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The evolution of progressive verb forms within the language system from late Middle English to Early Modern English
JOZOVÁ, Dominika
The aim of my thesis is to map the occurrence of the progressive verb forms in the English language from the period of the end of the 14th century to the beginning of the 18th century. The theoretical reading is based on the history of language development, its typological development and the development of the verb in terms of morphology. In the practical part I deal with the analysis of selected texts and I search for shapes marking the progressive form. I am looking for a connection with the typological development and development of the education in society mentioned in the practical part.
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Corpus based analysis of the competition of linguistic expressions of Old Norse and Old English origin in the Late Old English and Middle English periods
Schlindenbuchová, Magdalena ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
This paper seeks to illustrate the influence of Old Norse on the English lexicon. The theoretical part deals mainly with the socio-historical background and with the invasions of the Old Norse speakers, which brought about the changes in the English language. Furthermore, it discusses the idea of mutual intelligibility of the two languages concerned and it describes the characteristics of the language contact situation, which lasted for about 200 years, during which speakers of Old Norse invaded the British Isles. The aim then is to relate these events and factors to the linguistic changes in historical English caused by the influence of Old Norse. The changes shall be illustrated on the competition of concrete linguistic expressions of Old Norse origin and Old English origin. The research itself focuses on the examination of the competition during the periods of Late Old English and Middle English, and it is carried out in the Old English and Middle English corpora (YCOE, PPCME2). The analysis comprises four words of Old Norse origin and their four Old English equivalents. Key words: historical linguistics, borrowing, language contact, corpus linguistics, Old English, Middle English, Old Norse
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Middle English adjectival innovations of native origin (1200-1400) formed by prefixation
Ortutayová, Dominika ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Popelíková, Jiřina (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to analyse and describe the Middle English adjectival innovations of native origin coming into existence by prefixation in the period of 1200-1400. The formations are described from the point of view of their word-formation and semantics, the individual word- formation patterns are identified and analysed in terms of their productivity. In the theoretical part we present three points of view - social, typological and word-formational - which allow us to formulate our hypothesis consisting in the assumption that the native prefixation will exhibit gradual signs of decreasing productivity, brought about both by the language-external and language-internal causes - the language being overwhelmed by the an influx of foreign elements due to political and social situation at the time; as well as gradual phonological and semantic non- transparency of the native prefixes. The empirical part is based on the analysis of the 219 adjectives retrieved from the Oxford English Dictionary. Our results show that 7 out of 13 prefixes are decreasing in productivity or unproductive, yet the situation is not homogeneous and we were able to identify eight possible scenarios of development in productivity patterns. Our hypothesis is thus confirmed only partially - both the extra and...
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Corpus based description of attitudes to native language in the Middle English period
Puršová, Alena ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
Middle English is a form of English that was spoken between the late 12th and the late 15th century, which corresponds to the historical High Middle Ages in England. The term 'Middle' reflects its position between two very different stages of English development, the earlier Old English period, and the later Early Modern English period. At the beginning of the Middle English period English is an almost impenetrable West Germanic language that must be learned, whereas at the end the language used is very close to Modern English. Even though later stages of English development are very thoroughly described by the contemporary speakers, it is harder to find any textual reference about the language of the Middle English period. Therefore, the focus of this work was to find such references that would reveal additional information about the state and attitudes towards the English language at that time. Using previous studies done by historical linguists as the main resource, the theoretical part introduces Middle English, its structure and external historical context. It serves as an informative background for the practical part that follows. The research was conducted by examining a corpus of Middle English texts using a corpus management software. The program enables keyword-based search in the corpus...
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