{"id":969,"date":"2010-10-16T10:00:18","date_gmt":"2010-10-16T08:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=969"},"modified":"2010-07-22T15:17:46","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T13:17:46","slug":"connectives-in-the-history-of-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=969","title":{"rendered":"Connectives in the history of English"},"content":{"rendered":"
Connectives in the history of English. <\/strong>Ed. by Ursula Lenker<\/strong> and Anneli Meurman-Solin<\/strong>. (Current issues in linguistic theory 283.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007. Pp. viii, 318. ISBN 9789027247988<\/a>. $178 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by <\/strong>Agnieszka Pysz<\/strong><\/a>, Adam Mickiewicz University<\/em><\/p>\n

This collection of twelve papers, originally presented at the 13th International Conference of English Historical Linguistics in Vienna in 2004, explores clausal connectives in the history of English by means of various methodological tools and from a variety of theoretical perspectives.<\/p>\n

The first two papers consider connectives in the context of categorial continua. In \u2018Adverbial connectives within and beyond adverbial subordination: The history of lest<\/em>\u2019, Mar\u00eda Jos\u00e9 L\u00f3pez-Couso<\/strong> traces the development of lest<\/em> from a subordinator (specifically, an adverbial connective of negative purpose) into a complementizer. Bettelou Los <\/strong>explores \u2018To<\/em> as a connective in the history of English\u2019 <\/strong>and <\/strong>presents the accompanying diachronic changes in morphology and syntax.<\/p>\n

Several papers discuss individual connectives that express specific semantic relations. Matti Rissanen<\/strong>, \u2018From o\u00fe<\/em> to till<\/em>: Early loss of an adverbial subordinator\u2019, and Laurel J. Brinton<\/strong>, \u2018Rise of the adverbial conjunctions {any<\/em>, each<\/em>, every<\/em>} time\u2019, both focus on temporal connectives. <\/strong>Brinton discusses the use and discourse functions of these conjunctions in contemporary English and in historical data.<\/p>\n

The next four papers deal with connectives that signal concessive or contrastive relations. Rafa\u0142 Molencki <\/strong>presents \u2018The evolution of since<\/em> in medieval English\u2019, taking into account its orthographic, phonological, morphosyntactic, and semantic changes. Elina Sorva<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018Grammaticalization and syntactic polyfunctionality: The case of albeit<\/em>\u2019 <\/strong>is a corpus-based study devoted to the diachrony of the concessive connective albeit<\/em>. \u2018On the subjectification of adverbial clause connectives: Semantic and pragmatic considerations in the development of while<\/em>-clauses\u2019, by Ana I. Gonz\u00e1lez-Cruz<\/strong>, traces the different meanings while<\/em> has expressed over time. In \u2018A relevance-theoretic view on issues in the history of clausal connectives\u2019, Carsten Breul <\/strong>presents an account of the semantic diachrony of where<\/em> and whereas<\/em>. Finally, in \u2018Forhwi<\/em> \u201cbecause\u201d: Shifting deictics in the history of English causal connection\u2019, Ursula Lenker<\/strong> outlines major tendencies in the development of English connectors that express causal relations.<\/p>\n

The last three papers examine text-organizational aspects of connectives. Claudia Claridge<\/strong>, \u2018Conditionals in Early Modern English texts\u2019, <\/strong>presents a number of functions for which conditional clauses were used in Early Modern English. Anneli Meurman-Solin <\/strong>discusses the use of \u2018Relatives as sentence-level connectives\u2019, especially in the context of anaphoric reference. In \u2018\u201cConnective profiles\u201d in the history of English texts: Aspects of orality and literacy\u2019, Thomas Kohnen <\/strong>looks at English connectives that appear in sermons and statutes and describes patterns of distribution across the different text types.<\/p>\n

This volume documents important research of the diachrony of English connectives, taking into account syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Connectives in the history of English. Ed. by Ursula Lenker and Anneli Meurman-Solin. (Current issues in linguistic theory 283.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007. Pp. viii, 318. ISBN 9789027247988. $178 (Hb). Reviewed by Agnieszka Pysz, Adam Mickiewicz University This collection of twelve papers, originally presented at the 13th International Conference of English Historical Linguistics in Vienna […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":970,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}