Table Of ContentENGLISH HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 1994
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); John E. Joseph (Hong Kong)
Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 135
Derek Britton (ed.)
English Historical Linguistics 1994
Papers from the 8th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics
(8. ICEHL, Edinburgh, 19-23 September 1994)
ENGLISH HISTORICAL
LINGUISTICS 1994
PAPERS FROM THE 8TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON ENGLISH HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
(8. ICEHL, EDINBURGH, 19-23 SEPTEMBER 1994)
Edited by
DEREK BRITTON
University of Edinburgh
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
English Historical Linguistics 1994
Papers from the 8th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (8. ICEHL),
Edinburgh, Scotland, 19-24 September 1994 / edited by Derek Britton.
p. cm. - (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series
IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 135)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. English language-Grammar, Historical-Congresses. 2. English language-History-
Congresses. 2. English language—History—Congresses. I. Britton, Derek. II. Title. III. Series.
PE1075 1981
425-dc20 96-667
ISBN 90 272 3639 9 (Eur.) / 1-55619-590-7 (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1996 - John Benjamins B.V.
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John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 75577 · 1070 AN Amsterdam · The Netherlands
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FOREWORD
This book offers a selection of papers given at the Eighth International
Conference on English Historical Linguistics, held at Edinburgh on 19-23
September 1994. If the general reception of an event may be accurately gauged
by the level of enjoyment on the part of the organizers, then the conference
must have been a very successful one, both academically and socially; and there
can be little doubt that the sense of well-being was considerably enhanced by the
shift of venue from the university precincts to the comforts of the Scandic
Crown Hotel, set in the Old Town of Edinburgh with its numerous attractions
and amenities.
In establishing a framework for the conference the Organizing Committee
determined that there should be a Plenary Session of 90 minutes at the
beginning of each day and that all other papers should be allocated 45-minute
slots, each of these papers to run concurrently with another. This made for a
relatively small number of papers - 55 in all - that could be accepted from the
large number of abstracts submitted. Less than a score of the papers given at the
conference appear in this book. This follows in part from the conference
decision that papers submitted for publication could be of an approximate
maximum of 20 pages (greater in length than in previous years) and in part, too,
from the publishers' wish to have a slim, affordable volume. What has thereby
been lost in diversity of topics and authors will, perhaps, have been offset by the
scope given to contributors to treat of substantial issues with something like the
fullness which they merit.
Each part of the selection process has been painfully difficult for the
responsible committees; and it is certain and inevitable that at both stages
submissions that were worthy of acceptance were not chosen - with regard to
the final short-list in particular, the number of good contributions considerably
exceeded the 20 or so that we were able to take. We trust, however, that those
papers that do appear here are representative of current work in the field and
are of high quality: for the first time in the history of the published proceedings
papers have not only been vetted by a committee of staff-members of the host
department, but have also been refereed by scholars of international standing
from other universities.
The thematic order of presentation of papers at the conference followed in
the main a division by historical period, with sessions on Old English", "Middle
vi FOREWORD
English", "English 1500-1900", "The General History of English" and "The
History of Scots and Historical Lexis". In the published proceedings I have
preferred largely to adopt the practices of past editors, with sections or
"Phonology" (with a bias towards Old English and Old English prosodic
features which seems accurately to reflect the current interests of many of the
most distinguished scholars in the field of English historical phonology),
"Morphology", "Lexis" (which now looks very slender, following Roger Lass's
unfortunate need to withdraw at a late stage as a result of copyright difficulties)
and "Syntax". I have also innovated with a section on "Sociohistorical
Linguistics", which acknowledges a relatively new discipline whose
practitioners frequently take account of several levels of language.
The difficulties of editors in preparing camera-ready copy for collective
volumes have been well rehearsed elsewhere. At times what seems to have been
the first lone editorship in the English Historical Linguistics series has felt like
an endeavour as heroic as Dr Johnson's one-man Dictionary. But just as
Johnson was backed up by five Scottish assistants, so I have had the
indispensable help of one, E.S., whose word-processing knowledge, problem-
solving skills and unflappable temperament made her an ideal partner in this
venture. Without her help what yielded no more than a couple of troubled
dreams could have been a nightmare. I cannot thank her enough.
I should also like to extend warm thanks to all those who acted as referees,
especially the Manchester linguists, who took on more than their fair share of
reviewing at a particularly inconvenient time for them. In this work, as in all
matters, I have been helped and invigorated by every one of my Edinburgh
colleagues. I owe particular thanks to Heinz Giegerich for his perennial
willingness to help out and to Charles Jones, the organizer of the conference,
for support and sound advice at important stages in the editorial process. My
thanks, too, to Konrad Koerner, the general editor, and Anke de Looper of
John Benjamins for good counsel in response to my many queries.
On behalf of the Conference Organizing Committee I should like to thank
Peter Niven and his team at UnivEd Technologies and Morvyth Laidlaw of the
English Language Department for patience and efficiency in their contributions
towards the organization of the event. We thank, too, Lothian & Edinburgh
Enterprise Ltd for a very substantial grant towards the costs of mounting the
conference and Edinburgh District Council for a generous subvention to a
Reception and Banquet held in the City Chambers.
Edinburgh, October 1995 Derek Britton
CONTENTS
Editor's Foreword ν
1. PHONOLOGY
Richard M. HOGG: Tertiary stress in Old English: Some
reflections on explanatory inadequacy 3
Donka MINKOVA: Verse Structure as Evidence for
Prosodic Reconstruction in Old English 13
Seiichi SUZUKI: On the Syllable Weight of-VΠin Old English:
A metrical perspective 39
Robert P. STOCKWELL: Old English Short Diphthongs and the
Theory of Glide Emergence 57
April M.S. MCMAHON: On the Use of the Past to Explain the
Present. The history of/r/in English and Scots 73
2. MORPHOLOGY
Dieter KASTOVSKY: Verbal Derivation in English: A historical
survey or Much Ado About Nothing 93
Mieko OGURA & William S-Y. WANG: Snowball Effect
in Lexical Diffusion: The development of-s in the third person
singular present indicative in English 119
Herbert SCHENDL: The 3rd Plural Present Indicative in Early
Modern English - Variation and linguistic contact 143
Manfred GÖRLACH: Morphological Standardization: The
strong verbs in Scots 161
3. LEXIS
Isabel MOSKOWICH & Elena SEOANE: Scandinavian Loans
and Processes of Word-Formation in ME: Some
preliminary considerations 185
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Edgar W. SCHNEIDER: Towards Syntactic Isomorphism and
Semantic Dissimilation: The semantics and syntax of
prospective verbs in Early Modern English 199
4. SYNTAX
Willem F. KOOPMAN: Evidence for Clitic Adverbs in Old
English: An evaluation 223
Olga FISCHER: Verbal Complementation in Early ME: How
do the infinitives fit in? 247
María José LÓPEZ COUSO: A Look at That/Zero Variation in
Restoration English 271
David DENISON: The Case of the Unmarked Pronoun 287
5. SOCIOHISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
Terttu NEVALAINEN & Helena RAUMOLIN-BRUNBERG:
Social Stratification in Tudor English? 303
Inglid TIEKEN-BOON VAN OSTADE: Social Network Theory
and Eighteenth-Century English: The case of Boswell 327
Carol PERCY: Eighteenth-Century Normative Grammar in
Practice: The case of Captain Cook 339
Joan BEAL: The Jocks and the Geordies: Modified standards
in eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionaries 363
6. INDEXES
Index of Persons 385
Index of Concepts and Terms 391
1. PHONOLOGY
