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- Volume 9, Issue, 2008
Journal of Historical Pragmatics - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2008
Volume 9, Issue 2, 2008
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The pragmatics of and-conjunctives in Middle English medical recipes: A Relevance Theory description
Author(s): Francisco Alonso-Almeidapp.: 171–199 (29)More LessThe present paper seeks to explore the multiple meanings of the conjunction and in Middle English medical recipes. The corpus used contains a total number of 6,300 words, mainly from the Middle English Medical Texts compiled by Taavitsainen, Pahta and Mäkinen (2005). The framework of analysis is Relevance Theory as in Sperber and Wilson (1995). Jucker (1993), Blakemore and Carston (1999), and Carston (2002) have proved that this theory can neatly describe the various functions and meanings of discourse markers, such as and, but and well. As I show in the conclusion, and constructions must be studied in detail so that we may identify their particular meaning, which is mostly context-dependent rather than semantically constrained. By doing so, we will have a better understanding of texts and this will benefit the comprehension of medieval English. Whether the meanings of and occur similarly in other genres is left for a future, contrastive analysis.
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The directionality of grammaticalization in Spanish
Author(s): Concepción Company Companypp.: 200–224 (25)More LessThe paper examines three directions of grammaticalization by subjectification. Using the general cline Grammar > Discourse and Discourse > Grammar or Grammar ↔ Discourse, Spanish shows three types of diachronic subjectification, going in three different directions: (1) Grammar > Grammar; (2) Grammar > Discourse; (3) Grammar > Discourse > and again Grammar. Directions 1 and 2 are well known; direction 3, as far as I know, is unknown in the literature about grammaticalization. (1) Initiates in the Grammar, at the textual-syntactic level, and continues to function in the Grammar, with a different distribution and different syntactic-semantic properties as regards its etymon. (2) Begins in the Grammar, cancels the syntactic and morphological capacities of the etymon, produces syntactic isolation and widening of scope and results in the creation of autonomous forms which work at the discourse level. (3) Begins in the Grammar, goes to the Discourse via the cancellation of the morphological and syntactic capacities of the objective form, widens its scope and results in an autonomous form. Once it has operated in the Discourse, it returns to the Grammar, narrowing its scope, taking a new grammatical role again, and paradigmatizing with other forms. The form preserves the subjective meaning of the second stage. The process in all cases is semantically the same: the speaker’s appraisals, points of view and attitudes about the event and his/her interaction with regard to the hearer find explicit codification in grammar, becoming a coded and highly-conventionalized meaning in the grammar of a language (Traugott 1995b, 1999), but the direction of the change is different in each case. Subjectification looks like a multi-dimensional process, not a unidirectional one.
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From the bridal letter to online flirting: Changes in text type from the nineteenth century to the Internet era
Author(s): Eva L. Wysspp.: 225–254 (30)More LessOver the past two centuries concepts of love, as well as the nature of intimate relations, have undergone modifications. Along with these modifications, the language of desire, the text type of the love letter and love-letter writing practice have changed as well. It is therefore surprising that certain elements of the correspondence between prospective brides and grooms of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie seem today to be enjoying a comeback on the Internet. Some of the parameters, however, have changed. This essay will explore the similarities and differences of intimate literacy from a historical and pragmatic point of view. On the one hand it will discuss the text type in its pragmatic, textual, stylistic and medial aspects, and on the other hand it will focus on a number of distinct writing practices. The essay arises from a larger book project that investigates the interrelations among literary, social and technological change and persistence. In the context of this larger project, I have assembled a corpus of more than 7,500 love letters (letters, postcards, telegrams, e-mails and text messages) in the Zurich Love Letter Archive (ZLA). The empirical materials discussed here are drawn from this archive.
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The interlocking paths of development to emphasizer adjective pure
Author(s): Sigi Vandewinkel and Kristin Davidsepp.: 255–287 (33)More LessThis study deals with the emphasizing use of adjective pure, as in pure heaven, pure unbridled hell, which heightens the semantic specifications of the following nominal description. On the basis of close analysis of synchronic and diachronic data, it is argued that the peculiarities of Present-day emphasizer pure are the result of two distinct but mutually reinforcing paths of development. Emphasizing pure first appeared as a subjective heightener of emotion nouns in the syntactic environment pure + noun, in which it subsequently spread to other collocational sets. The contextual emphasizing use, e.g. in pure spirit, seems to have been a facilitating factor in this process. In the pattern pure and adjective + noun, the emphasizing use cropped up only at the end of Late Modern English as the result of leftward movement and subjectification (Adamson 2000), enabled by contextual modulation of pure by the other adjective. These two paths were linked by shared collocational sets such as the emotion nouns.
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A historical and collexeme analysis of the development of the compromiser fairly
Author(s): Hélène Margeriepp.: 288–314 (27)More LessThis paper discusses the historical evolution of fairly as a compromiser. Rather, which had already developed into a compromiser by the time fairly started going down the same cline, provides the background for the study of the grammaticalisation of fairly. Based on electronic corpora, the distinctive collexeme analysis I propose (Stefanowitch and Gries 2003) focuses on the collocational preferences exhibited by the two compromisers when combining with an adjective, from the origins of fairly as a compromiser in the early nineteenth century to the present day. The difference in the polarity of the adjectives they modify indicates their complementary distribution. Finally the semantic origin of the two forms provides some insights into the specificities they developed as moderators, showing signs of persistence, as defined in the framework of grammaticalisation, and of subjectification (Traugott 1988, 1995).
Volumes & issues
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Volume 25 (2024)
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Volume 24 (2023)
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Volume 23 (2022)
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Volume 22 (2021)
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Volume 21 (2020)
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Volume 20 (2019)
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Volume 19 (2018)
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Volume 18 (2017)
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Volume 17 (2016)
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Volume 16 (2015)
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Volume 15 (2014)
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Volume 14 (2013)
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Volume 13 (2012)
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Volume 12 (2011)
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Volume 11 (2010)
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Volume 10 (2009)
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Volume 9 (2008)
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Volume 8 (2007)
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Volume 7 (2006)
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Volume 6 (2005)
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Volume 5 (2004)
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Volume 4 (2003)
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Volume 3 (2002)
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Volume 2 (2001)
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Volume 1 (2000)
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