Abstract
This study investigates diachronic trends in the use of evidential markers in Early Modern English medical treatises (1500–1700), with data drawn from the Corpus of Early Modern English Medical Texts. The state of medical thought and practice in Early Modern England is discussed, with particular focus on the changing role that Scholasticism played during this period. The nature of evidentiality and types of scholastic vs. non-scholastic evidence are given attention, and quantitative results are outlined. It is shown that as scholastic models of medicine gave way to more empirically-driven approaches, the use of evidential markers indicating direct perceptual and inferential evidence increased drastically, while the use of markers signaling reported information – particularly information mediated by classical authorities – decreased significantly. The results are finally discussed in light of discursive and typological considerations relating to contextual changes accompanying the reference to classical authors as sources of evidence, as well as the notion of “marked” and “unmarked” evidence types.
Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful for the hospitality and support I received while a Visiting Fellow at The University of Helsinki during Autumn 2014. In particular I would like to thank Terttu Nevalainen, Maura Ratia, Villa Marttila, Turo Hiltunen, Carla Suhr, and Martti Mäkinen for making my time at VARIENG exceptionally stimulating. Most of all I am grateful to Irma Taavitsainen for the many discussions and for reading an early draft of this paper. Thanks are also due to Nicola McLelland and two anonymous reviewers to further comments and suggestions. Of course, any errors are mine and mine alone.
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Appendix
Below is a list of the 108 lexemes that were used in evidential constructions in EMEMT (individual frequencies are not included).
| according | declare | opinion |
| account | decree | perceive |
| acknowledge | demonstrate | phrase |
| add | demonstration | plain |
| admonish | describe | prove |
| advise | divide | read |
| affirm | do | reason |
| agree | dream | receive |
| allege | evident | recite |
| answer | evidently | record |
| apparent | experience | relate |
| apparently | expound | remark |
| appear | express | report |
| appoint | find | say |
| as | follow | see |
| assert | gather | seem |
| assertion | give | show |
| assure | have | sign |
| avouch | hear | signification |
| avow | hearsay | signify |
| be | hold | speak |
| betoken | imply | suppose |
| bid | infer | sure |
| by | inform | surely |
| certain | insinuate | suspect |
| certainly | interpret | take |
| clear | inveigh | teach |
| command | judge | tell |
| conceive | learn | testify |
| conclude | maintain | think |
| confess | make | token |
| confirm | manifest | understand |
| conjecture | mean | verify |
| consider | mention | will |
| convince | note | witness |
| counsel | observe | write |
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- The sociolinguistics of gender, social status and masculinity in Aristophanes
- A note on the relationship between Scandinavian and Low German
- Trilingualism in early modern Norwich
- Evidentiality in Early Modern English Medical Treatises (1500–1700)
- Book Reviews
- Spolsky, Bernard: The Languages of the Jews. A Sociolinguistic History
- Havinga, Anna & Nils Langer: Invisible Languages in the Nineteenth Century
- Jones, Mari C.: Variation and Change in Mainland and Insular Norman. A Study of Superstrate Influence
- Doyle, Aidan: A History of the Irish Language. From the Norman Invasion to Independence
- Bös, Birte & Lucia Kornexl: Changing Genre Conventions in Historical English News Discourse