Morphosyntactic variation and change in Late Modern English. A sociolinguistic perspective Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie des Fachbereiches 05 der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen vorgelegt von Bianca Widlitzki aus Staufenberg 2018 Dekan: Prof. Dr. Thomas Möbius 1.Berichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Magnus Huber 2.Berichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Joybrato Mukherjee Tag der Disputation: 20. Juni 2018 Table of contents Erklärung zur Dissertation ............................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... ii List of figures .............................................................................................................. iv List of tables ............................................................................................................... vii 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Motivation and aim ........................................................................................ 1 1.2 Scope and methodology................................................................................. 3 1.3 The upcoming chapters .................................................................................. 8 1.4 Typographical and citation conventions ........................................................ 9 2 Theoretical background: researching the social dimension of variation and change ........................................................................................... 10 2.1 Historical sociolinguistics: development, key assumptions and aims ......... 10 2.2 Accessing the language of the past: challenges and strategies .................... 16 2.2.1 Social imbalance in historical sources: Whose language survived? .... 16 2.2.2 Stylistic imbalance in historical sources: Insight into spoken language? .............................................................. 18 2.2.3 Genres and genre conventions between spoken and written norms ..... 26 2.3 Accessing the social context of Late Modern England ............................... 28 2.3.1 General issues in reconstructing past societies .................................... 29 2.3.2 Late Modern England: society and language ....................................... 32 2.3.3 Language prescription and language use ............................................. 37 2.4 Summary and outlook: an analytical challenge ........................................... 41 3 Empirical foundations: corpora and methodology .............................................. 44 3.1 Corpora in historical and sociolinguistic studies ......................................... 44 3.2 Main source of data: The Old Bailey Corpus 1.0 ........................................ 47 3.2.1 The OBC as a linguistic corpus ............................................................ 47 3.2.2 The Proceedings as a publication in its historical context ................... 51 3.2.3 The OBC as a record of spoken interaction (in court) ......................... 57 3.2.4 The OBC as testimony of and to a group of speakers .......................... 66 3.3 Supplemental data: the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts ................... 73 3.4 Choosing and defining variables ................................................................. 74 3.4.1 Linguistic variables .............................................................................. 74 3.4.2 Social and other extralinguistic variables ............................................. 78 3.5 Methodological concerns and analytical procedure .................................... 84 3.6 Summary and outlook: Researching Late Modern English ......................... 94 4 Modals and semi-modals of strong obligation and necessity: MUST and HAVE TO .............................................................................................. 96 4.1 Introductory remarks ................................................................................... 97 4.1.1 Modal verbs and related expressions of modality ................................ 97 4.1.2 MUST and HAVE TO: a brief historical sketch ..................................... 103 4.2 Previous research: variation and change among the modals and semi-modals of obligation and necessity ................................................... 108 4.2.1 Modals and semi-modals in a diachronic perspective ........................ 108 4.2.2 Long-term diachronic change in the domain of obligation/necessity 112 4.2.3 Recent developments: the 20th century .............................................. 117 4.2.4 Late Modern grammars on MUST and HAVE TO .................................. 122 4.3 Methodological considerations .................................................................. 125 4.4 Findings and discussion ............................................................................. 132 4.4.1 MUST and HAVE TO in Late Modern English: general trends ............. 132 4.4.2 Root meaning ..................................................................................... 133 4.4.3 Epistemic meaning ............................................................................. 142 4.4.4 Conclusions ........................................................................................ 145 4.5 Summary .................................................................................................... 147 5 Auxiliary variation: BE and HAVE with perfects of mutative intransitives ........ 149 5.1 Previous research and treatment in LModE grammars ............................. 149 5.1.1 BE/HAVE + past participle in the history of English ........................... 150 5.1.2 Factors conditioning variation between BE and HAVE ........................ 154 5.1.3 Late Modern grammars on BE/HAVE + past participle ....................... 157 5.2 Methodological considerations .................................................................. 159 5.3 Findings and discussion ............................................................................. 164 5.3.1 BE/HAVE variation in the OBC ........................................................... 164 5.3.2 BE/HAVE variation in comparison to the CLMET .............................. 175 5.3.3 Conclusions ........................................................................................ 181 5.4 Summary .................................................................................................... 182 6 Alternation between historic present and simple past in narrative: Tense of the discourse-presenting verb SAY ...................................................... 184 6.1 Previous research and treatment in LModE grammars ............................. 184 6.1.1 Tense shifting in narrative .................................................................. 185 6.1.2 Tense shifting in discourse introducers and the form I says .............. 188 6.1.3 Late Modern grammars on I says/I said ............................................. 190 6.2 Methodological considerations .................................................................. 191 6.3 Preliminary analysis .................................................................................. 194 6.3.1 I says/I said in the OBC: An unexpected picture ............................... 194 6.3.2 The case for scribal interference ........................................................ 197 6.4 Findings and discussion ............................................................................. 201 6.4.1 I says/I said in the OBC: results ......................................................... 201 6.4.2 I says/I said in comparison to the CLMET ........................................ 205 6.4.3 Conclusions ........................................................................................ 209 6.5 Summary .................................................................................................... 211 7 Subject-verb agreement: you was – you were ................................................... 213 7.1 Previous research and treatment in LModE grammars ............................. 214 7.1.1 The larger context: variable agreement patterns of BE ....................... 214 7.1.2 Previous work on singular you was – you were ................................. 219 7.1.3 Late Modern grammars on you was/you were ................................... 223 7.2 Methodological considerations .................................................................. 226 7.3 Findings and discussion ............................................................................. 228 7.3.1 you was/you were in the OBC ............................................................ 228 7.3.2 you was/you were in comparison to the CLMET ............................... 232 7.3.3 Conclusions ........................................................................................ 234 7.4 Summary .................................................................................................... 235 8 Theoretical and methodological implications ................................................... 237 8.1 The social dimension of variation and change .......................................... 237 8.1.1 Review of findings ............................................................................. 238 8.1.2 Implications of the findings ...............................................................