This thesis has been produced under the conditions of the Gatty (Florence Emily and Charles Tindal) Memorial Scholarship, the holder of which "must pursue advanced study or research in Scottish Language and Literature with special reference to dialects on both sides of the border and to such border antiquities and music as bear on the subject". In order to satisfy these requirements as far as possible, rather more attention has been given to historical and dialectal notes than is usual or necessary in place-name studies. The following work is intended as a survey of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian place-name. material in the Border Counties. I have tried to demonstrate chat types of names occur, where they are situated, and roughly to what period they belong. Thus it has been more convenient to group the names under their endings than to arrange them by parishes in the manner of the English Place-Name Society's volumes. It is almost impossible to date Scottish places with any certainty since spellings for the majority are not found before the 13th Century, but generally they may be classified under three headings (a) Old English; (b) Middle English (c) Scandinavian, and Middle English of Scandinavian origin. Between the first two classes there must be a good deal of overlapping. It is known that names in -ing, -ingaham, -ingtun and -ham probably ceased to be formed after the OE period, but many of the other habitational endings which in England belong. to this time must have continued to be formed at a much later date in the North. Similarly many of the names classified as Middle English may belong to the OE period. It has been my practice to count as an ending second element of each name if a habitative or topographical term. Thus Torwoodlee is discussed under -wood and Capehope Burn under -hope. Only the main, or original, parts of names are of importance in a survey of this kind, and so where groups occur such as Caverton, C- Mains, C- Hillhead, C- Mill, I have dealt only with the basic name, Caverton. Names which do not appear in the 1 inch. Ordnance Survey maps, but which are found in sources before 1600, have been used for purposes of illustration and comparison. In most cases I have not consulted the 6 inch maps in attempts to locate these or other minor names. The phonetic symbols used in the transcription of place-name pronunciations are those normally employed by the E. P. N. S.

No description available.

The Scots language has been historically marginalised in Scotland, arguably due to its lack of ‘capital’ (see Bailey, 1987 and Bourdieu, 1986). The European Union, under the Charter for Minority Languages, recognised Scots as a minority language in 2000 and the UK Government ratified Scots as such in 2001, yet Scots is still often perceived as ‘bad English’ or positioned within the invented romantic ‘tartanry’ of Scotland’s heritage (Matheson and Matheson, 2000). Scottish institutions such as the education system have traditionally ‘othered’ the Scots language and its speakers (Bailey, 1987). This has potentially generated barriers for learning and compromised Scots-speaking children’s notions of self-worth, agency and identity. The following thesis explores Scottish secondary school student and teacher attitudes towards the place of Scots language in the Scottish classroom. The study also considers how and why such attitudes have emerged and endure. Moreover implications and recommendations for the inclusion of Scots in Scottish schools are considered.

No description available.

This thesis addresses two fundamental issues regarding lexis in the Business English environment. It firstly asks whether the lexis of Business English is significantly different from that of 'everyday' general English, and secondly, if the lexis found in Business English published materials is significantly different from that found in real-life business. In order to test these hypotheses two corpora were created to form the basis of the analysis: the Published Materials Corpus (PMC) consisting of 33 published Business English course and resource books at 590,000 running words and the Business English Corpus (BEC) at, 1,023,000 running words divided between spoken (44%) and written (56%) texts. The BNC Sampler corpus was used as reference corpus. These three corpora were then able to be lexically compared by using WordSmith 3 (Scott 1999) using statistically-based key words. The results of these analyses showed that it was possible to define the world of business lexis, and also how it was lexically separated from general English by placing the words into a limited group of semantic categories. These categories were found to recur across word class boundaries and showed a lexical world of business bounded by its people, institutions, activities, events and entities, The boundary limits of business lexis were placed by the non-business lexis of the negative key words and the semantic groups they formed. Representative words from each of the main semantic groups were chosen for further study to see how they behaved both semantically and grammatically. Louw's (1993) concept of semantic prosody was used to determine how Business English words associated with certain semantic groups, and Firth's (1957) and Hoey's (1997) idea of colligation was used to show which grammatical patterns the words typically formed themselves into. Results of these secondary analyses of the BEC showed that whilst some business lexis associates with semantic groups unique to itself, most lexis is formed into patterns of interrelated semantic groups which regularly co-occur with each other. Additionally, there was evidence to suggest that words form associations to some semantic groups when in the business environment, and others when out of it. In the business setting, the meaning potential of words was found to be reduced and this had consequences both semantically and grammatically. Fewer meanings were used than in general English - and, as grammatical patterning and meaning were found to be co-dependent, restricted meaning led to area-specific and restricted grammatical patterning. The same analytical methods were used in the analysis of the PMC and it was compared both to the BNC, to see how published materials differ from general English, and to the BEC, to see how two corpora, both purporting to be Business English, differed from each other. Where the BEC could be seen to show a limited and specialist lexis, the PMC was even more limited. The lexical world of business presented by the materials showed a stress on personal and interpersonal contact, and a focus on a limited number of business activities, notably entertaining, travel, meetings and presentations. There was less reference to states and qualities, and the lexis in the PMC concentrated even more than the BEC on tangible, concrete items

The research presented in this thesis details the linguistic patterns of two contact varieties of English spoken in the UK. Based on an analysis of recordings made in two British cities, the research assesses the influence of Panjabi on the English spoken in Bradford and Leicester. In addition, it considers what the role and influence of the respective regional ‘Anglo English’ variety is having on the development of the contact variety in each location. The research here focusses on variation in voice quality, the vowels FACE, GOAT and GOOSE, and the realisation of /r/. For voice quality, a vocal profile analysis (e.g. Laver 1980) was completed for each of the speakers included in the corpus with characteristic vocal settings observed among Panjabi and Anglo English groups. The results from a dynamic vowel analysis of F1 and F2 variation across the trajectory for FACE, GOAT and GOOSE illustrated that despite the cross regional similarities which are observable in Panjabi English, local interpretations are crucial. A combined auditory and acoustic analysis of /r/ in word initial and medial position revealed divergent regional patterns in Panjabi English. A number of arguments are put forward to account for the linguistic parallels reported here, and more widely, in contact varieties of English in the UK. The findings of the thesis contribute to a growing body of work that explores the development of contact varieties spoken in the UK, with this thesis concentrating on the development of ‘Panjabi English’ in two locations simultaneously. The patterns observed are accounted for by considering research from both language and dialect contact research, with the thesis drawing together ideas from these two separate fields. The claims put forward argue that the similar patterns observed can be considered to be independent innovations, with contact processes accounting for the linguistic correspondences.

This thesis sets out to characterise English as a World Language, in contrast with English used in homogeneous, intranational settings. After a brief introduction, the relevant literature is reviewed in two chapters: firstly the concept of an international variety of English is challenged and, following this, there is consideration of current thinking under the headings of English as an International Language and English as Lingua Franca. This preliminary part of the thesis leads to some hypotheses concerning the way in which EWL might be characterised, with particular attention to attitudes among different sorts of speaker. Chapter Five introduces methodologies (1) for finding data-providing participants and (2) assessing their language-related attitudes relevant to the research questions. It continues by (3) examining ways of obtaining spoken data and (4) of transcribing and (5) analysing it. Chapter 6 presents the specific methodological choices for this thesis. The following four chapters provide results. Firstly, brief results are given of tests applied to ascertain participants' language-related attitudes. Following this, the results of analysing and explaining the spoken data itself are given. Chapter 8 closely compares one EWL conversation with one homogeneous one and draws tentative conclusions about what might be found in the remaining conversations: that EWL may be characterised by greater convergence among speakers, irrespective of whether or not they are native speakers. Chapter 9 examines the whole suite of conversations in this light and the previous results are generally confirmed: the speakers in homogeneous conversations tend to be as divergent as they are convergent, where in EWL conversations they try their best to maintain an atmosphere of comity. Chapter 10 completes the results section by comparing the performance of six speakers in particular, who each participate in an EWL conversation and in a homogeneous one. They are found to draw on convergence strategies for their EWL conversations while being more direct and divergent in their homogeneous ones. Chapter 11 attempts to summarise the preceding chapters and to draw some conclusions from the results.

The evolution of the genitive noun phrase in English has been the subject of numerous studies, yet some aspects of this evolution have received less attention than others. In this study I address two of these less studied aspects: the evolution of the plural genitive noun phrase in Middle English (1150-1500), and the decline of the overtly case-marked genitive modifiers (singular and plural) in the same period. The former has generally been presented as following the same path of the singular genitive noun phrase; the latter has been all but ignored, with only a single study (Thomas 1931) which explicitly examines the use of the genitive definite article and strong adjective. The study uses text samples from two electronic corpora, the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English and the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, Second Edition, as well as samples from printed editions. The texts used in the present study have been selected with the aim of covering as wide a geographical and chronological range as possible. The thesis examines how and why the number of endings for the genitive plural inflection first increased (in the period up to about 1350) and then decreased (from 1350 onward), a fluctuation not found in the singular inflected genitive noun. The number of available inflectional endings increased due to the morphophonological weaknesses of the -V ending type – the dominant ending type inherited from OE – leading to instabilities in the inflectional system which allowed alternatives to arise. However, the number of genitive plural inflectional endings then decreased, apparently affected not only by the phonological strength/weakness of the ending types but also the type of noun phrase that these were associated with. The inflectional ending which survives, -Vs, is most commonly found with genitive noun phrases in which the genitive noun is animate and the noun phrase has one of the genitive functions labelled POSSESSIVE in this study. This distribution of the various inflectional endings according to animacy and function is related to the rise of the periphrastic genitive plural noun phrase. The initial preferred environment for the periphrastic genitive construction is noun phrases with those functions which will be referred to as NONPOSSESSIVE. As the inflected genitive becomes increasingly restricted to a single noun phrase type, the periphrastic construction expands, to become the default genitive construction by the end of the period. The thesis examines the decline of overtly case-marked genitive modifiers in Middle English, both adjective and determiners. In general, the trend is that morphologically more conservative texts are more likely to preserve case-marked modifier forms, although some marked forms are more widespread due to the development of fixed expressions. Where case-marked modifiers are maintained, historical grammatical gender agreement and the strong/weak adjective distinction are often preserved. Factors which play a role in the survival of marked modifiers are chronological distribution, impact of Old English exemplars, and the development of certain fixed expressions with the adjectives. Thomas (1931) considered the loss of case-marked definite articles and strong adjectives to be the principal factor in the shift from inflected to periphrastic genitive constructions, but the evidence from the present study shows that this is not the case for all texts.

Los relatos cosmológicos se pueden entender como el intento por responder a la pregunta acerca del nacimiento, desarrollo y evolución del universo . En la tradición filosófica griega y en la mitología se encuentran numerosos ejemplos de relatos cosmológicos que buscan hacer inteligible el proceso de desarrollo del universo. Los relatos teleológicos, por su parte, tratan de responder una pregunta distinta que los cosmológicos. En las explicaciones teleológicas se busca dar cuenta del destino del cosmos o el propósito específico por el cual el universo ha sido creado, sea este orden, bondad o belleza . Los diálogos teleológicos platónicos, el Timeo y la República, pueden ser entendido como el intento de reunir en una misma obra y discurso la explicación cosmológica y teleológica: dar razón del desarrollo del mundo a partir de la explicación del tránsito del desorden al orden que este exhibe en su estado final y el cual ha sido introducido por un agente externo al universo mismo, el demiurgo. / Tesis

This thesis investigates how the strong verb system inherited from Old English evolved in the regional dialects of Middle English (ca. 1100-1500). Old English texts preserve a relatively complex system of strong verbs, in which traditionally seven different ablaut classes are distinguished. This system becomes seriously disrupted from the Late Old English and Early Middle English periods onwards. As a result, many strong verbs die out, or have their ablaut patterns affected by sound change and morphological analogy, or transfer to the weak conjugation. In my thesis, I study the beginnings of two of these developments in two strong verb classes to find out what the evidence from Middle English regional dialects can tell us about their origins and diffusion. Chapter 2 concentrates on the strong-to-weak shift in Class III verbs, and investigates to what extent strong, mixed and weak past tense and participle forms vary in Middle English dialects, and whether the variation is more pronounced in the paradigms of specific verbs or sub-classes. Chapter 3 analyses the regional distribution of ablaut levelling in strong Class IV verbs throughout the Middle English period. The Class III and IV data for the Early Middle English period are drawn from A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, and the data for the Late Middle English period from a sub-corpus of files from The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English and The Middle English Grammar Corpus. Furthermore, The English Dialect Dictionary and Grammar are consulted as an additional reference point to find out to what extent the Middle English developments are reflected in Late Modern English dialects. Finally, referring to modern insights into language variation and change and linguistic interference, Chapter 4 discusses to what extent intra- and extra-linguistc factors, such as token and type frequency, stem structure and language contact, might correlate with the strong-to-weak shift and ablaut levelling in Class III and IV verbs in the Middle English period. The thesis is accompanied by six appendices that contain further information about my distinction of Middle English dialect areas (Appendix A), historical Class III and IV verbs (B and C) and the text samples and linguistic data from the Middle English text corpora (D, E and F).