Author: PhilSocUK

The Philological Society is the oldest learned society in Great Britain devoted to the scholarly study of language and languages. It is also a registered charity (no. 1014370). It was established in its present form in 1842, consisting partly of members of a society of the same name established at the University of London in 1830 “to investigate and promote the study and knowledge of the structure, the affinities, and the history of languages”. As well as encouraging all aspects of the study of language, PhilSoc has a particular interest in historical and comparative linguistics, and maintains its traditional interest in the structure, development, and varieties of Modern English.

Survey: Attitudes towards digital culture and technology in the Modern Foreign Languages

by Renata Brandão (King’s College London)

Looking at the history, present and future of ‘digital’ Modern Languages research, our strand, Digital Mediations, of the AHRC-funded Language Acts & Worldmaking project explores the effects of digital culture and technology upon Modern Language research, asking what kinds of ‘translation’ are performed as information enters and leaves the digital sphere.

As part of our research, we have just launched a survey of attitudes towards digital culture in the Modern Foreign Languages, with attention to both theory and practice, as part of the Language Acts & Worldmaking project, a flagship project funded by the AHRC Open World Research Initiative, which aims to regenerate and transform modern language learning. Please consider doing the survey if you work in Modern Languages. We would be very interested to hear about your experience.

The survey is aimed at people with any level of digital expertise, and whose work involves Modern Foreign Languages in any role (whether that be as researcher, learner, teacher, funder, policy-maker, digital practitioner, cultural practitioner or other).

For most participants, the survey will take about 15 minutes. For those who have strong involvement in digital theory or practice, you will be offered additional optional questions which might make the survey longer.

We will analyse the survey results for future presentation and publication—all results will be anonymised—and will present initial findings in the coming year.

The survey will be open until 31st May 2018.

To the survey ➡

This survey is part of a research project called ‘Modern Foreign Languages Research: Digital Mediations’ which was submitted to, and approved by, the King’s College Research Ethics committee under its Minimal Ethical Risk Registration Process (REC Reference Number: MR/17/18-280).

 If you have any questions, please contact Paul Spence at paul.spence@kcl.ac.uk.

 

TPS 116(1) – Abstract 6

Changes in status and paradigms? On subject pronouns in medieval French

by Michael Zimmermann (University of Konstanz)

This paper addresses the debate on the morpho‐syntactic status of subject pronouns in the pre‐modern stages of the French language by reinvestigating this issue along with that of the number of paradigms of such elements. On the basis of a collection of the various evidence provided in the literature as well as hitherto ignored and novel empirical insights, the paper discusses the different views put forward and essentially argues that, in its medieval stages, French had two paradigms of, respectively, strong and phonologically clitic subject pronouns. From this finding as well as standard assumptions on the modern (standard) stage of the language the paper eventually concludes that, diachronically, French evinces continuity, rather than changes regarding the two issues under investigation.

DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.12112

TPS 116(1) – Abstract 5

IE *peug′‐ /*peuk′‐ ‘to pierce’ in Celtic: Old Irish og ‘sharp point’, ogam, and uaigid ‘stitches’, Gallo‐Latin Mars Ugius, Old Welsh ‐ug and Middle Welsh ‐y ‘fist’, Middle Welsh vch ‘fox’, and ancient names like Uccius

by Patrick Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth University)

A systematic search for Celtic derivatives of IE *peug′‐ /*peuk′‐ ‘to pierce’ illustrates the extent to which Indo‐European etymological dictionaries have tended to overlook the existence of cognates in the Celtic languages.

DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.12107

TPS 116(1) – Abstract 4

Chinese cleft structures and the dynamics of processing

by Wei Liu (Beijing Jiaotong University) & Ruth Kempson (King’s College London)

This paper addresses the challenge of Chinese cleft structures, involving a pairing of the particles shi and de, which in different combinations display a variety of focus‐related effects and different potentials for ambiguity: clefts and pseudo‐clefts in particular differ only in order of the elements. We argue that retaining conventional assumptions necessarily involves positing unrelated structures and multiple ambiguities, leaving the systematicity of variation unexplained; and we go on to argue that it is only by turning to a dynamic framework in which syntax is defined as mechanisms for incremental build‐up of interpretation that an integrated characterisation of these effects is made possible. Adopting the Dynamic Syntax framework (Cann et al 2005), we argue that shi and de induce procedures for incremental build‐up of construal which feed and can be fed by other such procedures; and we show how the array of effects both in clefts and pseudo‐clefts can be shown to follow from the dynamics of building up interpretation reflecting online processing.

DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.12106

TPS 116(1) – Abstract 3

The Status of Passive Constructions in Old English

by Howard Jones (University of Oxford) & Morgan Macleod (University of Cambridge)

In Old English, passive‐type constructions involving a copula and a passive participle could be used to express both events and states. Two different types of copula are found in these constructions: weorðan, meaning ‘become’, and wesan and beon, meaning ‘be’. There has been some dispute as to how the meaning of these copulas relates to the meaning of the construction as a whole, in both its eventive and its stative uses, and whether any of these constructions was grammaticalized in the sense that its meaning was non‐compositional. We propose a semantic model that represents these constructions compositionally and test it against a selected corpus of Old English texts in order to address two questions: whether the data provide evidence of non‐compositional meaning that would suggest grammaticalization, and whether other factors are also responsible for the choice of copula. Our analysis suggests that the attested Old English passives are fully compatible with a compositional analysis; we also discuss additional semantic factors that may be responsible for the lower frequency of passives with weorðan.

DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.12101

TPS 116(1) – Abstract 2

Tracing The Development Of An Old Old Story: Intensificatory Repetition In English

by Victorina González‐Díaz (University of Liverpool)

The present paper explores the synchronic distribution and historical development of an intensificatory construction that has so far received little attention in previous literature on English; i.e. what Huddleston and Pullum (2002) label as INTENSIFICATORY REPETITION (e.g. old old story, long long way). Synchronically, the paper records the existence of two functional subtypes of repetitive intensification (affection and degree) and expands previous accounts by showing the functional versatility of the degree intensificatory subtype. At the diachronic level, the paper dates the establishment of (degree) intensificatory repetition to the Late Modern English (LModE) period. It also suggests that (a) intensificatory affection was the first repetitive (sub)type to develop in the language, and (b) that its collocational expansion from Early Modern English (EModE) onwards may have paved the way for the establishment of its degree intensification counterpart.

More generally, the paper shows that formulaic phraseology can contribute to the development of fully productive constructions and advocates the need for further study of ‘minor’ intensificatory constructions (such as the one explored here) and the way in which they may help to refine current standard descriptions of the English Noun Phrase.

DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.12114

TPS 116(1) – Abstract 1

Contrastive Feature Hierarchies in Old English Diachronic Phonology

by Elan Dresher (University of Toronto)

This article looks at the origins and uses of contrastive hierarchies in Old English diachronic phonology, with a focus on the development of West Germanic vowel systems. I begin with a rather enigmatic remark in Richard Hogg’s A grammar of Old English (1992), and attempt to trace its provenance. We will find that the trail leads back to analyses by some prominent scholars that make use of contrastive feature hierarchies. However, these analyses often appear without context or supporting framework. I will attempt to provide the missing framework and historical context for these analyses, while showing their value for understanding the development of phonological systems. I will show that behind these apparently isolated analyses there is a substantial theoretical edifice that once held a central role in synchronic as well as diachronic phonological theory, and which is still capable of providing insights into the workings of phonology.

DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.12105

Mechanising historical phonology

by Patrick Sims-Williams (Aberystwyth University)

The neogrammarian approach to historical phonology involves propounding sound-change laws and explaining exceptions by means such as sub-laws, rearranging the relative chronology, and appeal to special factors such as analogy, borrowing, incomplete lexical diffusion, and sporadic phenomena like metathesis. Progress is mostly made manually, but in the second half of the 20th century some linguists looked forward to the ‘triumph of the electronic neogrammarian’. Although this hasn’t been realized yet, I’ll argue that there are opportunities to make important advances with comparatively little effort.

This paper will be read at the Philological Society meeting in Cambridge, Selwyn College, Diamond Room, on Saturday, 10 March, 4.15pm.

In Memoriam Matti Rissanen

by Sylvia Adamson (University of Sheffield)

It is with great sadness that the Society has received news of the death of Matti Rissanen, Professor Emeritus of English Philology at the University of Helsinki, at the age of 80 on 24 January 2018.

varieng_matti_rissanen

A long-time member and supporter of the Philological Society, Matti Rissanen was a pioneer in English historical corpus linguistics, and the director of the project that produced the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, which covers a thousand years of the history of English and has been used widely since its publication in 1991.

Matti Rissanen was one of the rare scholars to command the history of the English language from its early stages to the present, beginning with his PhD thesis (1967) on the Old English numeral ONE. His wide range of publications includes a number of original articles and several co-edited volumes of corpus-based research, such as Early English in the Computer Age (1993), English in Transition and Grammaticalization at Work (1997), as well as the much cited chapter on ‘Early Modern English syntax’ in The Cambridge History of the English Language (vol. 3, 1999). Also taking an active interest in early American English, he was one of the international team that re-edited the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (2009).

His retirement in 2001 did not mark an end to his research activities. His philological expertise made an important contribution to the publication project that resulted in a new Finnish translation of all Shakespeare’s works. One of his long-lasting research interests was the history of English connectives, on which he was working to the very last days of his life.

Active in numerous professional organizations, Matti Rissanen served as president of the Societas Linguistica Europaea and chaired the Board of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME). He was the founder and first director of the Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English (VARIENG), an Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence from 2000 to 2011. He was also a driving force in the foundation of the Finnish Institute in London and the Language Centre of the University of Helsinki. In recognition of his achievements Matti Rissanen received many awards, including an honorary doctorate of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and being elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. He was an Honorary member of the Modern Language Society, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, and the Japan Association for English Corpus Studies.

On the personal level, Matti was supervisor to several generations of undergraduate and doctoral students in Helsinki, while providing unfailing encouragement and support to many more students and colleagues both in Finland and abroad. He will be greatly missed by his wide circle of friends.

Anyone who would like to share their memories and recollections of him is invited to do so by adding them as comments (in English or Finnish) to this VARIENG blog post.

This notice has been adapted, with permission, from the notice posted by Matti’s colleagues in Helsinki.