This article is a corpus-based investigation into the presence or absence of the conjunction þæt in dependent sentences containing a gif-clause in Old English and attempts in the process to shed light on the historical development of indirect speech. Encumbered by the addition of the gif-clause, a complex dependent sentence reveals facts about indirect speech that a simple dependent sentence cannot. Firstly, the article draws attention to a great number of instances of the zero form (the þæt-less construction) in which the dependent sentence is accompanied by a gif-clause, and, noting its structural similarity to direct speech, ascribes the zero form's origins to direct speech. Secondly, it is pointed out that in Old English, constructions with þæt still clearly reflect the influence of direct speech and closely resemble the zero form in structure. Thirdly, all this is attributed to the fact that OE prose was still unregularized and retained traits of spoken language, which may have made it difficult to accommodate a complex dependent sentence.

This article approaches the study of pragmatic meaning in English modal verbs like can, may, and shall in early eighteenth-century English prose using the techniques of corpus linguistic analysis, politeness theory, and social network analysis. The study is based on a quantitative survey of modal expressions across registers in a corpus of fourteen early eighteenth-century authors, which yields relative frequencies of occurrence according to genre and to author. Together with the sociohistorical information provided by the strategic coalitions constructed to develop, nurture and maintain relationships between clients and literary and political patrons, this survey provides the context for a pragmatic study of politeness strategies. The subsequent qualitative examination of letters in the oeuvres of selected authors yields a rich picture of individual pragmatic variation. The study reveals that although the corpus as a whole exhibits trends for different usages in different genres, the letters exhibit a predominance of modal expressions that may be used to index the facework involved in building and maintaining relationships of patronage. Within this genre, modal choice is influenced by a writer's sense of the relationship with the patron as well as the degree of risk and cost involved in the communication.

This article is an attempt to account for data, collected from twenty speakers of Tyneside English (TE), which seem to indicate that syllabification of the oral stops in certain positions in English is subject to dialectal variation, and that the issue of syllabification is closely linked to patterns of glottal reinforcement and glottal substitution in the TE variety. Models of syllable structure based on data from ‘standard’ accents such as Received Pronunciation (RP) therefore fail to account for patterns in nonstandard varieties. In what follows, I propose some revisions to the RP-based account provided in Giegerich (1999) which are necessary to account for the TE data and, furthermore, I emphasize the need for a more holistic approach to studies of variation, which attempts to synthesize structural and sociolinguistic principles.

This article surveys the debate on the origin of periphrastic do, with particular attention to the hypothesis that Celtic languages might have exerted some influence. With respect to the facts, it is argued that there are various types of Celtic hypotheses and that one type is sensible, though unlikely to be proven and even less likely to be proven to be the only relevant factor. With respect to the debate itself, it is shown that a Celtic origin hypothesis is accepted more widely among non-British scholars, and we speculate why that might be the case.

The clear-cut distinction between free adjuncts and absolutes based on the presence in absolutes of an overt subject different from the subject of the matrix clause, as opposed to the covert subject – controlled by the subject of the matrix clause – of free adjuncts, does not always hold. While it is generally agreed that unrelated free adjuncts are fairly frequent in Present-day English (PE), absolutes whose subject is identical to that of the matrix clause are regarded as obsolete (Jespersen, 1909–49; Kortmann, 1991; Söderlind, 1958; Visser, 1963–73). However, no statistical evidence has been provided on this topic for earlier stages of the history of English. This article quantitatively assesses whether the various degrees of relatedness observed in Early Modern English (EModE) coincide with those attested for PE, and concludes that the boundaries between free adjuncts and absolutes were considerably fuzzier in EModE, a phenomenon to which punctuation decisively contributed.

The phenomenon of Definite Article Reduction (DAR) is the realization of the definite article in northern British English dialects in a range of vowel-less forms, usually written t' in literature. The origin of DAR is assumed to be the assimilation of the initial fricative of the Middle English definite article þe to produce a te form, a sound change recorded for many dialects of Middle English. This article examines the validity of this hypothesis by analysing the distribution of fricative allomorphs in the modern dialects in comparison with the details of the Middle English change. The predicted distribution of fricative forms is not found at most localities, indicating that the development hypothesis is incorrect, but the available data are too scanty to suggest an alternative model.

Unless-constructions have often been compared with conditionals. It was noted that unless can in most cases be paraphrased with if not, but that its meaning resembles that of except if (Geis, 1973; von Fintel, 1991). Initially, it was also assumed that, unlike if-conditionals, unless-sentences with counterfactual (or irrealis) meanings are not acceptable. In recent studies by Declerck and Reed (2000, 2001), however, the acceptability of such sentences was demonstrated and a new analysis was proposed.

The present article argues for an account of irrealis unless-sentences in terms of epistemic distance and mental space embeddings. First, the use of verb forms in irrealis sentences is described as an instance of the use of distanced forms, which are widely used in English to mark hypotheticality. In the second part, the theory of mental spaces is introduced and applied to show how different mental space set-ups (in conjunction with distanced forms) account for the construction of different hypothetical meanings. The so-called irrealis unless-sentences are then interpreted as a number of instances of mental space embeddings. Finally, it is shown how the account proposed explains the fact that some unless-constructions can be paraphrased only with if not while others only with except if.