Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund

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Format: 1 online resource (442 pages)

Edition: 1st ed.

Series Statement: Advances in historical sociolinguistics Letters as loot

Content: This book presents an in-depth study of the language of letters focussing on a unique collection of Dutch private letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which comprises letters from the lower, middle and upper ranks, written by men as well as women.

Note: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph , Intro -- Letters as Loot -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Preface and acknowledgements -- Chapter 1. Letters as Loot -- 1. The Letters as Loot source -- 2. Letters as Loot and language history 'from below' -- 3. Selection of periods and phenomena -- 4. Speech and writing -- 5. The variables -- 6. The autograph status of letters, corpora and presentation of results -- 7. Outlook -- Chapter 2. Sounds and signs -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Standard languages, language standards and the degree of orality -- 3. The degree of orality in the history of Dutch -- 4. Case studies Zeeland -- 4.1 The subcorpora used -- 4.2 H-dropping in the seventeenth century: First case study -- 4.3 H-dropping in the seventeenth century: Second case study -- 4.4 H-dropping in the eighteenth century, and diachronically -- 4.5 Long e's in the seventeenth century -- 4.6 Long e's in the eighteenth century, and diachronically -- 4.7 Conclusions -- 5. Case studies North Holland and Amsterdam -- 5.1 The subcorpora used -- 5.2 Germanic sk -- 5.3 Germanic ft -- 5.4 A-like vowels in the seventeenth century -- 5.5 Prefix ge- in the seventeenth century -- 5.6 Long e's in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- 5.7 Conclusions -- 6. Conclusions -- Chapter 3. Epistolary formulae -- 1. Introduction -- 2. A sample letter -- 3. The subcorpora -- 4. Functions of epistolary formulae -- Text-constitutive formulae -- Intersubjective formulae -- Christian-ritual formulae -- 5. Text composition -- 6. Text-constitutive formulae -- 6.1 Text-type formulae -- Prepositional phrases having the meaning "to" -- The addressee's name and social role -- The addressee's location -- The means by which the letter is sent -- Additional information -- Praise to God -- The writer's location -- The date -- Additional information -- Addressing the recipient. , Greeting the recipient -- Referring to (earlier) communication -- 6.2 Text-structural formulae -- 7. Intersubjective formulae -- 7.1 Health formulae -- 7.2 Greeting formulae -- 7.3 Contact formulae -- 8. Christian-ritual formulae -- 9. Conclusions -- Chapter 4. Variation and change in formulaic language -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Formulaic language and writing experience -- 2.1 Previous research -- 2.2 Processing effort and writing experience -- 2.3 Writing experience and social variables -- 2.4 Summing up - hypotheses -- 3. Case studies -- 3.1 The subcorpora -- 3.2 Greeting -- 3.3 Communicating health -- 3.4 Communicating sorrow -- 3.5 Communicating God's omniscience -- 3.6 Initiating discourse -- 3.7 Continuing discourse -- 3.8 Conclusions -- 4. Variation and change as functions of writing experience -- 4.1 The social literacy boundary -- 4.2 Gender differences -- 4.3 Incremental and levelling writing experience -- 4.4 Writing experience vs. social identity and style -- 5. Conclusions and further discussion -- Chapter 5. Detailing the writing process -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The non-autograph subcorpus -- 3. Comparing autographs and non-autographs -- 3.1 Greeting -- 3.2 Communicating health -- 3.3 Communicating sorrow -- 3.4 Communicating God's omniscience -- 3.5 Initiating discourse -- 3.6 Continuing discourse -- 3.7 Conclusion -- 4. Writing in the name of: Social or professional writers -- 5. Formulaic language, group practices and social routine -- 6. Formulae in letter-writing manuals -- 6.1 Elite manuals -- 6.2 School books -- 6.3 Jacobi and his successors -- 7. Conclusions -- Chapter 6. Forms of address -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Forms of address in the history of Dutch -- 3. Politeness as a variable -- 3.1 Private vs business -- 3.2 Within the core family -- 3.3 The j-forms -- 3.4 An increase in negative politeness?. , 3.5 Politic behaviour and social stratification -- 4. Sociolinguistic variation and change -- 4.1 The overall diachronic picture -- 4.2 Epistolary forms of address -- 4.3 The pronominal forms of address -- 5. Politeness - again -- 6. Conclusions -- Chapter 7. Clause chaining between spoken and written language -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The subcorpora -- 3. Clause linking in the letter corpus -- 3.1 No bleached connectives and no punctuation -- 3.2 Bleached connectives, but no punctuation -- 3.3 Bleached connectives as well as punctuation -- 3.4 Punctuation, but no bleached connectives -- 4. Grammaticalisation of clause linkages and discourse markers -- 5. The rise of punctuation -- 6. Variation and change in clause chaining -- 6.1 Discourse units -- 6.2 Sociolinguistic patterns -- 7. The interplay of punctuation and clause chaining -- 8. Conclusions -- Chapter 8. Variation and change in the relative clause -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Relativisation in the history of Dutch -- 3. Syntacticisation of the relative clause - hypotheses -- 4. Variation and change in the relative clause - case studies -- 4.1 Extracting d's and w's - diachronic results -- 4.2 Social and gender variation -- 4.3 A change from above -- 5. Relativisation and incremental writing experience -- 6. Relativisation and formulaic language -- 6.1 Epistolary formulae -- 6.2 Constructional diffusion -- 7. Relativisation and clause integration -- 7.1 Integration of relative clauses -- 7.2 Integration and syntacticisation -- 8. Conclusions -- Chapter 9. Apocope of final schwa -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The subcorpora -- 3. A regionally diffused phonological change -- 3.1 The broad picture by time and region -- 3.2 Right context -- 3.3 Left context -- 4. North Holland, including Amsterdam -- 5. South Holland -- 6. Zeeland -- 7. Interpreting social and regional variation -- 8. Epistolary conventions. , 8.1 Formulaic language -- 8.2 Zero subjects -- 9. Conclusions -- Chapter 10. Clausal and local negation -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The subcorpora and the overall results -- 3. Regional patterns -- 4. Constructional patterns -- 5. Lexical-semantic patterns -- 5.1 The negators niet and geen -- 5.2 Type of verb -- 6. Phonological patterns -- 7. Complexity effects -- 7.1 Proximity -- 7.2 Verbal cluster complexity -- 8. Social patterns -- 9. Social patterns in Amsterdam and Zeeland -- 10. Conclusions -- Chapter 11. Harvesting -- 1. Harvesting: Introduction -- 2. Mapping variation and change -- 3. Explanations: Community practices and politeness theory -- 4. The writing process and different degrees of writing experience: Connecting all the data -- 4.1 Acquiring writing skills -- 4.2 Phenomena and the explanation of writing experience -- 5. The complex nature of change -- 6. The fruits of confiscated letters -- 7. Conclusions -- References -- Index. , English

Additional Edition: ISBN 90-272-0081-5

Language: English