Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:55:46.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A diachronic study of relative markers in spoken and written English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Catherine N. Ball
Catherine N. Ball
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although English relative clauses have been the subject of considerable research, few quantitative studies have traced their development over an extended period of time. The present study focuses on factors governing the choice of relative markers in restrictive relative clauses with relativized subjects from the 16th century to the present day, using both spoken and written data, and including non-standard and regional varieties. The study examines claims by Romaine (1982) that the wh-strategy has not affected spoken English, and that no major qualitative changes have occurred in the relative system since the early 16th century. The results, however, show that these claims are not correct: a major event occurred in the 17th century which had a significant impact on spoken and written English. Many areas are identified which merit further research.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , July 1996 , pp. 227 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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

Allen, H. B. (Ed.) (1975). The linguistic atlas of the Upper Midwest (2 vols.). University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Ball, C. N. (1994). Relative pronouns in it-clefts: The last seven centuries. Language Variation and Change 6:179–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bately, J. M. (1965). Who and which and the grammarians of the 17th century. English Studies 46:245–250.Google Scholar
Beaman, K. (1984). Coordination and subordination revisited: Syntactic complexity in spoken and written narrative discourse. In Tannen, D. (Ed.), Coherence in spoken and written discourse. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. 45–80.Google Scholar
Biber, D. (1986). Spoken and written textual dimensions in English. Language 62:384–414.Google Scholar
Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Biber, D., & Finegan, E. (1988). Historical drift in three English genres. In Walsh, T. (Ed.), Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics 1988. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 22–36.Google Scholar
Bond, D. F. (Ed.). (1965). The Spectator, Vol. I. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Boyer, P., & Nissenbaum, S. (Eds.). (1977). The Salem witchcraft papers: Verbatim transcripts of the legal documents of the Salem witchcraft outbreak of 1692, in three volumes. New York: Da Capo.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. L., Du Bois, J. W., & Thompson, S. A. (1991). Towards a new corpus of spoken American English. In Aijmer, K. & Altenberg, B. (Eds.), English corpus linguistics. London: Longman. 64–82.Google Scholar
Cofer, T. M. (1972). Linguistic variability in a Philadelphia speech community. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Cheshire, J. (1982). Variation in an English dialect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fowler, H. W. (1927). Modern English usage. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Fowler, H. W., & Fowler, F. G. (1973). The King's English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fox, B. A., & Thompson, S. A. (1990). A discourse explanation of the grammar of relative clauses in English conversation. Language 66:297–316.Google Scholar
Gepp, E., & Appleby, J. S. (Eds.). (1969). An Essex dialect dictionary. Wakefield, Yorkshire: S.R. Publishers.Google Scholar
Hackenberg, R. (1972). Appalachian English: A sociolinguistic study. Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Hargrave, F. (Ed.). (1776). A complete collection of state-trials and proceedings for high-treason and other crimes and misdemeanors, Vol. 3. London: Wright.Google Scholar
Hargrave, F. (Ed.). (1777). A complete collection of state-trials and proceedings for high-treason and other crimes and misdemeanors, Vol. 4. London: Wright.Google Scholar
Hatcher, A. G. (1948). From Ce suis je to C'est moi (the ego as subject and as predicative in Old French). Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 63:1053–1100.Google Scholar
Hedevind, B. (1967). The dialect of Dentdale in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Uppsala: Appelbergs Boktryckeri.Google Scholar
Hughes, A., & Trudgill, P. (1979). English accents and dialects: An introduction to social and regional varieties of British English. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Ihalainen, O. (1980). Relative clauses in the dialect of Somerset. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 81:187–196.Google Scholar
Kerl, S. (1878). A common-school grammar of the English language. Facsimile edition 1985, New York: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints.Google Scholar
Kikai, A., Schleppegrell, M., & Tagliamonte, S. (1987). The influence of syntactic position on relativization strategies. In Denning, K., Inkelas, S., McNair-Knox, F., & Rickford, J. (Eds.), Variation in language: NWAV-XV at Stanford. 266–277.Google Scholar
Lubell, J., Sheridan, R., & Slosser, R. (Eds.). (1973). The Watergate hearings. New York: Bantam.Google Scholar
Lumsden, M. (1988). Existential sentences: Their structure and meaning. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Macaulay, R. K. S. (1991). Locating dialect in discourse: The language of honest men and bonnie lasses in Ayr. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mesthrie, R., & Dunn, T. T. (1990). Syntactic variation in language shift: The relative clause in South African Indian English. Language Variation and Change 2:31–56.Google Scholar
Montgomery, M. (1989). The standardization of English relative clauses. In Trahern, J. (Ed.), Standardizing English: Essays in the history of language change. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Olofsson, A. (1981). Relative junctions in written American English. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Google Scholar
Orton, H., & Barry, M. (Eds.). (1971). Survey of English dialects. vol. 2, part 3: The West Midland counties. Leeds: E.J. Arnold & Son.Google Scholar
Orton, H., & Halliday, W. (Eds.). (1963). Survey of English dialects. vol. 1, part 3: The Six Northern counties and the Isle of Man. Leeds: E.J. Arnold & Son.Google Scholar
Orton, H., Sanderson, S., & Widdowson, J. (Eds.). (1978). The linguistic atlas of England. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Orton, H., & Tilling, P. (Eds.). (1971). Survey of English dialects. vol. 3, part 3: The East Midland counties and East Anglia. Leeds: E.J. Arnold & Son.Google Scholar
Orton, H., & Wakelin, M. F. (Eds.). (1968). Survey of English dialects. vol. 4, part 3: The Southern counties. Leeds: E.J. Arnold & Son.Google Scholar
Petyt, K. M. (1985). Dialect and accent in industrial West Yorkshire. Philadelphia: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poussa, P. (1985). Historical implications of the distribution of the zero-pronoun relative in Modern English dialects: Looking backwards towards OE from Map S5 of The linguistic atlas of England. In Jacobson, S. (Ed.). Papers from the third Scandinavian symposium on syntactic variation, Stockholm, May 11–12, 1985. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. 99–117.Google Scholar
Prideaux, G. D., & Baker, W. J. (1986). Strategies and structures: The processing of relative clauses. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Quirk, R. (1957). Relative clauses in educated spoken English. English Studies 38:97–109.Google Scholar
Quirk, R. (1968). Essays on the English language, medieval and modern. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rissanen, M. (1981). The choice of relative pronouns in 17th century American English. In Fisiak, J. (Ed.), Historical syntax. Berlin: Mouton. 417–435.Google Scholar
Rissanen, M. (1986). Variation and the study of English historical syntax. In Sankoff, D. (Ed.), Diversity and diachrony. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 97–109.Google Scholar
Rochemont, M. S. (1986). Focus in generative grammar. Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Romaine, S. (1982). Socio-historical linguistics: Its status and methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romaine, S. (1984). Relative clauses in child language, pidgins and creoles. Australian Journal of Linguistics 4:257–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rydén, M. (1966). Relative constructions in early sixteenth century English. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells.Google Scholar
Rydén, M. (1983). The emergence of who as relativizer. Studia Linguistica 37:126–134.Google Scholar
Sells, P. (1985). Restrictive and non-restrictive modification. CSLI Report 85–28. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Schneider, E. W. (1989). American Earlier Black English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Shnukal, A. (1981). There's a lot mightn't believe this…Variable subject pronoun absence in Australian English. In Sankoff, D. & Cedergren, H. (Eds.), Variation omnibus. Carbondale, IL: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
Söderlind, J. (1964). The attitude to language expressed by or ascertainable from English writers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Studia Neophilologica 36:111–126.Google Scholar
Terkel, S. (1975). Working. New York: Avon.Google Scholar
Tottie, G., & Rey, M. (1994). Relativization Strategies in Earlier African American Vernacular English. Paper presented at NWAVE-XXIII,Stanford University.Google Scholar
Ward, C. E. (Ed.). (1942). The letters of John Dryden. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfram, W., & Christian, D. (1976). Appalachian speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Wright, S. (1994). The place of genre in the corpus. In Kytö, M., Rissanen, M., & Wright, S. (Eds.), Corpora across the centuries: Proceedings of the first international colloquium on English diachronic corpora. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar