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Part of
Unlocking the History of English: Pragmatics, prescriptivism and text types
Edited by Luisella Caon, Moragh S. Gordon and Thijs Porck
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 364] 2024
► pp. 225–249

“Quhen I am begun to write I really knou not what to say”

Inter- and intra-writer variation in the use of <quh‑> in Early Modern Scots

| University of Edinburgh

It is currently unclear to what extent Older Scots features continued in correspondence during the early eighteenth century (Millar 2020: 100). To explore this, the digitised letters of politically-involved Scottish writers active during this time were compiled into a purpose-built corpus, and searched for the Scots feature <quh‑>. The focus was on three authors in particular who were selected for close-up analysis. Their correspondence was quantitatively analysed to determine the frequency of <quh‑> across author and word-type, which was then compared to the general dataset. Inter- and intra-writer variation was evaluated in relation to possible macrosocial influences. Results suggest that, contrary to earlier findings (Macqueen 1957; van Eyndhoven & Clark 2019), <quh‑> had not completely disappeared, but its persistence was largely conditioned by its use in abbreviations for highly frequent function words. The professional background of the author, however, is also shown to influence usage.

Keywords: eighteenth-century Scots, orthography, <quh‑>, abbreviation, identity-politics, lexical bundles
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Divergence and convergence in the history of Scots
    • 2.1Defining ‘Older’ Scots?
    • 2.2The variable <quh‑>
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Data and methods
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Use of <quh‑> across author
    • 5.2Professional background
    • 5.3Use of <quh‑> across lexical item
    • 5.4The role of abbreviation
    • 5.5The influence of topic
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 4 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.364.10van
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