Variation and change in idiolects: Tracing a lexical substitution inside a psychiatric hospital around 1900
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Markus Schiegg
Abstract
This paper presents a case study on the lexical substitution of Wärter (‘guard’) by Pfleger (‘nurse’) in records from a southern German psychiatric hospital around 1900. Its goal is to shed light on language variation and change from the perspective of idiolects. Therefore, I analyse how this change, implemented by official documents in 1876, spreads ‘from above’ into the written language of 108 patients and 10 family members. The results show a quick implementation of the new variant, comprising its semantic generalization and the near-complete replacement of the older variant. This process can sometimes be observed in individual lifespan changes, while other writers continue using Wärter in idiosyncratic ways. Finally, a comparison with two more general corpora (DWDS and Google Books) shows that this lexical change appears delayed and less consistent outside the hospital context.
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©2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Diachronic Cognitive Linguistics
- Variation and change in idiolects: Tracing a lexical substitution inside a psychiatric hospital around 1900
- The syntax of metaphor
- Of travels and travails: The role of semantic typology, argument structure constructions, and language contact in semantic change
- Morphosyntactic vagueness and directionality
- What does solid spelling reveal about cognition? Evidence from Middle Low German
- The emergence of light verb constructions
- The diachronic development of the verbal bracket construction in German
- The problem of universalism in (diachronic) cognitive linguistics
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Diachronic Cognitive Linguistics
- Variation and change in idiolects: Tracing a lexical substitution inside a psychiatric hospital around 1900
- The syntax of metaphor
- Of travels and travails: The role of semantic typology, argument structure constructions, and language contact in semantic change
- Morphosyntactic vagueness and directionality
- What does solid spelling reveal about cognition? Evidence from Middle Low German
- The emergence of light verb constructions
- The diachronic development of the verbal bracket construction in German
- The problem of universalism in (diachronic) cognitive linguistics