Syntactic Change in Late Modern English
eBook - PDF

Syntactic Change in Late Modern English

Studies on Colloquialization and Densification

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Syntactic Change in Late Modern English

Studies on Colloquialization and Densification

About this book

Syntactic Change in Late Modern English presents a stability paradox to linguists; despite the many social changes that took place between 1700 and 1900, the language appeared to be structurally stable during this period. This book resolves this paradox by presenting a new, idiolect-centred perspective on language change, and shows how this framework is applicable to change in any language. It then demonstrates how an idiolect-centred framework can be reconciled with corpus-linguistic methodology through four original case studies. These concern colloquialization (the process by which oral features spread to writing) and densification (the process by which meaning is condensed into shorter linguistic units), two types of change that characterize Modern English. The case studies also shed light on the role of genre and gender in language change and contribute to the discussion of how to operationalize frequency in corpus linguistics. This study will be essential reading for researchers in historical linguistics, corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics.

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Yes, you can access Syntactic Change in Late Modern English by Erik Smitterberg in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Historical & Comparative Linguistics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title page
  3. Series page
  4. Title page
  5. Copyright page
  6. Contents
  7. List of Figures
  8. List of Tables
  9. Acknowledgements
  10. Chapter 1 Introduction
  11. Chapter 2 Sociocultural and Linguistic Change in Late Modern English
  12. Chapter 3 Aspects of Language Change
  13. Chapter 4 Methodological Framework
  14. Chapter 5 Colloquialization I: Not-Contraction
  15. Chapter 6 Colloquialization II: Co-ordination by And
  16. Chapter 7 Densification I: Nouns as Premodifiers in Noun Phrases
  17. Chapter 8 Densification II: Participle Clauses as Postmodifiers in Noun Phrases
  18. Chapter 9 Concluding Discussion
  19. Appendix
  20. References
  21. Index