Irish English Modal Verbs from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Centuries in Comparison to Mainland English
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IRISH ENGLISH MODAL VERBS FROM THE FOURTEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURIES A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PHD) IN THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES MARIJE VAN HATTUM SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES, LINGUISTICS AND CULTURES 2012 CONTENTS Abstract 15 Declaration 16 Copyright 17 Acknowledgements 18 I Introduction 20 1 Introduction 21 1.1 Aims of the present study.......................... 21 1.2 Irish English................................. 23 1.2.1 Terminological issues regarding Irish English........... 23 1.2.2 Previous research on Irish English modal verbs.......... 26 1.3 Overview of the thesis........................... 29 II Historical, methodological and theoretical background 32 2 Linguistic background of Ireland from the Celts to the nineteenth century 33 2.1 Ireland before the Anglo-Normans..................... 33 2.1.1 The linguistic situation in pre-Anglo-Norman Ireland....... 35 2.2 Medieval Ireland 1169-1534........................ 36 2.2.1 The linguistic situation in Medieval Ireland (1169-1533)..... 39 2.3 Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691...................... 41 2.3.1 The linguistic situation in Early Modern Ireland.......... 44 2.4 Language Shift............................... 46 2.4.1 The linguistic situation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ire- land: language shift......................... 48 2 CONTENTS 3 Data sources 51 3.1 Medieval sources.............................. 52 3.1.1 Irish English: the Kildare Poems (ca. 1330)............ 52 3.1.2 English English: poems from the Helsinki corpus (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries)........................ 54 3.2 Modern sources (1647-1949)........................ 56 3.2.1 Trial proceedings as a linguistic source: the Old Bailey proceedings 57 3.2.2 Letters as a linguistic source.................... 60 3.2.3 A historical corpus of Irish English (1647-1949)......... 63 3.2.4 English English letters....................... 68 3.3 Present-day sources: the ICE corpora.................... 70 4 Theoretical and terminological issues 72 4.1 Theoretical models for the development of new varieties......... 73 4.1.1 Contact-induced language change................. 73 4.1.2 New-dialect formation....................... 76 4.1.3 supraregionalization........................ 78 4.2 Theoretical issues regarding modality................... 79 4.2.1 Semantic change.......................... 84 5 The development of modal verbs in English 89 5.1 Morpho-syntactic development of modal verbs.............. 89 5.1.1 Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English..... 89 5.1.2 Standard Present-day English................... 94 5.2 Semantic development of modal verbs................... 95 5.2.1 CAN, COULD and the semi-modal BE ABLE TO .......... 95 5.2.2 MAY and MIGHT .......................... 100 5.2.3 MUST ................................ 105 6 Verbs and verbal phrases expressing modality in Irish 110 6.1 Types of modal expressions in Irish.................... 111 6.1.1 Theoretically fully inflectable verbs................ 112 6.1.2 Theoretically fully inflectable verb + prepositional phrase.... 117 6.1.3 Verb phrases: COP + adjective/noun etc. + prepositional phrase.. 118 6.1.4 Verb phrases: substantive bí + adjectival/adverbial/prepositional phrase................................ 124 6.1.5 Participle of necessity....................... 129 6.2 Summary.................................. 130 3 CONTENTS III The morpho-syntactic development of modal verbs in Irish English 131 7 Morpho-syntax of Medieval Irish English pre-modals 133 7.1 CONNEN ................................... 134 7.2 MOUEN ................................... 141 7.3 MOTEN ................................... 146 7.4 SHULEN ................................... 149 7.5 WILLEN ................................... 156 7.6 Discussion.................................. 165 8 Morpho-syntax of Modern Irish English modals 169 8.1 Temporal analysis of sentences with modal verbs............. 170 8.1.1 Tense, time and aspect with modal verbs in standard present-day English............................... 172 8.2 The Irish English perfects.......................... 174 8.3 Time reference and modal verbs in Irish English.............. 176 8.3.1 CAN + infinitive........................... 176 8.3.2 Epistemic past tense modal + infinitive.............. 179 8.3.3 Counterfactuals........................... 181 8.4 Discussion.................................. 185 IV The semantic development of modal verbs in Irish English 187 9 Semantics of pre-modal verbs expressing possibility in Medieval Irish English188 9.1 Modals of possibility in the Kildare poems................. 189 9.1.1 Participant-internal possibility (p-i-p)............... 189 9.1.2 Participant-external possibility (p-e-p)............... 191 9.1.3 Deontic possibility (d-p)...................... 193 9.1.4 Epistemic possibility (e-p)..................... 194 9.1.5 Optative............................... 195 9.2 Discussion.................................. 197 10 Semantic development of modals of possibility from Modern to present-day Irish English 198 10.1 Methodology................................ 199 10.1.1 Data analysis for the case study on participant-internal possibility 199 10.2 Modals of possibility in Modern and present-day Irish English...... 201 10.2.1 Participant-internal possibility in Modern and present-day Irish English............................... 201 4 CONTENTS 10.2.2 Participant-external possibility in Modern and present-day Irish English............................... 203 10.2.3 Deontic possibility in Modern and present-day Irish English... 205 10.2.4 Epistemic possibility in Modern and present-day Irish English.. 207 10.3 Case study: BE ABLE TO versus CAN in participant-internal possibility contexts................................... 211 10.3.1 Language-internal factors..................... 213 10.3.2 Contact-related factors....................... 217 10.3.3 Extra-linguistic factors....................... 218 10.4 Discussion.................................. 223 V Conclusion 226 11 Conclusion 227 11.1 Modal verbs in historical Irish English................... 228 11.2 New-dialect formation, contact-induced language change and suprare- gionalization in Irish English........................ 231 11.3 Linguistic evidence for the periodization of Irish English......... 232 11.4 Further research avenues.......................... 233 Appendices 235 A Languages spoken in Ireland from the introduction of Gaelic to the present 236 B Error estimation of the distribution of meanings per modal verb in the full Old Bailey Corpus 237 C Informants in a historical corpus of Irish English (1647-2000) 238 D An overview of Irish modal constructions and their meanings 276 Final word count: 82,601 5 LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Periods in Irish, English and Irish English................. 25 2.1 Political structure in Gaelic Ireland from the arrival of the Celts to the arrival of the Anglo-Normans (ca. 3 BC - 1170 AD)............ 34 2.2 Ireland at the beginning of the sixteenth century.............. 39 2.3 Tudor plantations in the sixteenth century................. 43 2.4 Ulster dialects................................ 45 2.5 Percentage of Irish-speakers according to the 1851 census......... 49 3.1 Middle English dialects........................... 56 3.2 Dialect regions in Ireland.......................... 64 3.3 Diachronic distribution in the historical corpus of Irish English (1647-1949) 65 3.4 Sex in the historical corpus of Irish English (1647-1949)......... 66 3.5 Social rank in the historical corpus of Irish English (1647-1949)..... 66 3.6 Education in the historical corpus of Irish English (1647-1949)...... 67 3.7 Regional distribution in the historical corpus of Irish English (1647-1949) 68 4.1 Terminology in Modality’s Semantic Map ................. 81 4.2 Semantic map of the four modal domains................. 82 4.3 Semantic map of paths towards and from possibility............ 83 4.4 Semantic map of paths towards and from necessity............ 83 4.5 Modality’s Semantic Map .......................... 85 4.6 Model of the invited inferencing theory of semantic change........ 86 5.1 Semantic shifts of the pre-modal CAN ................... 96 5.2 Semantic shifts of the pre-modal MAY ................... 101 5.3 Semantic shifts of the pre-modal MUST .................. 105 8.1 Temporal analysis of the CAN + infinitive construction.......... 177 9.1 Pre-modals of possibility in the Kildare and Helsinki corpus poems.... 189 9.2 P-i-p meanings for CONNEN, MOUEN and MOTEN in the Kildare and Helsinki corpus poems........................... 190 6 LIST OF FIGURES 9.3 P-e-p meanings for CONNEN, MOUEN and MOTEN in the Kildare and Helsinki corpus poems........................... 193 9.4 D-p meanings for CONNEN, MOUEN and MOTEN in the Kildare and Helsinki corpus poems................................ 194 9.5 E-p meanings for CONNEN, MOUEN and MOTEN in the Kildare and Helsinki corpus poems................................ 195 9.6 Optative meanings for CONNEN, MOUEN and MOTEN in the Kildare and Helsinki corpus poems........................... 196 10.1 BE ABLE TO and CAN in p-i-p contexts in ModIrE and PDIrE....... 202 10.2 BE ABLE TO and CAN in p-i-p contexts in IrE and EngE from 1825 to 1899 202 10.3 BE ABLE TO and CAN in p-i-p contexts in IrE trial and letter data from 1825 to 1899................................ 202 10.4 CAN, MAY and BE ABLE TO in p-e-p contexts in ModIrE and PDIrE... 204 10.5 CAN, MAY and BE ABLE TO in p-e-p contexts in IrE and EngE