Tracking down phrasal verbs in the spoken language of the past: Late Modern English in focus
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: This article analyses the formal and stylistic features of phrasal verbs in theOld Bailey Corpusand compares them with results obtained from the speech-related genres of ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers), namely diaries, drama, letters and sermons. Phrasal verbs tend to be associated with spoken colloquial registers both in PDE and previous stages of the language, although this statement has been challenged by Thim (2006a, 2012), who argues that in EModE the (non-)occurrence of phrasal verbs in a particular text seems motivated by its contents, rather than its degree of formality. The results in this study show that phrasal verbs were a feature of the spoken language already in LModE, since their frequency is remarkably higher in trial proceedings, arguably the closest representation of the spoken word of the past. However, in contrast to other speech-related text types, the frequency of phrasal verbs in trial proceedings decreases over time, which seems to point towards a decolloquialisation of this genre over time. The study also shows differences at the formal level across genres, demonstrating that sermons display more formal and archaic characteristics, whereas trial proceedings contain features which bring them closer to the spoken language.
Source: English Language and Linguistics
Author: PAULA RODRÍGUEZ-PUENTE
Institution: Universidad de Oviedo
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2397665388