent of English not) in other languages. The particular language of translation investigated in this paper is Norwegian in which the default negation marker is ikke. It is shown that translations in both directions lend support to the hypothesis.

ЗМІНИ СИНТАГМАТИКИ ПРИГОЛОСНИХ ФОНЕМ НА ПОЧАТКУ СЛОВА У ДАВНЬОАНГЛІЙСЬКИЙ ПЕРІОД

The paper presents the results of а detailed analysis of syntagmatic specifi city of initial consonantal clusters, registered in the Old English period of the English language development, viewed in terms of their basic phonetic characteristics and their behavior under different phonotactic conditions. Considering the data on the bi-, three- and four-consonantal clusters frequency and the results of the performed analysis, the author gives characteristics of the nomenclature of initial consonantal clusters typical of this period, outlines the regularities of their occurrence in the word structure as well as describes the dynamics of their changes during this period. The results of the research confi rm that qualitative characteristics of clusters depend on the place of the consonants articulation, while the position of a consonant in the cluster is conditioned by the manner of its articulation. The identifi ed processes, which led to historical changes, open up possibilities forfurther studies of historical phonotactics with an aim of fi nding parallels of processes taking place in present-day English.

Expressing conditionality in earlier English

This article traces the diachronic development of English conditionals with clause-initial subclauses (If you hurt the cat, (then) she will bite you) by means of (frequency) data from three corpora (YCOE, PPCME2 and PPCEME). It investigates the division of labour between(g)if,and(meaning ‘if, suppose/provided that, on condition that’) and verb-initial conditionals from Old to Early Modern English. It is shown that conjunctional conditionals (e.g.ifconditionals) have always been most frequent. The limitations on verb-initial conditionals (as they exist in Present-day English) develop diachronically and are related to restrictions on verb movement and choice of verb, and not frequency. Genre preferences, however, seem to exist. The use ofthenintroducing the main clause will be shown to be a reflex of an earlier paratactic structure. Its use over time is influenced by mood and length, the latter being of influence especially in later periods.