In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.

In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:06:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FelipeMM_DISSERT_PARCIAL.pdf: 543992 bytes, checksum: ce3639e86db6323316d34db69a7a5540 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-10-17 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The diachronic studies marked the first decades of the 20th century in Brazilian linguistics, passing by an ostracism period after the 50s. Mainly from the 90s especially with the project, created in 1997, Para a hist?ria do portugu?s brasileiro (PHPB), which has systemized, in national ambit, the programme related to the area of diachrony the historical studies retake forces and have gradually increased since then. Our work is set in the new scene of Brazilian historical linguistics and it is associated to two research programmes: i) the constitution of a diachronic corpus; ii) the diachrony of text and discourse. As regards the first programme, we made effort to constitute a diachronic corpus of official letters about Rio Grande do Norte, we called cartas oficiais norte-rio-grandenses, written in 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The chosen for bureaucrat letters occurred for they represent a textual category very productive in historical contexts, mostly 18th and 19th centuries, in which the command of writing was the least and also because they bring, almost always explicitly, the information of where, when, for whom and from whom, as remembers Fonseca (2003). The rules for constituting the corpus were based, although not strictly, on the orientation from PHPB. In respect to the second programme, we set up on the ideas of coserian base came from the studies on discourse traditions (TD) (Koch, 1997; Kabatek, 2006) amongst which that the texts are shaped so as to follow their own tradition (Coseriu, 2007), and we turned to Diplomatics (Belloto, 2002) in order to do the characterization of this corpus by the application of concepts from Diplomatics and TD as well as by the presentation of the structures that form those official letters: their textual genres, a kind of TD, with their macrostructures; and some of their formulaic expressions (microstructures), another sort of TD. This stage of characterizing will pay attention, as far as possible, to the dynamic between tradition and innovation that happen in the actualization of those textual structures along the centuries. This work intends to contribute with the researches connected to Historical Linguistics in Rio Grande do Norte, more specifically the ones related to the constitution of diachronic corpora and to TD; and with the study of official documents, textual category about which there are almost no studies (cf. Silveira, 2007) / Os estudos diacr?nicos marcaram as primeiras d?cadas do s?culo XX na lingu?stica brasileira, passando por um per?odo de ostracismo ap?s a d?cada de 50. Principalmente a partir da d?cada de 90 com ?nfase na cria??o, em 1997, do projeto Para a hist?ria do portugu?s brasileiro (PHPB), que tem sistematizado, em ?mbito nacional, os planos de trabalho relacionados ? ?rea da diacronia os estudos hist?ricos da l?ngua retomam for?a e v?m aumentando paulatinamente desde ent?o. Nosso trabalho situa-se neste novo cen?rio da lingu?stica hist?rica brasileira e est? relacionado a dois programas de pesquisa: i) a organiza??o de um corpus diacr?nico e ii) a diacronia do texto e do discurso. No que respeita ao primeiro programa, empenhamo-nos na constitui??o de um corpus diacr?nico de cartas oficiais relacionadas ao Rio Grande do Norte, a que chamamos cartas oficiais norte-rio-grandenses, escritas nos s?culos XVIII, XIX e XX. A escolha por cartas burocr?ticas se deu por elas representarem uma categoria textual bastante produtiva em ambientes hist?ricos, principalmente dos s?culos XVIII e XIX, em que o dom?nio da escrita era m?nimo e tamb?m por trazerem, quase sempre explicitamente, informa??es do tipo onde, quando, para quem e por quem, conforme relembra Fonseca (2003). Os crit?rios para a constitui??o do corpus tomaram por base, embora n?o estritamente, as orienta??es do PHPB. Com rela??o ao segundo programa, partimos das ideias de base coseriana advindas dos estudos sobre as tradi??es discursivas (TD) (Koch, 1997; Kabatek, 2006), dentre as quais a de que os textos se configuram de modo a seguirem suas pr?prias tradi??es (Coseriu, 2007), e recorremos ? Diplom?tica (Belloto, 2002), a fim de proceder a uma caracteriza??o desse corpus pela aplica??o de conceitos tanto da Diplom?tica quanto das TD e por meio da apresenta??o das estruturas que conformam essas cartas: seus g?neros textuais, uma modalidade de TD, com suas macroestruturas; e algumas de suas express?es formulaicas (microestruturas), outra modalidade de TD. Essa etapa da caracteriza??o atentar?, sempre que poss?vel, para a din?mica entre conservadorismo e inova??o que se processa na atualiza??o dessas estruturas textuais ao largo dos s?culos. Este trabalho pretende contribuir com as investiga??es ligadas ? Lingu?stica Hist?rica no Rio Grande do Norte, de modo mais pontual as atinentes ? constitui??o de corpora diacr?nicos e ?s TD; e com o estudo dos documentos oficiais, categoria de g?neros textuais sobre a qual praticamente inexistem estudos (cf. Silveira, 2007)

Climate change must be considered one of the most critical issues of the coming decades that poten- tially poses foundational threats to human societies. Aviation has relatively little impact on green- house gas emissions globally, but this picture changes when focusing on emissions of rich industrial states. While being one of the foundations of the modern globalised world, present aviation growth trajectories are untenable. In this thesis, I investigated (a) how discourses about climate change are mediated, amplified and constructed by traditional mass media in Germany and (b) which de- bate configurations lead to political and civil society action on the issue. In particular, I highlighted the underlying ideological currents that influence how journalists discuss issues. This study uses a corpus-assisted approach to critical discourse studies, where statistical insights from large amounts of data are combined with a closer reading of text extracts. It is unique in its methodological breadth and the focus on a non-English-speaking country. The analysis is also angled differently compared to many previous studies insofar as I capture climate in relation to a different topic and not as the main issue. I reproduce previous findings of two periods of intense reporting on the issue with a period of disinterest in between and show that attitudes and ideologies of both the progressive and conservative media outlets have changed considerably over time. This change created a novel debate constellation that proved to be surprisingly robust in the woes of the coronavirus pandemic. Discus- sions moved from a dichotomy between effective climate and economic policy towards a narrative of economic transformation towards innovative industries and technologies. Meanwhile, there was also an increased focus on social consequences and questions of efficacy. The results expand on many of the earlier framing analyses and yield additional insight into effectively drafting and communicating climate policy to appeal to both progressive and conservative target groups. Creating climate poli- cies that are attractive to various strata in the population is essential to avoid polarised debates and assuage climate denialism, tendencies that can already be observed in a variety of countries.