Frequency changes and stylistic levelling of though in diachronic and synchronic varieties of English – linguistic democratisation?

Publication date: Available online 10 February 2020Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): Ole SchützlerAbstractBased on diachronic and synchronic corpus data, this paper empirically explores two symptoms of linguistic democratisation in English: (i) a general frequency increase of a linguistic feature traditionally associated with spoken language, which may be interpreted as colloqualisation, and (ii) a development towards similar rates of occurrence of the phenomenon in different genres, i.e. its more general availability irrespective of stylistic context. For the latter process, the term ‘stylistic levelling’ is suggested. The focus is on developments of the (typically spoken) conjunct though, as in the sentence It was not cheap, though, from the early 17th to the late 20th century. The paper makes suggestions for the quantitative analysis of aspects of linguistic democratisation, demonstrates the approach based on a corpus study, discusses L2 varieties of English as one possible source of such processes, and discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of the study.
Source: Language Sciences - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research