John Benjamins Publishing Company
The importance of genre in the Greek diglossia of the 20th century
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Abstract
Greek diglossia has been mainly studied so far by focusing on linguistic attitudes rather than investigating actual use. This paper aims at studying evidence from a number of genres in the Diachronic Corpus of Greek of the 20th Century, including academic texts, public speeches, film scripts, newsreels, literature, song lyrics and private letters. The frequencies of the high vs. low variants of two pairs of basic grammatical items are compared across the nine decades of the corpus. It is suggested that recent language change in Greek largely depends on genre, which can account, among other factors, for the direction and timing of developments. Dimensions of text production like formality, conventionality, planning and (perceived) spontaneity contribute to the specificities of each genre.
Abstract
Greek diglossia has been mainly studied so far by focusing on linguistic attitudes rather than investigating actual use. This paper aims at studying evidence from a number of genres in the Diachronic Corpus of Greek of the 20th Century, including academic texts, public speeches, film scripts, newsreels, literature, song lyrics and private letters. The frequencies of the high vs. low variants of two pairs of basic grammatical items are compared across the nine decades of the corpus. It is suggested that recent language change in Greek largely depends on genre, which can account, among other factors, for the direction and timing of developments. Dimensions of text production like formality, conventionality, planning and (perceived) spontaneity contribute to the specificities of each genre.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface and acknowledgments vii
- Using diachronic corpora to understand the connection between genre and language change 1
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Part I. Methods in diachronic corpus linguistics
- ‘From above’, ‘from below’, and regionally balanced 19
- Diachronic collocations, genre, and DiaCollo 41
- Classical and modern Arabic corpora 65
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Part II. Genre and diachronic corpora
- Scholastic genre scripts in English medical writing 1375–1800 95
- Academic writing as a locus of grammatical change 117
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Part III. Genre-based analyses of linguistic phenomena
- The importance of genre in the Greek diglossia of the 20th century 149
- “You can’t control a thing like that” 171
- Concessive conjunctions in written American English 195
- Variation of sentence length across time and genre 219
- A comparison of multi-genre and single-genre corpora in the context of contact-induced change 241
- Some methodological issues in the corpus-based study of morphosyntactic variation 261
- The interplay between genre variation and syntax in a historical Low German corpus 281
- Genre influence on word formation (change) 301
- Index 333
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface and acknowledgments vii
- Using diachronic corpora to understand the connection between genre and language change 1
-
Part I. Methods in diachronic corpus linguistics
- ‘From above’, ‘from below’, and regionally balanced 19
- Diachronic collocations, genre, and DiaCollo 41
- Classical and modern Arabic corpora 65
-
Part II. Genre and diachronic corpora
- Scholastic genre scripts in English medical writing 1375–1800 95
- Academic writing as a locus of grammatical change 117
-
Part III. Genre-based analyses of linguistic phenomena
- The importance of genre in the Greek diglossia of the 20th century 149
- “You can’t control a thing like that” 171
- Concessive conjunctions in written American English 195
- Variation of sentence length across time and genre 219
- A comparison of multi-genre and single-genre corpora in the context of contact-induced change 241
- Some methodological issues in the corpus-based study of morphosyntactic variation 261
- The interplay between genre variation and syntax in a historical Low German corpus 281
- Genre influence on word formation (change) 301
- Index 333
