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Article published In:
Dialogues in Diachrony: Celebrating Historical Corpora of Speech-related Texts
Edited by Merja Kytö and Terry Walker
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 19:2] 2018
► pp. 286–301

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

| University of Helsinki

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.

Keywords: Corpus of English Dialogues , English historical corpora, temporal adverbial links
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Old English
  • 3.Middle and Early Modern English
  • 4. Corpus of English Dialogues
  • 5.Other Modern English corpora
  • 6.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • Corpora
  • References
Published online: 1 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00023.ris
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