The overall aim of this article is to show that pauper letters are a valuable, but as yet largely untapped resource for historical dialectological research. Offering a case study based on 31 poor-relief applications sent by 10 individuals to parishes in Dorset between 1742 and 1834, the article aims to identify regional variation, especially as associated with Dorset and/or the Southwest of England more generally, by comparing variant spellings and morphosyntactic usages contained in the letters with features listed in modern dialect surveys (mainly Wakelin 1986; Altendorf & Watt 2008; Wagner 2008), as well as in Dorset poet William Barnes’ Dissertation and the reconstruction of his idiolect by Burton (2013). It is possible to isolate 297 occurrences of 52 different phonological and morphosyntactic features in the pauper letters; 11 of these features are salient across the letter selection (i.e. represented by at least three paupers) and are suggestive of the provenance of the letters. The article also offers surprising findings such as the absence of the prototypically Southwestern fricative voicing, features unrecorded by modern synopses (e.g. unmarked possessive), and the presence of a feature (-ind for -ing) which had fallen out of common use in the fifteenth century.

This article deals with the mechanisms that language users employ in historical periods to represent spoken language in writing. I focus on a set of features known as speech descriptors, which allow users to combine representation and evaluation of the speech (and, possibly, of the speaker), such as most disgusting in ‘he used most disgusting language’. The study shows that such speech descriptors in combination with the lemma language are used for a number of sociopragmatic purposes in the Old Bailey Corpus which includes legal materials, especially testimony, from 1720 to 1913. The descriptors can be used to avoid having to repeat a more specific, and possibly offensive and socially or morally inappropriate utterance; they can be used to put the spotlight on the evaluation and impact of the wording rather than the original speech itself; and they can help users mitigate, deflect, or disprove an accusation or guilt. Overall, the article demonstrates that studying the speech of the past must necessarily involve investigating the complex choices made by language users in terms of what to represent, what means to use to represent the speech, and how they evaluate the speech (and speaker).

This article presents an analysis of vowels in the goat set and /r/ in the Collection of Nineteenth-century Grammars (CNG) (cf. Anderwald 2016). My central questions concern the extent to which grammarians provide evidence for early diphthongisation in goat words and for changes in the distribution of /r/ variants in nineteenth-century prestige accents. I furthermore evaluate how far grammars are suitable as a source for researching historical sound changes. I show that monophthongs are the most frequently proposed variants for goat and are often referred to as ‘improper diphthongs’. Some diphthongal descriptions exist for words in open syllables, before /l/ and before plosives in words like know, soul and boat respectively. Concerning the distribution of /r/, I show that most grammars continued to propose two sounds, which were almost exclusively described as ‘rough’ or ‘trilled’, and ‘smooth’ or ‘soft’. However, some grammarians also argued for /r/ having only one sound in all positions and complete post-vocalic /r/ absence. Overall, the grammars in the CNG display a considerable amount of what I assume to be copying from scholars such as Walker (1791) and Murray (1795). Thus, I argue that great care is required when attempting to infer phonological changes from nineteenth-century grammars.

This article provides a corpus-driven overview of the ‘epistemic space’ surrounding the use of two lockwords of Early and Late Modern English writings on midwifery and childbirth, child and uterus. Rather than searching for epistemic stance markers themselves, this study employs the ‘bottom-up’ approach by examining the propositions containing these lockwords, and then seeing what particular epistemic meanings are signalled by the surrounding discourse context. Both treatises and periodicals representative of medical writing from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries are examined, thus allowing any diachronic trends characteristic of a period that witnessed much change in midwifery practices, and medicine more broadly, to be uncovered. Data are drawn from the Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT) and Late Modern English Medical Texts (LMEMT) corpora.

Describing specific dialect areas in terms of their lexis is an attractive idea now that the latest version of the English Dialect Dictionary Online (EDD Online 3.0, 2019) allows for quick and easy lexical retrievals of English dialect words of the Late Modern English period. This paper uses the Isle of Wight (I.W.) as a test case for putting such an idea into practice. The 137 words uniquely attributed in the EDD to I.W. are analyzed and interpreted in relation to the 1500-odd words used on I.W. alongside other areas of the UK. The paper informs the reader of the available query modes and discusses their pros and cons, quantifying and mapping the different numbers of isolated words in use on I.W. versus those unique to other English counties. The larger number of words that the island shared with the counties of the “mainland” will likewise be considered, thus allowing for first steps towards a “dialectometrical” analysis. The findings are related to the historical background of I.W., particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This article reports on the use of the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource in historical sociolinguistics and historical linguistics courses at the University of Sheffield. Pronouncing dictionaries are an invaluable resource for students learning about processes of standardisation and language attitudes during the Late Modern English period (1700–1900), however they are not easy to use in their original format. Each author uses their own notation system to indicate their recommended pronunciation, while the terminology used to describe the quality of the vowels and consonants differs from that used today, and provides an additional obstacle to the student wishing to interrogate such sources. ECEP thus provides a valuable intermediary between the students and the source material, as it includes IPA equivalents for the recommended pronunciations, as well as any metalinguistic commentary offered by the authors about a particular pronunciation. This article demonstrates a teaching approach that not only uses ECEP as a tool in its own right, but also explores how it can be usefully combined with other materials covering language change in the Late Modern English period to enable students to undertake their own investigations in research-led courses.

The present corpus-based study deals with eight sets of rivalling prepositions in verb-dependent prepositional phrases. The two or three members of these sets, though equivalent in specific uses, differ in terms of functional explicitness. For instance, in directional uses, into can be regarded as more explicit than in. The main objective is to demonstrate for each of these sets that, in line with the Complexity Principle, the more explicit items are favoured in more complex grammatical environments. The contexts under scrutiny include those produced by passivisation, Heavy NP Shift, object relativisation, the use of full object NPs rather than personal pronouns, and preposition stranding. Thus, we observe that – compared with basic active clauses – preposition stranding in the active induces increased shares of the more explicit prepositions in question. Predictably, even higher degrees of prepositional explicitness are found with the combination of preposition stranding and passivisation. Also, it is shown that Heavy NP Shift tends to trigger greater proportions of the more explicit prepositions than object relativisation. The observed tendencies hold for Present-day English and earlier stages of English as well as for morphologically related and unrelated rival prepositions.

Based on an investigation of the Old Bailey Corpus, this article explores the development and usage patterns of maximizers in Late Modern English (LModE). The maximizers to be considered for inclusion in the study are based on the lists provided in Quirk et al. (1985) and Huddleston & Pullum (2002). The aims of the study were to (i) document the frequency development of maximizers, (ii) investigate the sociolinguistic embedding of maximizers usage (gender, class) and (iii) analyze the sociopragmatics of maximizers based on the speakers’ roles, such as judge or witness, in the courtroom.

Of the eleven maximizer types focused on in the investigation, perfectly and entirely were found to dominate in frequency. The whole group was found to rise over the period 1720 to 1913. In terms of gender, social class and speaker roles, there was variation in the use of maximizers across the different speaker groups. Prominently, defendants, but also judges and lawyers, maximized more than witnesses and victims; further, male speakers and higher-ranking speakers used more maximizers. The results were interpreted taking into account the courtroom context and its dialogue dynamics.