In contemporary contexts, monosemous borrowing appears to be the normal case (Winter-Froemel 2014: 73). It was found by Ingham (2021) that the majority outcome in Middle English was for multiple senses of a French etymon to be borrowed, however. The explanation offered was that the context for borrowing in Middle English was one of extensive bilingualism practised by the educated classes. Since that context came to an end after the 14th century, the prediction is made here that polysemous borrowing sharply declined in the Early Modern English period. Two samples of 16th and 17th century loans from French into English are analysed so as to validate this prediction. Data drawn from a comparison of entries in the Dictionnaire du Moyen Fran & ccedil;ais and the OED's Historical Thesaurus of English show a marked reduction in loan polysemy in this period. It is proposed that the context in which borrowing occurs exerts a decisive influence on the range of senses adopted by the borrowing language. The borrowing process in the EModEng period is hypothesised to have operated by adapting into English items encountered in written form by individuals with a reading ability in French, rather than a communicative setting requiring spoken proficiency.
This article translates into English eight German letters sent between 1840 and 1843 from the poet and dramatist Thomas Lovell Beddoes to his friend Leonhard Tobler. The letters were originally published in Studia Neophilologica by Beddoes's editor and biographer H. W. Donner in 1963. In translating the letters and providing substantial explanatory annotation, the article makes more widely available these documents, which illuminate Beddoes's personal and political engagements during a period of his life from which little writing survives and demonstrate Beddoes's idiosyncratic imagination and ironical sense of humour.
Identifying features of orality in written texts is one of the major concerns of historical linguists. This contribution argues that the travel accounts of Ohthere and Wulfstan preserved in the Old English Orosius can be stripped off various layers of 'writtenness', allowing some access to the spoken Old English words. The analysis is set within the framework of pragmaphilology, that interrogates texts in their contextual and historical embedding on the one hand (manuscript, authorship, settings of text production and reception, etc.), and on the other, allowing for a discourse-linguistic analysis on the level of language. In Ohthere and Wulfstan, we can not only discern the 'voices' of the two travellers, but also those of their audiences, and of the 'reporters'. There are arguments indicative of dialogues underlying both texts. While they differ in the degrees of 'spoken-' and 'writtenness', both texts start out as indirect represented discourse, slipping quickly to non-dependent and direct discourse. On the cline between orality and literacy, Ohthere is situated closer to the orality end than Wulfstan, due to, e.g. its disjunctive narrative and slips from dependent to direct discourse. Wulfstan is closer to literacy, with syntactically more complex structures and a more streamlined narrative.
Between variation and standardization: The verb apparire as evidence of diachronic overabundance in the third conjugation - this study offers a preliminary systematic investigation of the distributional and functional parameters regulating the alternation between infixed and non-infixed morphological variants of the verb apparire within pre-contemporary written Italian. Prior to corpus analysis, grammaticographic sources were examined to delineate the normative framework shaping the verb's usage across centuries. Utilizing a representative diachronic corpus spanning multiple textual genres, the analysis delineates the interplay of prosodic, diastratic, grammatical-semantic, and textual-discursive factors underlying variant selection. The results reveal complex variation patterns shaped by normative prescriptivism and contextual contingencies across historical periods.
Contemporary Chicana women's writing is deeply marked by processes of trauma and healing. This article focuses on the feminine relationship with nature, with particular attention to the narratives of Graciela Lim & oacute;n and Irene Lara Silva. Drawing on Gloria Anzald & uacute;a's formulation of the 'Coyolxauhqui imperative' and Stephanie Fetta's somatic studies, the study examines how their works articulate processes of subjective recomposition in the face of both individual and collective traumas rooted in colonialism, racism, and patriarchal violence. The analysis highlights how natural landscapes-particularly beaches, fields, and gardens-together with Indigenous spirituality and bonds of female solidarity, are configured as therapeutic spaces mediating between body, memory, and community. The article explores the narrative strategies and key factors through which the protagonists transmute trauma and embark on processes of regeneration that reverberate outward to their surroundings. It concludes that these authors construct an ecopoetics of healing that interweaves ancestral practices, communal care, and connection to the land, ultimately proposing a model of resilience and transformation grounded in ecofeminist and decolonial perspectives.
Der Artikel untersucht die historischen und soziolinguistischen Ursachen f & uuml;r den Sprachverlust der deutschen Variante in Westpolen, insbesondere in der Region Pi & lstrok;a. Sprachverlust wird als kontextabh & auml;ngiger Prozess betrachtet. Nach einer kurzen Darstellung dialektaler Merkmale und des historischen Hintergrunds wird der Sprachwechsel vom Deutschen zum Polnischen analysiert. Es folgt eine Bestandsaufnahme der heutigen Situation der deutschen Sprache sowie eine Analyse der sprachlichen Erosion anhand konkreter Beispiele. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die geringe Anzahl aktiver Sprecher, die vollst & auml;ndige Dominanz des Polnischen und die fortschreitende Spracherosion eindeutige Hinweise auf einen anhaltenden Sprachverlust liefern.
Chaucer's A Treatise on the Astrolabe, although written for a boy named Lewis, must have had quite broad readership as indicated by the number of surviving manuscripts: there are at least 32 identified manuscripts dated to the period between a1400 and a1600. Several of them contain figures, which, Gunther (1932: 480) claims, are so alike that 'there can be no doubt that they were taken from the same instrument'. The paper looks at the treatise from the so-far unexplored perspective focusing on the diagrams included. It considers the relation between the text and the diagrams examining issues surrounding (1) the number of diagrams, i.e. which portions of the text are illustrated in various manuscripts; (2) the design for the layout of pages, and (3) how important the diagrams are for the comprehension of the text. The analysis sheds light on some details concerning the process of organizing the work over the manuscript production. The study also compares the diagrams from various manuscripts to identify differences between them and thus attempts to answer the question of whether the surviving diagrams may have one common source and as well as that of whether the manuscripts show traces of copying from one another.
This study focuses on the phenomenon of algospeak on TikTok. Algospeak is propelled by the proprietary and thus enigmatic character of the platform's algorithm, leading to the emergence of algorithmic folk theories, including censorship. Through algospeak, TikTok users employ diverse linguistic strategies to outsmart the algorithm and to prevent their content from being down-ranked or removed. Our objective is to present the concept of algospeak as potentially x-phemistic creative expressions to address recognized taboo topics. Thus, we analyze how algospeak is created and whether the employed mechanisms are akin to those found in other forms of communication, particularly x-phemisms and other genres of computer-mediated communication. Our analysis is based on a qualitative examination of a corpus of 550 instances of algospeak. The primary objective was to categorize those examples, establishing the most prominent categories in terms of both formation mechanisms (morphological and semantic innovations) and taboo themes. This study sheds light on how users adapt their language to navigate TikTok and its algorithmic content curation, and contributes to a deeper comprehension of the evolving dynamics of online communication on algorithm-driven platforms.
Modal adjunct is the element that does not possess the potential to be Subject in clauses in Systemic Functional Linguistics. The criteria for delimiting its forms are not yet consistent, and their global characteristics also remain under-explored. This study explores the lexicogrammatical evolution and evolving paths of English modal adjuncts from a diachronic perspective based on the Corpus of Historical American English. The findings indicate that modal adjuncts of Probability, Usuality, and Inclination exhibit gradual and steady evolutionary trends, while those of Obligation vary significantly. According to the rankscale, modal adjuncts of Probability and Usuality follow an evolving pathway from group to clause to clause complex, though the former demonstrate a leap from group directly to clause complex. In contrast, modal adjuncts of Obligation evolve between adjacent ranks from word to group or from clause to clause complex, while those of Inclination display no systematic pathway. The evolution of modal adjuncts is argued to follow the principle of 'interpersonal first', subjected to a self-adapting system. This study is conducive to construing the modal system in Systemic Functional Linguistics, uncovering the evolving picture of modality system in American English, and providing diachronically detailed evidences for the English modal recognition.
Diachronic patterns of lexical diversity and density in research article (RA) abstracts have garnered increasing scholarly attention in recent years, with findings generally pointing to an upward trend in the two metrics across various journals. However, despite the examination of a broad spectrum of disciplines, translation studies (TS) has remained underexplored in this line of research. Furthermore, most of extant studies fell short of in-depth explanations for observed trends but only provide rough analyses. This study investigates the diachronic trends in lexical diversity and density of RA abstracts published over the past 35 years in 12 prestigious TS journals, and further inquires into the driving forces behind the trends. The results reveal a pronounced upward trajectory in both lexical metrics across the examined period. The trend can be attributed to the rising frequency of nouns and adjectives, which is fundamentally driven by disciplinary development including theoretical evolution, diversification of research objects as well as prevalence of empirical methodologies.
In all areas of contemporary life, we are constantly confronted with diverse forms of media communication that emerge, diversify, hybridize, transform, and eventually disappear from circulation. In response, scholars seek to organize this dynamic media universe by describing communicative transformations, comparing older and newer forms, and developing new terms, concepts, and definitions, often alongside the recontextualization of traditional categories. Given the complexity of media messages, the multifaceted relationships between communication participants, and the rapid pace of media change, we argue that media linguistics in particular requires coherent categories and harmonized analytical approaches that enable at least a partial structuring of the communicative space. Against this background, the article examines selected attempts to organize media communication within research conducted in the German-speaking cultural sphere and in Polish linguistics. The aim is to assess whether and to what extent media-linguistic research seeks to systematize the media space, to critically evaluate existing proposals for media stratification, and to reflect on their terminological, conceptual, and operational foundations. Furthermore, the article proposes selected terminological-conceptual solutions intended to facilitate navigation in media analysis and outlines possibilities for a typological approach to media phenomena. These considerations are developed from a contrastive research perspective.
The present article reassesses the fragmentary Middle High German romance known as Walther und Hildegund. It focuses on the narrative implications of a single word (keyserinne, 'empress') and uses it to reconstruct part of the plot of the lost romance from which the fragments derive. It hypothesizes that the plot turned on the concealment and revelation of Hildegund's noble birth. This hypothesis is shown to possess considerable explanatory power not only in connection with other passages in the Graz and Vienna fragments of Walther und Hildegund, but also in connection with passages in & THORN;i & eth;reks saga, Waltharius, and the Nibelungenlied. It is suggested that Walther und Hildegund, instead of representing the late corruption of an epic into a romance, might preserve archaic motifs from a narrative tradition that had possessed affinities with romance from its inception.
