Chaucer's Colloquial English: Its Structural Traits

Schlauch, Margaret

doi:10.2307/459962

Cited by 30 publications

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“…It is generally assumed that Chaucer and the Wakefield playwright juxtapose and harmonise colloquial speech with poetic language. As regards CT, Schlauch (1952) suggests that Chaucer's colloquial idiom is achieved by means of syntactical "looseness", repetition, ellipsis, and "overlapping and shifted constructions". From a textual perspective, Lewis (1982) considers that Chaucer uses a "direct discourse" by juxtaposing courtly and colloquial language.…”

Section: Corpora and Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 97%

Collocations in Law Texts in Late Middle English: Some Evidence Concerning Adverbs Ending in-lī

Iglesias-Rábade

2011

Studia Neophilologica

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The numerous large-scale research projects in progress focusing on the phraseology of modern languages evince the scholarly fascination for word-combinations because of their acknowledged relevance in both theoretical and applied linguistics. The reasons why some words tend to associate with others in a given order and at a given time in the history of a language are still a matter of conjecture. However, it is generally assumed that, whatever the circumstances of mental organisation turn out to be for speakers to associate some words, word-combinations must have ultimately developed in a cultural framework and been more dependent on lingo-cultural domains than on a statistical probability of co-occurrence.The aim of this paper is to study the collocational patterns of adverbs ending in -lī in a legal corpus of late Middle English. The findings will be contrasted with the data from a contemporary corpus of literary works. This literary corpus has been chosen as representative of a language which is supposed to be spoken and understood by lower and upper-middle classes alike by the end of the Middle English period. By comparing the legal corpus with the literary one, I intend to support the idea that the collocational evidence shown in this work also sets legalese apart from other varieties of Middle English.The study of set phrases, of which collocations are a subclass, introduces an interesting scholarly debate about the terminological character of the general categories and subcategories of phraseology. 1 With regard to the general categories of the phraseological system, Mel'čuk (1998: 24-30) uses the terms "set phrases" or "phrasemes" to refer to the total catalogue of word combinations. For Gläser (1998: 126) the whole inventory of idioms and phrases ("phrasicon") of a language is constituted by "phraseological units", whereas Cowie (1998: 5) andHowarth (1996) use the term "word combination". These general categories of the phraseological system may operate either as word-like units, organised at or below the level of the simple sentence, providing a specific semantic role, or as sentence-like units endowed with a pragmatic function. Mel'čuk (1988Mel'čuk ( , 1998 considers that word-like units are "semantic phrasemes", Gläser (1988Gläser ( , 1998 includes them under the term of "nomination", whereas Cowie (1988) calls them "composite" and Howarth (1996) "composite units". In contrast, the sentence-like units are identified as "pragmatemes"

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Section: Corpora and Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 97%

Collocations in Law Texts in Late Middle English: Some Evidence Concerning Adverbs Ending in-lī

Iglesias-Rábade

2011

Studia Neophilologica

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A Humanizing Literary Pragmatics

Sell

2019

FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures

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A Middle English Syntax

Mustanoja¹

2016

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For a good orientation into the history of English grammar, several books are indispensable. One of those is Mustanoja’s A Middle English Syntax. However, for a long time this work was not readily available; the present edition changes that. This is a fac simile reprint from the 1960 publication which appeared as volume XXIII in ‘Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki’, with a new Introduction by Elly van Gelderen. Compared to Old English, Middle English has fewer grammars and textbooks devoted to it. This book provides an interesting supplement by going deeper into certain questions and, especially, into exceptions. The book points out differences with Old English and certain peculiarities of the Middle English system. It was originally written for students of Middle English literature but serves a linguist well in detailed descriptions of the parts of speech, the use of the various cases, gender, and number. Word order, complex sentences, and conjunctions were meant to be dealt with in a second volume, which was never published.

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Chaucer's Colloquial English: Its Structural Traits

Cited by 30 publications

References 0 publications

Collocations in Law Texts in Late Middle English: Some Evidence Concerning Adverbs Ending in-lī

Collocations in Law Texts in Late Middle English: Some Evidence Concerning Adverbs Ending in-lī

A Humanizing Literary Pragmatics

A Middle English Syntax

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