Cover not available
Part of
Sociocultural Dimensions of Lexis and Text in the History of English
Edited by Peter Petré, Hubert Cuyckens and Frauke D'hoedt
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 343] 2018
► pp. 125–150

Chapter 6
Spatio-temporal systems in Chaucer

This paper presents a systematic analysis of synchronic spatio-temporal systems in Chaucer’s language against the background of research in historical pragmatics and discourse analysis. The data consists of The Canterbury tales (fiction) and A treatise on the astrolabe (handbook). After defining spatio-temporal systems, I carry out a frequency study of the speaker’s use of spatio-temporal elements, by comparing the two registers and contrasting proximal and distal elements. A qualitative analysis then highlights typical patterns of spatio-temporal elements in discourse. It reveals how proximal or distal elements combine in conveying a proximal or distal perspective and how these perspectives change in discourse.
Keywords: spatio-temporal system, Chaucer, historical pragmatics, discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What are spatio-temporal systems?
  • 3.Elements of space and time
    • 3.1Frequency analysis
    • 3.2Proximal vs. distal elements
  • 4.Spatio-temporal systems in discourse
    • 4.1Typical combinations
    • 4.2Discourse-structuring elements
    • 4.3Combining proximal or distal elements
    • 4.4The alternation between proximal and distal perspectives
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.343.06nak
References (49)
References
Benson, Larry Dean. 1961. Chaucer’s historical present: Its meaning and uses. English Studies 42. 65–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.). 1987. The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. Modal use across registers and time. In Anne Curzan & Kimberly Emmonds (eds.), Studies in the history of the English language, Unfolding conversations, 189–216. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Susan Conrad. 2009. Register, genre, and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Doublas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Boggel, Sandra. 2009. Metadiscourse in Middle English and Early Modern English religious texts: A corpus-based study. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Brisard, Frank (ed.). 2002. Grounding: The epistemic footing and deixis and reference. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bühler, Karl. 1934. Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: G. Fischer.Google Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. 1983. The semantics of modal auxiliaries. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 1999. Demonstratives: Form, function, and grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duchan, Judith F., Gail A. Bruder & Lynne E. Hewett (eds.). 1995. Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Eisner, Sigmund. 1975. Building Chaucer’s astrolabe, Part I. Journal of British Astronomical Association 86. 18–29.Google Scholar
. 1976a. Building Chaucer’s astrolabe, Part II. Journal of British Astronomical Association 86. 125–132.Google Scholar
. 1976b. Building Chaucer’s astrolabe, Part III. Journal of British Astronomical Association 86. 219–227.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1997 [1975]. Lectures on deixis. Stanford: CSLI Publications. [Originally published as Santa Cruz lectures on deixis. Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club.]Google Scholar
Fries, Udo. 1994. Text deixis in Early Modern English. In Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), Studies in Early Modern English, 111–128. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fritz, Thomas A. 2003. “Look here, what I am saying!” Speaker deixis and implicature as the basis of modality and future tense. In Friedrich Lenz (ed.), Deictic conceptualisation of space, time and person, 135–151. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gunther, Robert Theodore. 1977. Chaucer on the astrolabe with original illustrations. Revised from the 1931 Oxford Edition by Robert Theodore Gunther. Emeryville, CA: Norman Greene.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. & Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. & Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen. 2014. Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar, 4th edn. Milton Park: Routledge.Google Scholar
Huang, Yan. 2014. Pragmatics, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. 2006. “Thou art so loothly and so oold also”: The use of ye and thou in Chaucer’s Canterbury tales . Anglistik 17(2). 57–72.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. & Irma Taavitsainen. 2013. English historical pragmatics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Kytö, Merja (ed.). 1996. Manual to the diachronic part of the Helsinki corpus of English texts: Coding conventions and lists of source texts, 3rd edn. Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. Cognitive grammar: A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, James Robert. 1992. English text: System and structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. Cohesion and texture. In Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton & Deborah Schiffrin (eds.), Handbook of discourse analysis, vol. 1, 2nd edn., 61–81. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
MED. 2007. Middle English dictionary. [URL]. (6 September, 2015.)
Nagucka, Ruta. 2000. The spatial and temporal meanings of before in Middle English. In Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta & Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in context, 329–337. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakayasu, Minako. 2009. The pragmatics of modals in Shakespeare. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2011. Towards a pragmatic analysis of modals shall and will in Chaucer’s language. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 46(4). 73–96. DOI logo.Google Scholar
. 2013. Chaucer’s historical present: A discourse-pragmatic perspective. In Liliana Sikorska & Marcin Krygier (eds.), Evur happie and glorious, ffor I have at will grete riches, 41–60. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2014. Weep now namoore; I wol thy lust fulfille: Towards a sociopragmatic analysis of the spatio-temporal systems in Chaucer. Paper read at the First Poznań Historical Sociopragmatics Symposium. Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland.
. 2015. Spatio-temporal systems in A treatise on the astrolabe . In Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre & Javier Calle-Martín (eds.), Approaches to Middle English: Variation, contact and change, 243–259. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
North, John David. 1988. Chaucer’s universe. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Oakeshott-Taylor, John. 1984. Factuality, tense, intonation and perspective: Some thoughts on the semantics of ‘think’. Lingua 62. 289–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pakkala-Wekström, Mari. 2005. The dialogue of love, marriage and maistrie in Chaucer’s Canterbury tales . Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Palmer, Frank Robert. 2001. Mood and modality, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taavitsainen, Irma. 1999. Personality and styles of affect in the Canterbury tales . In Geoffrey Lester (ed.), Chaucer in perspective: Middle English essays in honour of Norman Blake, 218–234. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.Google Scholar
Taavitsainen, Irma & Turo Hiltunen. 2012. Now as a text deictic feature in Late Medieval and Early Modern English medical writing. In Ulrich Busse & Axel Hübler (eds.), Investigations into the meta-communicative lexicon of English: A contribution to historical pragmatics, 179–205. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taavitsainen, Irma & Andreas H. Jucker. 2010. Trends and developments in historical pragmatics. In Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Historical pragmatics, 3–30. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
. 2015. Twenty years of historical pragmatics. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 16. 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tanabe, Harumi. 2014. Kantaberiimonogatari no katarite no shakaikaikyuu kara mita goyoo-hyooshiki toshite no this ni tsuite [The pragmatic marker this viewed from the narrator’s social rank in the Canterbury tales ]. In The Society for Chaucer Studies & Koichi Kano (eds.), Choosaa to chuusei o nagamete: Choosaakenkyuukai 20shuunenkinenronbunshuu [Through the eyes of Chaucer: Essays in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Society for Chaucer Studies], 185–200. Tokyo: Asao Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1972. A history of English syntax: A transformational approach to the history of English sentence structure. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
. 1974. Explorations in linguistic elaboration: Language change, language acquisition and the genesis of spatio-temporal terms. In John Mathieson Anderson & Charles Jones (eds.), Historical linguistics, vol. 1: Syntax, morphology, internal and comparative reconstruction: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Edinburgh, 2–7 September 1973, 263–314. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.Google Scholar
. 1978. On the expression of spatio-temporal relations in language. In Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of human language, vol. 3: Word structure, 369–400. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilkins, David P. 1995. Expanding the traditional category of deictic elements: Interjections as deictics. In Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder & Lynne E. Hewitt (eds.), Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective, 359–386. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Nakayasu, Minako
2021. Spatio-Temporal Systems in Shakespeare’s Dialogues: A Case from Julius Caesar . Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 0:0 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 december 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.