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Tracking down phrasal verbs in the spoken language of the past: Late Modern English in focus1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

PAULA RODRÍGUEZ-PUENTE
PAULA RODRÍGUEZ-PUENTE*
Affiliation:
Department of English, French and German, University of Oviedo, Campus El Milán – C/Teniente Alfonso Martínez s/n, 33011 Oviedo, Spainrodriguezppaula@uniovi.es
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Abstract

This article analyses the formal and stylistic features of phrasal verbs in the Old Bailey Corpus and 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.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 69 - 97
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

1

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Laurel Brinton and the two anonymous reviewers of this article for their kind comments, insightful suggestions and valuable discussion on earlier versions of this piece of research. For generous financial support, thanks are due to the European Regional Development Fund and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grants FFI2014-52188-P and FFI2014-51873-REDT).

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