A corpus-based analysis of grammarians’ references in 19th-century British grammars
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Beatrix Busse
Abstract
Comprehensive studies of nineteenth-century British grammar books are still scarce despite essential changes in the genre during the nineteenth century. Grammarians often use references to other authors in order to either criticize the work of predecessors and contemporaries or to support their work. This study, which is part of the larger HeidelGram project, investigates the scholarly network of grammarians’ references in a corpus of nineteenth-century English grammars. After introducing the corpus as well as a reference categorization system derived from the data, we present initial findings on the various types of references used by grammarians and how practices of referencing, and especially evaluation, have changed. Based on these findings, we prove that there seems to be a shift away from evaluating the works of others towards describing what they do. Finally, we discuss some methodological and technical challenges of the combination between corpus linguistics and network analysis and suggest potential fruitful pathways to address these.
Abstract
Comprehensive studies of nineteenth-century British grammar books are still scarce despite essential changes in the genre during the nineteenth century. Grammarians often use references to other authors in order to either criticize the work of predecessors and contemporaries or to support their work. This study, which is part of the larger HeidelGram project, investigates the scholarly network of grammarians’ references in a corpus of nineteenth-century English grammars. After introducing the corpus as well as a reference categorization system derived from the data, we present initial findings on the various types of references used by grammarians and how practices of referencing, and especially evaluation, have changed. Based on these findings, we prove that there seems to be a shift away from evaluating the works of others towards describing what they do. Finally, we discuss some methodological and technical challenges of the combination between corpus linguistics and network analysis and suggest potential fruitful pathways to address these.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
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I Meaning in time and space
- Digital discourse and its discontents 9
- Text, intertext and meaning 37
- Hic sunt dracones 65
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II Variation in time
- Presenting knowledge of the world 89
- Interpreting the world of late modern English medical writing 113
- A corpus-based analysis of grammarians’ references in 19th-century British grammars 133
- Construing justice 173
-
III Variation in space
- Variation in the complementiser choice between if and whether 203
- Using intensifier-adjective collocations to investigate mechanisms of change 231
- There’s different types 257
- Academic prose across countries 283
- A corpus-based study of metadiscoursal boosters in applied linguistics dissertations written in Thailand and in the United States 321
- Patterns and meanings of hedging verbs in English-medium research articles by Chinese and Western scholars 351
- The EMI campus as site and source for a multimodal corpus 377
- Index 403
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
-
I Meaning in time and space
- Digital discourse and its discontents 9
- Text, intertext and meaning 37
- Hic sunt dracones 65
-
II Variation in time
- Presenting knowledge of the world 89
- Interpreting the world of late modern English medical writing 113
- A corpus-based analysis of grammarians’ references in 19th-century British grammars 133
- Construing justice 173
-
III Variation in space
- Variation in the complementiser choice between if and whether 203
- Using intensifier-adjective collocations to investigate mechanisms of change 231
- There’s different types 257
- Academic prose across countries 283
- A corpus-based study of metadiscoursal boosters in applied linguistics dissertations written in Thailand and in the United States 321
- Patterns and meanings of hedging verbs in English-medium research articles by Chinese and Western scholars 351
- The EMI campus as site and source for a multimodal corpus 377
- Index 403
