University:
Boston University
Course:
CAS LX 110 | Say What? Accents, Dialects, and Society
Academic year:

2023
Views:

201

Pages:

8
Author:

StellarSymphony

Pilot Study: Diachronic development of dummy it with 10 Vs in AmE (COHA, N = 697) Occurrences per million words 4,0 LEG it 3,5 3,0 FUCK it SNUFF it Publication of Mark Twain's travelogue "Roughing it" in 1872 FROG it FLOOR it 2,5 WING it SHOVE it HIKE it 2,0 MOVE it ROUGH it 1,5 1,0 0,5 0,0 18101829 18301849 18501869 18701889 18901909 19101929 19301949 19501969 19701989 occurrences for all Vs apart from snuff it in COHA 19902009 Vs found with dummy it bike, blow, brave, bus cocquet floor, French, frog, fuck hike, hoove Leg, lose move rough shift, shove, snuff tongue walk, wing 54 Verb-formations on crutches of transitivity 1. Rohdenburg [1996]: expressions which enhance a lexeme’s transitivity can reinforce its V status. 2. Salkoff [1988]: support Vs are occasionally required to turn Ns into Vs. 3. Similarly, the way-construction equips novel Vs with transitivity by providing them with a pseudo-object (one's way). The Data British Corpora Period Mio Words Early English Prose Fiction *1460 – 1682 10 Eighteenth Century Fiction *1660 – 1752 10 Nineteenth Century Fiction *1728 – 1869 39 British National Corpus (wridom1) p1960 19 – 1993 Total American Corpora 78 Period Mio Words Early American Fiction 1 *1744 – 1799 16 Early American Fiction 2 *1800 – 1827 19 American National Corpus (2. release) p1728 22 Total * birth dates, p publication dates – 1869 57 Reflexive object as 'pseudo-object' Spanish (33) a. Juan durmió (toda la noche). 'slept' intransitive b. Juan se durmió *(toda la noche). 'fell asleep' semi-transitive (pseudo-object se) French (34) a. ouvrir ‘open’, terminer ‘end’ transitive b. s’ouvrir ‘open’, se terminer ‘end’ semi-transitive Russian (35) a. na inát’ ‘begin’, kon at’ ‘end’ transitive b. na inát’sja ‘begin’, kon at’sja ‘end’ semi-transitive [Hopper/Thompson 1980] 1. This is the '90s equivalent of one of those '60s shows when six or seven groups would bus it from city, doing their three or four hits and heading on. [Detroit Free Press 1995] • While dummy it in subject position has received much scholarly attention (6) It is raining its use in object position has rarely been investigated.