Studies in the History of the English Language VIII : Boundaries and Boundary-Crossings in the History of English

This volume collects essays that approach notions of creating, maintaining, and crossing boundaries in the history of the English language. The concept of boundaries is variously defined within linguistics depending on the theoretical framework, from formal and theoretical perspectives to specific fields and more empirical, physical, and perceptual angles. The contributions to this volume do not take one particular theoretical or methodological approach but, instead, explore how examining various types of boundaries—linguistic, conceptual, analytical, generic, physical—helps us illuminate and account for historical use, variation, and change in English. In their exploration of various topics in the history of English, contributions ask a range of questions: what does it mean to set up boundaries between time periods? When do language varieties have distinct boundaries and when do they overlap? Where do language users draw up clausal, constructional, semantic, phonetic/phonological boundaries? Thus, the chapters explore not only how boundaries illustrate synchronic and diachronic features in the history of the English language but also what we can discover by questioning perceived or actual boundaries. Acknowledgments 5 Contents 7 Contributor addresses 9 Introduction: Boundaries and boundarycrossings in the history of English 11 Section 1: Conceptual and methodological boundaries 33 1. Scale and mode in histories of English 33 2. The blurred boundaries of genres-in-use: Principles and implications from rhetorical genre studies for English historical linguistics 55 3. Meanderings from early English to World Englishes: A Complex Systems perspective on morphosyntactic changes in wh-pronouns 83 Section 2: Linguistic boundaries 119 4. First or best, last not least: Domain edges in the history of English 119 5. Expanding boundaries of a function word: Uses of one in Early Modern and Modern English 145 6. Non-correlative commas between subjects and verbs in Early and Late Modern English sermons and scientific texts 177 7. Old English verbs of envy: Class membership and grammatical behaviour 197 Section 3: Language and language variety boundaries 221 8. Germanic /r/ as an isogloss, rhotacism, and the West Germanic gemination 221 9. Migration, localities, and discourse: Shifting linguistic boundaries in Swedish-American cookbooks 235 10. Specimen texts and boundaries in the history of the English language 259 Coda: HEL-bound 281 Index 289 The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics