Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T16:59:59.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conjuncts in nineteenth-century English: diachronic development and genre diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2014

PETER J. GRUND  and
ERIK SMITTERBERG
PETER J. GRUND
Affiliation:
Department of English, Wescoe Hall Rm. 3001, University of Kansas, 1445 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS 66045, [email protected]
ERIK SMITTERBERG
Affiliation:
Department of English, Uppsala University, PO Box 527, SE-751 20 Uppsala, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the use of connective adverbials or conjuncts (e.g. therefore, on the other hand, firstly) in nineteenth-century English. Drawing on A Corpus of Nineteenth-Century English (CONCE), the study focuses on charting change over time and variation among different genres, and considers the distribution of various semantic types (e.g. contrastive, resultive) as well as individual conjuncts and author styles. We show that nineteenth-century English displays considerable genre differentiation in the use of conjuncts, both in terms of frequency and semantic types of conjuncts employed. Within these larger trends, patterns are also evident for individual conjuncts (e.g. now, therefore, so) and individual authors (e.g. in Letters). Science writing, in particular, reveals a drastic increase in conjuncts (in nearly all semantic types), which sets it apart from other genres. This suggests that the conjunct-heavy style of academic writing that has been attested in studies of Present-Day English was established in the nineteenth century. On a more general level, this result underlines the importance of considering formal genres when charting language change, as they may be in the forefront of the formation of new linguistic patterns that are unique to written texts. The article also contributes to our growing understanding of Late Modern English syntax.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 157 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aijmer, Karin. 2002. English discourse particles: Evidence from a corpus. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altenberg, Bengt. 1984. Causal linking in spoken and written English. Studia Linguistica 38 (1), 20–69.Google Scholar
Altenberg, Bengt. 1986. Contrastive linking in spoken and written English. In Tottie & Bäcklund (eds.), 13–40.Google Scholar
Altenberg, Bengt. 1999. Adverbial connectors in English and Swedish: Semantic and lexical correspondences. In Hasselgård & Oksefjell (eds.), 249–68.Google Scholar
Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar & Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. 2002. On the development of final though: A case of grammaticalization? In Wischer & Diewald (eds.), 345–61.Google Scholar
Bell, David M. 2004. Correlative and non-correlative ‘on the other hand’. Journal of Pragmatics 36 (12), 2179–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, David M. 2010. Nevertheless, still and yet: Concessive cancellative discourse markers. Journal of Pragmatics 42 (7), 1912–27.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Finegan, Edward. 1997. Diachronic relations among speech-based and written registers in English. In Nevalainen & Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.), 253–75.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Gray, Bethany. 2010. Challenging stereotypes about academic writing: Complexity, elaboration, explicitness. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 9, 2–20.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Gray, Bethany. 2011. Grammatical change in the noun phrase: The influence of written language use. English Language and Linguistics 15 (2), 223–50.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar
Borkin, Ann. 1979. Antithetic conjuncts in written English. RELC Journal 10 (2), 44–56.Google Scholar
Borkin, Ann. 1980. On some conjuncts signalling dissonance in written expository English. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 12, 47–59.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. 1996. Pragmatic markers in English: Grammaticalization and discourse functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charles, Maggie, Pecorari, Diane & Hunston, Susan (eds.). 2009. Academic writing: At the interface of corpus and discourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Defour, Tine. 2008. ‘And so now. . .’: The grammaticalisation and (inter)subjectification of now. In Nevalainen et al. (eds.), 17–36.Google Scholar
Denison, David & Hundt, Marianne. 2013. Defining relatives. Journal of English Linguistics 41 (2), 135–67.Google Scholar
Dorgeloh, Heidrun. 2004. Conjunction in sentence and discourse: Sentence-initial and and discourse structure. Journal of Pragmatics 36, 1761–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finell, Anne. 1992. The repertoire of topic changers in personal, intimate letters: A diachronic study of Osborne and Woolf. In Rissanen et al. (eds.), 720–35.Google Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1999. What are discourse markers? Journal of Pragmatics 31 (7), 931–52.Google Scholar
Gardezi, S. Amina & Nesi, Hilary. 2009. Variation in the writing of economics students in Britain and Pakistan: The case of conjunctive ties. In Charles et al. (eds.), 236–50.Google Scholar
Geisler, Christer. 2002. Investigating register variation in nineteenth-century English: A multi-dimensional comparison. In Reppen et al. (eds.), 249–71.Google Scholar
Greenbaum, Sidney. 1969. Studies in English adverbial usage. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.Google Scholar
Gustafsson, Larisa Oldireva. 2006. The passive in nineteenth-century scientific writing. In Kytö et al. (eds.), 110–35.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. 1994. An introduction to functional grammar, 2nd edn. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. & Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Haselow, Alexander. 2011. Discourse marker and modal particle: The functions of utterance-final then in spoken English. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (14), 3603–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haselow, Alexander. 2012. Discourse organization and the rise of final then in the history of English. In Hegedűs & Fodor (eds.), 153–75.Google Scholar
Hasselgård, Hilde. 2010. Adjunct adverbials in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hasselgård, Hilde & Oksefjell, Signe (eds.). 1999. Out of corpora: Studies in honour of Stig Johansson. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Hegedűs, Irén & Fodor, Alexandra (eds.). 2012. English historical linguistics 2010: Selected papers from the sixteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 16), Pécs, 23–27 August 2010. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Hickey, Raymond (ed.). 2010. Eighteenth-century English: Ideology and change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey K.et al. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 2005. Metadiscourse: Exploring interaction in writing. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. & Ziv, Yael. 1998. Discourse markers: Introduction. In Jucker & Ziv (eds.), 1–12.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. & Ziv, Yael (eds.). 1998. Discourse markers: Descriptions and theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kytö, Merja, Rudanko, Juhani & Smitterberg, Erik. 2000. Building a bridge between the present and the past: A corpus of 19th-century English. ICAME Journal 24, 85–97.Google Scholar
Kytö, Merja, Rydén, Mats & Smitterberg, Erik (eds.). 2006. Nineteenth-century English: Stability and change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lenk, Uta. 1998. Marking discourse coherence: Functions of discourse markers in spoken English. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Lenker, Ursula. 2010. Argument and rhetoric: Adverbial connectors in the history of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenker, Ursula. 2011. A focus on adverbial connectors: Connecting, partitioning and focusing attention in the history of English. In Meurman-Solin & Lenker (eds.), n.p.Google Scholar
Lindquist, Hans. 1989. English adverbials in translation: A corpus study of Swedish renderings. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Lindquist, Hans & Mair, Christian (eds.). 2004. Corpus approaches to grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian & Hundt, Marianne (eds.). 2000. Corpus linguistics and linguistic theory: Papers from the twentieth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 20). Freiburg im Breisgau 1999. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markus, Manfred. 2000. Wherefore therefore: Causal connectives in Middle English prose as opposed to Present-Day English. In Mair & Hundt (eds.), 215–32.Google Scholar
Markus, Manfred, Iyeiri, Yoko, Heuberger, Reinhard & Chamson, Emil (eds.). 2012. Middle and Modern English corpus linguistics: A multi-dimensional approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Meurman-Solin, Anneli. 2011. Utterance-initial connective elements in early Scottish epistolary prose. In Meurman-Solin & Lenker (eds.), n.p. www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/08/meurman-solin/Google Scholar
Meurman-Solin, Anneli & Lenker, Ursula (eds.). 2011. Connectives in synchrony and diachrony in European languages. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/08/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Mittwoch, Anita, Huddleston, Rodney & Collins, Peter. 2002. The clause: Adjuncts. In Huddleston & Pullum et al., 663–784.Google Scholar
Morrow, Phillip R. 1989. Conjunct use in business news stories and academic journal articles: A comparative study. English for Specific Purposes 8, 239–54.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu & Kahlas-Tarkka, Leena (eds.). 1997. To explain the present: Studies in the changing English language in honour of Matti Rissanen. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, Taavitsainen, Irma, Pahta, Päivi & Korhonen, Minna (eds.). 2008. The dynamics of linguistic variation: Corpus evidence on English past and present. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Peters, Pam, Collins, Peter & Smith, Adam (eds.). 2009. Comparative studies in Australian and New Zealand English: Grammar and beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Peterson, Peter G. 2009. Commas and connective adverbs. In Peters et al. (eds.), 277–92.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Reppen, Randi, Fitzmaurice, Susan M. & Biber, Douglas (eds.). 2002. Using corpora to explore linguistic variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. 2004. Grammaticalisation from side to side: On the development of beside(s). In Lindquist & Mair (eds.), 151–70.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti, Ihalainen, Ossi, Nevalainen, Terttu & Taavitsainen, Irma (eds.). 1992. History of Englishes: New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shaw, Philip. 2009. Linking adverbials in student and professional writing in literary studies: What makes writing mature. In Charles et al. (eds.), 215–35.Google Scholar
Smitterberg, Erik. 2005. The progressive in 19th-century English: A process of integration. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Smitterberg, Erik. 2012. Colloquialization and NOT-contraction in nineteenth-century English. In Markus et al. (eds.), 191–206.Google Scholar
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid & van der Wurff, Wim (eds.). 2009. Current issues in Late Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Tottie, Gunnel & Bäcklund, Ingegerd (eds.). 1986. English in speech and writing. A symposium. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Ungerer, Friedrich. 1988. Syntax der englischen Adverbialen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Vandepitte, Sonia. 1993. A pragmatic study of the expression and the interpretation of causality: Conjuncts and conjunctions in modern spoken British English. Brussels: Paleis der Academiën.Google Scholar
Warner, Richard G. 1985. Discourse connectives in English. New York: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Williams, Howard A. 1996. An analysis of English conjunctive adverbial expressions. Unpublished PhD dissertation, UCLA.Google Scholar
Wischer, Ilse & Diewald, Gabriele (eds.). 2002. New reflections on grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeung, Lorrita. 2009. Use and misuse of ‘besides’: A corpus study comparing native speakers’ and learners’ English. System 37 (2), 330–42.Google Scholar