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This study offers a unique combination of two methodological frameworks: a rigorous corpus-driven data analysis, and a pragmaphilological, context-sensitive qualitative interpretation of the findings. Providing the reader with a rich socio-historical background of legal discourse in medieval and early modern Scottish burghs, this monograph traces the links between orality, literacy, and law, which are reflected in discourse features and linguistic standardization of legal and administrative texts.

Law --- Scots language --- Scotland --- Language --- History. --- Politics and government --- Older Scots language --- Acts, Legislative --- Enactments, Legislative --- Laws (Statutes) --- Legislative acts --- Legislative enactments --- Jurisprudence --- Legislation --- Older Scots

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Languages change and they keep changing as a result of communicative interactions and practices in the context of communities of language users. The articles in this volume showcase a range of such communities and their practices as loci of language change in the history of English. The notion of communities of practice takes its starting point in the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger and refers to groups of people defined both through their membership in a community and through their shared practices. Three types of communities are particularly highlighted: networks of letter writers; grou

English language --- Linguistic change --- Languages in contact --- Germanic languages --- Areal linguistics --- Change, Linguistic --- Language change --- Historical linguistics --- Language and languages --- Social aspects --- History. --- Variation --- Language in contact --- History --- Social aspects&delete& --- Variation&delete& --- Dialectology

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Binomials, such as for and against, dead or alive, to have and to hold, can be broadly defined as two words belonging to the same grammatical category and linked by a semantic relationship. They are an important phraseological phenomenon present throughout the history of the English language. This volume offers a range of studies on binomials, their types and functions from Old English through to the present day. Searching for motivations and characteristic features of binomials in a particular genre or writer, the chapters engage with many linguistic levels of analysis, such as phonology or semantics, and explore the important role of translation. Drawing on philological and corpus-linguistic approaches, the authors employ qualitative and quantitative methods, setting the discussion firmly in the extra-linguistic context. Binomials and their extended forms - multinomials - emerge from these discussions as an important phraseological tool, with rich applications and complex motivations.

English language --- Phraseology. --- History. --- Collocation (Linguistics) --- Binomial --- Semantics --- Semantic prosody --- Germanic languages

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This volume proposes the term pattern-driven approach as a more precise alternative. The chapters illustrate a variety of methods that fall under this broad methodology, such as lexical bundles, POS-grams and semantic frames, and demonstrate how these approaches can uncover new understandings of both synchronic and diachronic linguistic phenomena.

Corpora (Linguistics) --- Applied linguistics

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Textbooks inform readers that the precursor of Standard English was supposedly an East or Central Midlands variety which became adopted in London; that monolingual fifteenth century English manuscripts fall into internally-cohesive Types; and that the fourth Type, dating after 1435 and labelled ‘Chancery Standard’, provided the mechanism by which this supposedly Midlands variety spread out from London. This set of explanations is challenged by taking a multilingual perspective, examining Anglo-Norman French, Medieval Latin and mixed-language contexts as well as monolingual English ones. By analysing local and legal documents, mercantile accounts, personal letters and journals, medical and religious prose, multiply-copied works, and the output of individual scribes, standardisation is shown to have been preceded by supralocalisation rather than imposed top-down as a single entity by governmental authority. Linguistic features examined include syntax, morphology, vocabulary, spelling, letter-graphs, abbreviations and suspensions, social context and discourse norms, pragmatics, registers, text-types, communities of practice social networks, and the multilingual backdrop, which was influenced by shifting socioeconomic trends.

Historical linguistics --- Sociolinguistics --- English language --- Historical Sociolinguistics --- Medieval Multilingualism --- Standardisation of English --- E-books