This paper examines the potential large diachronic corpora hold for the study of social change. Resources such as COHA or Google Books allow us to detect shifts in the frequencies of linguistic elements, which can then be interpreted as reflections of developments in society. This paper addresses the practicalities of this question in two parts. The theoretical part surveys a series of problems that need to be controlled for in analyses of diachronic textual data. The second part implements these ideas in a study of the English make-causative over the past 150 years. Examining the variables of animacy and verb semantics, the study explores whether the diminishing social value of interpersonal authority is reflected in changing patterns of language use.
This study addresses how societal and linguistic changes can be detected using historical corpora, with the topics of poverty and industrial revolution as a case study, based on large historical corpora, in particular EEBO, and CLMET3.0. The results, based on a rich array of state-of-the art statistical approaches (such as kernel density estimation), show how poverty, industrial revolution, and urbanization are associated through, for instance, the associations of war, religion, family, poverty, and suffering. The study also discusses the importance of data size and cleanness, the temptations of distant reading, and the necessity for validating the discovered patterns in close reading and distant reading in interaction.
This chapter examines, with the help of collocation analysis, how patients were viewed in medical texts from 1500 to 1800. Previous studies have suggested that this period witnessed considerable changes in society. The field of medicine also underwent major developments during this time, but linguistic analyses have been lacking. Two corpora were used in the study: the Corpus of Early Modern English Medical Texts and the Corpus of Late Modern English Medical Texts, together totaling over 4.2 million words. The results indicate a development from the patient as an object of various treatments and cures in the early modern period to patient as experiencer in the late modern period. The growing importance of hospitals and public health in the latter era also emerges from the results.
This study deals with contemporary real-world social change and its linguistic expression by means of neosemes, with the help of the WebCorpLSE automated collocation analysis software. The study briefly outlines the history and pattern of diffusion of each of the five user-defined neosemes, noting where possible the tipping point of popularization. We examine these modern neosemes in a series of case studies, focussing on the challenges faced in this task, for instance in the form of rarity of occurrence, as emergent or ephemeral formations. The functionality of the software is examined in each case, in order to demonstrate various measures which can be undertaken to allow or enhance its performance in teasing out collocational profiles from sparse data.
This chapter focuses on the ways in which non-native English speakers living in Britain are represented in the British press, and in particular on how these representations have changed between 2005 and 2017. Using a corpus-assisted approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, collocation patterns of the phrase speak English reveal that migrants are represented in different ways across the 13-year period, which sees the levels of blame, threat and exclusion levelled at migrants increase and change shape over the years. This chapter builds on previous work by the authors, and emphasizes the importance of re-visiting and adding to corpora when analyzing dynamic discourses, and identifies two different ways in which change can manifest in collocation analysis: through the identification of occasional ‘seasonal’ collocates, and via consistent collocates being part of different representational patterns.
This chapter investigates the meanings and functions of the intensifier absolutely, both synchronically and diachronically. The research questions are asked against the background of absolutely becoming more frequent over a short period of time as shown by a comparison of the BNC1994 and the BNC2014. The results show that the developments undergone by absolutely can be described as a trajectory from degree modifier to emphasizer and to discourse marker, as absolutely increases in subjectivity. The description of the semantic and pragmatic developments also requires a sociolinguistic analysis of factors such as age and gender. The analysis shows that young speakers use it less often than older speakers and that it was first used by male speakers and only later by females.
This chapter presents a corpus-based study on the origin and development of two death-related intensifiers: the adjectives and adverbs deadly and mortal. The historical sources consulted reveal that these forms have progressively adopted more general meanings, that is, they have come to be grammaticalized as intensifiers over time. Two semantic variables, type of meaning (descriptive, affective, or intensifying, along the lines of Adamson 2000) and semantic prosody (Stubbs 1995), were central to the collocational diachronic analysis undertaken here. The study focuses on British English and covers the history of deadly and mortal from their origins in Old English and Middle English, respectively, to the 20th century.
This chapter traces the increase of -ingly adverbs from Late Middle to Early Modern English. Not only the frequency and versatility but also the functions of -ingly adverbs expanded in this period: from the modification of adjectives, adverbs, and verbs (found both in the Middle and Early Modern English data) to the modification of the whole sentence (found only in the Early Modern English data). Sentential adverbs of the commenting type (disjuncts) are still absent throughout the entire period of this study. Finally, this chapter discusses some -ingly adverbs of the so-called “Harry Potter” type, suggesting that their development is earlier than assumed in previous studies.
This study examines the diachronic development of amplification of adjectives in American English (AmE), specifically in the fiction section of the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). The results show that amplifier use in attributive contexts remains stable, while, in predicative contexts, so has increased significantly since the 1980s and has replaced very as the dominant amplifier. This development contrasts with ongoing change in other regional varieties of English where really, rather than so, has become the dominant amplifier of adjectives during the latter half of the 20th century. The results show that so and very are semantically highly similar and that the increase in so is mostly based on its co-occurrence with good.
That is not to say (that) is an introductory clause refuting an inference that could be drawn from the previous discourse; it often occurs in a negative context (with a positive reading) and is characteristic of written genres, with lowest frequency in fiction. The earliest examples date from the 16th century but the next examples found date from the mid- to late-19th century. The gap in the corpus data may be explained by the predominantly fiction/drama make-up of available corpora. The development of that is not to say (that) is not an entirely prototypical case of grammaticalization as certain parameters (loss of that, contracted forms) are inconclusive and there are no ‘lexical’ uses of the form and hence no ‘divergence’.
This chapter seeks to establish if the Transitivity Hypothesis (Hopper & Thompson 1980) can explain the variation in the use of two reflexive strategies with the verb sit in Early Modern English (e.g. I sat me down/I sat myself down) and the verb’s subsequent transitivization (e.g. he sat me down). By studying data from large historical corpora, we will re-evaluate the results of earlier research and establish why sit continued to be used with the simple reflexive strategy (i.e. with object pronouns) until the Late Modern period. In our analysis of the transitivization of sit (down), we focus on both micro-level semantic and syntactic factors and more general developments that have supported the transitivization of verbs in Late Modern English.
This paper examines the potential large diachronic corpora hold for the study of social change. Resources such as COHA or Google Books allow us to detect shifts in the frequencies of linguistic elements, which can then be interpreted as reflections of developments in society. This paper addresses the practicalities of this question in two parts. The theoretical part surveys a series of problems that need to be controlled for in analyses of diachronic textual data. The second part implements these ideas in a study of the English make-causative over the past 150 years. Examining the variables of animacy and verb semantics, the study explores whether the diminishing social value of interpersonal authority is reflected in changing patterns of language use.
This study addresses how societal and linguistic changes can be detected using historical corpora, with the topics of poverty and industrial revolution as a case study, based on large historical corpora, in particular EEBO, and CLMET3.0. The results, based on a rich array of state-of-the art statistical approaches (such as kernel density estimation), show how poverty, industrial revolution, and urbanization are associated through, for instance, the associations of war, religion, family, poverty, and suffering. The study also discusses the importance of data size and cleanness, the temptations of distant reading, and the necessity for validating the discovered patterns in close reading and distant reading in interaction.
This chapter examines, with the help of collocation analysis, how patients were viewed in medical texts from 1500 to 1800. Previous studies have suggested that this period witnessed considerable changes in society. The field of medicine also underwent major developments during this time, but linguistic analyses have been lacking. Two corpora were used in the study: the Corpus of Early Modern English Medical Texts and the Corpus of Late Modern English Medical Texts, together totaling over 4.2 million words. The results indicate a development from the patient as an object of various treatments and cures in the early modern period to patient as experiencer in the late modern period. The growing importance of hospitals and public health in the latter era also emerges from the results.
This study deals with contemporary real-world social change and its linguistic expression by means of neosemes, with the help of the WebCorpLSE automated collocation analysis software. The study briefly outlines the history and pattern of diffusion of each of the five user-defined neosemes, noting where possible the tipping point of popularization. We examine these modern neosemes in a series of case studies, focussing on the challenges faced in this task, for instance in the form of rarity of occurrence, as emergent or ephemeral formations. The functionality of the software is examined in each case, in order to demonstrate various measures which can be undertaken to allow or enhance its performance in teasing out collocational profiles from sparse data.
This chapter focuses on the ways in which non-native English speakers living in Britain are represented in the British press, and in particular on how these representations have changed between 2005 and 2017. Using a corpus-assisted approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, collocation patterns of the phrase speak English reveal that migrants are represented in different ways across the 13-year period, which sees the levels of blame, threat and exclusion levelled at migrants increase and change shape over the years. This chapter builds on previous work by the authors, and emphasizes the importance of re-visiting and adding to corpora when analyzing dynamic discourses, and identifies two different ways in which change can manifest in collocation analysis: through the identification of occasional ‘seasonal’ collocates, and via consistent collocates being part of different representational patterns.
This chapter investigates the meanings and functions of the intensifier absolutely, both synchronically and diachronically. The research questions are asked against the background of absolutely becoming more frequent over a short period of time as shown by a comparison of the BNC1994 and the BNC2014. The results show that the developments undergone by absolutely can be described as a trajectory from degree modifier to emphasizer and to discourse marker, as absolutely increases in subjectivity. The description of the semantic and pragmatic developments also requires a sociolinguistic analysis of factors such as age and gender. The analysis shows that young speakers use it less often than older speakers and that it was first used by male speakers and only later by females.
This chapter presents a corpus-based study on the origin and development of two death-related intensifiers: the adjectives and adverbs deadly and mortal. The historical sources consulted reveal that these forms have progressively adopted more general meanings, that is, they have come to be grammaticalized as intensifiers over time. Two semantic variables, type of meaning (descriptive, affective, or intensifying, along the lines of Adamson 2000) and semantic prosody (Stubbs 1995), were central to the collocational diachronic analysis undertaken here. The study focuses on British English and covers the history of deadly and mortal from their origins in Old English and Middle English, respectively, to the 20th century.
This chapter traces the increase of -ingly adverbs from Late Middle to Early Modern English. Not only the frequency and versatility but also the functions of -ingly adverbs expanded in this period: from the modification of adjectives, adverbs, and verbs (found both in the Middle and Early Modern English data) to the modification of the whole sentence (found only in the Early Modern English data). Sentential adverbs of the commenting type (disjuncts) are still absent throughout the entire period of this study. Finally, this chapter discusses some -ingly adverbs of the so-called “Harry Potter” type, suggesting that their development is earlier than assumed in previous studies.
This study examines the diachronic development of amplification of adjectives in American English (AmE), specifically in the fiction section of the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). The results show that amplifier use in attributive contexts remains stable, while, in predicative contexts, so has increased significantly since the 1980s and has replaced very as the dominant amplifier. This development contrasts with ongoing change in other regional varieties of English where really, rather than so, has become the dominant amplifier of adjectives during the latter half of the 20th century. The results show that so and very are semantically highly similar and that the increase in so is mostly based on its co-occurrence with good.
That is not to say (that) is an introductory clause refuting an inference that could be drawn from the previous discourse; it often occurs in a negative context (with a positive reading) and is characteristic of written genres, with lowest frequency in fiction. The earliest examples date from the 16th century but the next examples found date from the mid- to late-19th century. The gap in the corpus data may be explained by the predominantly fiction/drama make-up of available corpora. The development of that is not to say (that) is not an entirely prototypical case of grammaticalization as certain parameters (loss of that, contracted forms) are inconclusive and there are no ‘lexical’ uses of the form and hence no ‘divergence’.
This chapter seeks to establish if the Transitivity Hypothesis (Hopper & Thompson 1980) can explain the variation in the use of two reflexive strategies with the verb sit in Early Modern English (e.g. I sat me down/I sat myself down) and the verb’s subsequent transitivization (e.g. he sat me down). By studying data from large historical corpora, we will re-evaluate the results of earlier research and establish why sit continued to be used with the simple reflexive strategy (i.e. with object pronouns) until the Late Modern period. In our analysis of the transitivization of sit (down), we focus on both micro-level semantic and syntactic factors and more general developments that have supported the transitivization of verbs in Late Modern English.