Chapter 4. Borrowing and copy
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Philip Durkin
Abstract
Adamson (1999) demonstrates the importance of “copy” (copia) as a motivation for lexical borrowing in early modern English. Our paper will take this observation as its starting point. Using data from the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary to gain an overview of the available words realizing a given concept, we will investigate the evidence for the use of each of these words in the sixteenth century, as recorded in early books that can be accessed via Early English Books Online (EEBO). Our study will investigate how far certain words are confined to particular registers, and how far spread between registers can be detected using these resources. It will also examine how far we can identify diachronically what was the “usual” word realizing a particular meaning, what were its marked synonyms, and how these words interacted semantically.
Abstract
Adamson (1999) demonstrates the importance of “copy” (copia) as a motivation for lexical borrowing in early modern English. Our paper will take this observation as its starting point. Using data from the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary to gain an overview of the available words realizing a given concept, we will investigate the evidence for the use of each of these words in the sixteenth century, as recorded in early books that can be accessed via Early English Books Online (EEBO). Our study will investigate how far certain words are confined to particular registers, and how far spread between registers can be detected using these resources. It will also examine how far we can identify diachronically what was the “usual” word realizing a particular meaning, what were its marked synonyms, and how these words interacted semantically.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Chapter 1. Enregistering the North 13
- Chapter 2. The origin and development of the iffy-an(d) conjunction 31
- Chapter 3. From ornament to armament 49
- Chapter 4. Borrowing and copy 71
- Chapter 5. Decoding the parentheses in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus 87
- Chapter 6. The first person in fiction of the 1790s 111
- Chapter 7. “Worth a moment’s notice” 129
- Chapter 8. Jane Austen and the prescriptivists 151
- Chapter 9. Dismantling narrative modes 171
- Chapter 10. Stylistics and “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by W.B. Yeats 195
- Index 213
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Chapter 1. Enregistering the North 13
- Chapter 2. The origin and development of the iffy-an(d) conjunction 31
- Chapter 3. From ornament to armament 49
- Chapter 4. Borrowing and copy 71
- Chapter 5. Decoding the parentheses in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus 87
- Chapter 6. The first person in fiction of the 1790s 111
- Chapter 7. “Worth a moment’s notice” 129
- Chapter 8. Jane Austen and the prescriptivists 151
- Chapter 9. Dismantling narrative modes 171
- Chapter 10. Stylistics and “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by W.B. Yeats 195
- Index 213
