Cover not available
Article published In:
Corpus studies of language through time: Special issue of the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 27:4 (2022)
Edited by Tony McEnery, Gavin Brookes and Isobelle Clarke
[International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 27:4] 2022
► pp. 506–528

New methods for analysing diachronic suffix competition across registers

How -ity gained ground on -ness in Early Modern English

ORCID logo | University of Oviedo
ORCID logo | University of Helsinki
ORCID logo | Aalto University

This paper tracks stylistic variation in the use of two roughly synonymous suffixes, the Romance -ity and the native -ness, during the Early Modern English period. We seek to verify from a statistical viewpoint the claims of Rodríguez-Puente (2020), who reports on a decrease of -ness in favour of -ity in registers representative of the speech-written and formal-informal continua at that time. To this end, we develop new methods of statistical and visual analysis that enable diachronic comparisons of competing processes across subcorpora, building upon an earlier method by Säily and Suomela (2009). Our results confirm that -ity gained ground first in written registers and then spread towards speech-related registers, and we are able to time this change more accurately thanks to a novel periodisation. We also provide strong statistical support indicating that the proportion of -ity was significantly higher in legal registers than in other registers.

Keywords: derivational morphology, Early Modern English, productivity, cross-register analysis, statistical analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.-Ity vs. -ness: The effect of register on their morphological productivity
    • 2.1Register variation
    • 2.2Morphological productivity
  • 3.Sources
  • 4.Methodology and analysis
    • 4.1Data collection and periodisation
    • 4.2Speech-related vs. writing-based and writing-purposed registers
    • 4.3Formal vs. informal registers and the role of legal texts
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 19 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22014.rod
References
ARCHER
(1990–1993/2002/2007/2010/2013) A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers. Originally compiled under the supervision of Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan (Northern Arizona University and University of Southern California). Modified and expanded by members of a consortium of universities. Current consortium members: Universities of Bamberg, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Helsinki, Lancaster, Leicester, Manchester, Michigan, Northern Arizona, Santiago de Compostela, Southern California, Trier, Uppsala, and Zurich. [URL]
Aronoff, M.
(1976) Word Formation in Generative Grammar. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Aronoff, M., & Anshen, F.
(1998) Morphology and the lexicon: Lexicalization and productivity. In A. Spencer & A. M. Zwicky (Eds.), The Handbook of Morphology (pp. 237–247). Blackwell.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H.
(1989) A Corpus-based Approach to Morphological Productivity. Statistical Analysis and Psycho-linguistic Interpretation [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Free University of Amsterdam.
(1992) Quantitative aspects of morphological productivity. In G. Booij & J. Van Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1991 (pp. 109–149). Kluwer Academic Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1993) On frequency, transparency and productivity. In G. Booij & J. Van Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1992 (pp. 181–208). Kluwer Academic Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., & Renouf, A.
(1996) Chronicling the Times: Productive lexical innovations in an English newspaper. Language, 72 (1), 69–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baeskow, H.
(2012) -Ness and -ity: Phonological exponents of n or meaningful nominalizers of different adjectival domains? Journal of English Linguistics, 40 (1), 6–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berg, K.
(2021) Productivity, vocabulary size, and new words. A response to Säily (2016). Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 17 (1), 177–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D.
(2012) Register as a predictor of linguistic variation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 8 (1), 9–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., & Conrad, S.
(2019) Register, Genre, and Style (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., & Egbert, J.
(2016) Register variation on the searchable web: A multi-dimensional analysis. Journal of English Linguistics, 44 (2), 95–137. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., & Finegan, E.
(1997) Diachronic relations among speech-based and written registers in English. In T. Nevalainen & L. Kahlas-Tarkka (Eds.), To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki LII, pp. 253–275). Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Biber, D., & Gray, B.
(2013) Being specific about historical change: The influence of sub-register. Journal of English Linguistics, 41 (2), 104–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) Grammatical Complexity in Academic English: Linguistic Change in Writing. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E.
(1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. L.
(1948) On defining the morpheme. Word, 4 1, 18–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cowie, C.
(1998) Diachronic Word-formation: A Corpus-based Study of Derived Nominalizations in the History of English [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Cambridge.
Cowie, C., & Dalton-Puffer, C.
(2002) Diachronic word-formation and studying changes in productivity over time: Theoretical and methodological considerations. In J. E. Díaz Vera (Ed.), A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics (pp. 410–437). Rodopi.Google Scholar
Culpeper, J., & Kytö, M.
(2010) Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dalton-Puffer, C.
(1996) The French Influence on Middle English Morphology: A Corpus-based Study of Derivation. Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Degaetano-Ortlieb, S., & Teich, E.
(2018) Using relative entropy for detection and analysis of periods of diachronic linguistic change. In B. Alex, S. Degaetano-Ortlieb, A. Feldman, A. Kazantseva, N. Reiter, & S. Szpakowicz (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature (LaTeCH-CLfL-2018) (ACL Anthology W18–45, pp. 22–33). Association for Computational Linguistics. [URL]Google Scholar
Gaeta, L., & Ricca, D.
(2006) Productivity in Italian word formation: A variable-corpus approach. Linguistics, 44 (1), 57–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gardner, A.-C.
(2014) Derivation in Middle English: Regional and Text Type Variation (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki XCII). Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Gray, B., & Egbert, J.
(2019) Register and register variation. Register Studies, 1 (1), 1–9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hundt, M., & Gardner, A.-C.
(2017) Corpus-based approaches: Watching English change. In L. J. Brinton (Ed.), English Historical Linguistics: Approaches and Perspectives (pp. 96–130). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kilgarriff, A.
(2005) Language is never, ever, ever, random. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 1 (2), 263–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kroch, A., Santorini, B., & Delfs, L.
(2004) Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME; 1st ed., release 3). Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. [URL]
Kytö, M.
(2019) Register in historical linguistics. Register Studies, 1 (1), 136–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kytö, M., & Culpeper, J.
(2006) A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. [URL]
Lindsay, M.
(2012) Rival suffixes: Synonymy, competition, and the emergence of productivity. In A. Ralli, G. Booij, S. Scalise, & A. Karasimos (Eds.), Morphology and the Architecture of Grammar: On-line Proceedings of the 8th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM8) (pp. 192–203). University of Patras.Google Scholar
Lindsay, M., & Aronoff, M.
(2013) Natural selection in self-organizing morphological systems. In N. Hathout, F. Montermini, & J. Tseng (Eds.), Morphology in Toulouse: Selected Proceedings of Décembrettes 7 (pp. 133–153). Lincom.Google Scholar
Marchand, H.
(1969) The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation (2nd ed.). C. H. Beck. (Original work published 1960)Google Scholar
McIntosh, C.
(1998) The Evolution of English Prose 1700–1900: Style, Politeness, and Print Culture. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, T.
(1999) Early Modern English lexis and semantics. In R. Lass (Ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, III: 1476–1776 (pp. 332–458). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Oxford University Press. [URL]
Oxford English Dictionary
OED Online. Oxford University Press. [URL]
Palmer, C. C.
(2009) Borrowings, Derivational Morphology, and Perceived Productivity in English, 1300–1600 [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. The University of Michigan.
(2015) Measuring productivity diachronically: Nominal suffixes in English letters, 1400–1600. English Language and Linguistics, 19 (1), 107–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plag, I.
(2003) Word-formation in English. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plag, I., Dalton-Puffer, C., & Baayen, H.
(1999) Morphological productivity across speech and writing. English Language and Linguistics, 3 (2), 209–228. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Riddle, E. M.
(1985) A historical perspective on the productivity of the suffixes -ness and -ity . In J. Fisiak (Ed.), Historical Semantics, Historical Word-formation (pp. 435–461). Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez-Puente, P.
(2020) Register variation in word-formation processes: The development of -ity and -ness in Early Modern English. International Journal of English Studies, 20 (2), 147–169. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez-Puente, P., Fanego, T., López-Couso, M. J., Méndez-Naya, B., Núñez-Pertejo, P., Blanco-García, C., & Tamaredo, I.
(2018) Corpus of Historical English Law Reports 1535–1999 (CHELAR; version 2). Research Unit for Variation, Linguistic Change and Grammaticalization, University of Santiago de Compostela.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Puente, P., Säily, T., & Suomela, J.
(2022) Data for the article “New methods for analysing historical suffix competition across registers” (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romaine, S.
(1985) Variability in word formation patterns and productivity in the history of English. In J. Fisiak (Ed.), Papers from the 6th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (pp. 451–465). John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Säily, T.
(2011) Variation in morphological productivity in the BNC: Sociolinguistic and methodological considerations. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 7 (1), 119–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Sociolinguistic Variation in English Derivational Productivity: Studies and Methods in Diachronic Corpus Linguistics. Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
(2016) Sociolinguistic variation in morphological productivity in eighteenth-century English. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 12 (1), 129–151. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) Change or variation? Productivity of the suffixes -ness and -ity . In T. Nevalainen, M. Palander-Collin, & T. Säily (Eds.), Patterns of Change in 18th-century English: A Sociolinguistic Approach (pp. 197–218). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Säily, T., & Suomela, J.
(2009) Comparing type counts: The case of women, men and -ity in early English letters. In A. Renouff & A. Kehoe (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics: Refinements and Reassessments (pp. 87–109). Rodopi.Google Scholar
Scott, M.
(2012) WordSmith Tools (Version 6) [Computer software]. Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar
Suomela, J.
(2022a) Code for the article “New methods for analysing diachronic suffix competition across registers” (Version 1.0.0). Zenodo. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2022b) TypeRatio: Comparing competing suffixes (Version 1.0.0) [Computer software]. Zenodo. DOI logoGoogle Scholar