Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2009 vol. 45.2

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/handle/10593/19005

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    The pleasure of the eighteenth-century texts: The conflation of literary and critical discourse in the early novelistic tradition
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Maciulewicz, Joanna
    One of the prominent characteristics of contemporary literature is its assimilation to critical discourse. The self-reflexivity in literature, which transforms literary texts into acts of criticism, is paralleled by theory’s tendency to encroach on the literary domain. One of the findings of the poststructuralist literary theory is that descriptions of reading experience elude scientific language and are more aptly conveyed by metaphors. (A good example is Roland Barthes’ The pleasure of the text.) The conflation of literary and critical discourse is not, however, peculiar to postmodernity only. The same phenomenon is observable in the eighteenth-century writings. It turns out that the self-reflexivity evident at the times of the proclaimed “death of the novel” is manifest also in the times of its birth. The aim of my paper is to analyse the metafictional reflection on readerly pleasure incorporated in early novelistic texts.
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    Of people and places: Urban gendering in the English plays
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Kazik, Joanna
    The paper examines interconnections between gender and the civic landscape in the flood pageants in the English mystery plays (York, Towneley, N-Town and Chester). The marital conflict between Noah and his wife is discussed in the context of the urban physical and spiritual world that provides a double backdrop for the play. The geometry of human sin and divine insight is analysed and textile references are investigated to reveal the spatial and professional affiliation of the characters. The silent potential of the urban setting that enriches the theatrical power of the plays and transforms the events presented on stage into a medieval interactive game between the actors and the audience is discussed.
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    The interaction of form and content: Syntactic constructions and grammatical environment
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Trobevšek Drobnak, Frančiška
    In diachronic linguistics, the Naturalness Theory purports to unravel the seemingly random distribution of linguistic variants at the early stage of their assertion, when no other tangible functional, contextual or pragmatic motivation exists. The paper presents the results of three empirical studies, which confirm that the complexity of grammatical environment is instrumental in the choice between elective morphosyntactic constructions. Special attention is paid to the relevance of traditional grammatical parameters in defining grammatical environment as complex.
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    Natural syntax of Belfast English (I) subject-verb agreement, (II) imperative
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Orešnik, Janez
    The framework of this paper is Natural Syntax initiated by the author in the tradition of (morphological) naturalness as established by †Willi Mayerthaler and Wolfgang U. Dressler. Natural Syntax is a developing deductive theory. The naturalness judgements are couched in naturalness scales, which follow from the basic parameters (or “axioms”) listed at the beginning of the paper. The predictions of the theory are calculated in what are known as deductions, the chief components of each being a pair of naturalness scales and the rules governing the alignment of corresponding naturalness values. Parallel and chiastic alignment are distinguished and related to Henning Andersen’s early work on markedness. Natural Syntax is exemplified here with two syntactic phenomena found in Belfast English and partly deviating from Standard English: (I) subject-verb agreement, (II) the imperative. The language data are taken from Henry (1995), and close attention has been paid to the (TG- )interpretations adduced in that monograph. Some recent work related to Natural Syntax: Orešnik (2007a-e, 2008a-c) and Orešnik and Cvetko-Orešnik (2009, only work written in English is mentioned).
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    On the diversity of linguistic evidence for conceptual metaphor
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Górska, Elżbieta
    In this article my main concern is the linguistic evidence for the view that metaphor is conceptual in nature. Since the fact that there is a great diversity of linguistic evidence for patterns of metaphorical thought has been, by and large, not emphasized enough, I overview a variety of such evidence, which can be derived from the study of different aspects of meaning within a particular language, crosslinguistically, and at a metalinguistic level. However, in itself the variety of linguistic evidence, even though it speaks very strongly for the idea that metaphor is conceptual in nature, is not sufficient to justify it. Therefore, recognizing the fact that claims about our conceptual system which are based on linguistic analyses alone remain within the “language – thought – language” circle, the article discusses also some kinds of nonlinguistic evidence for conceptual metaphors. Psycholinguistic research on metaphorical reasoning is presented as a major source of such nonlinguistic verifications. Drawing on Daniel Barenboim’s BBC Reith lectures of 2006, it is also argued that convergent evidence from language and music may serve to break open the “language – thought – language” circle.
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    Nonstandard "were" and the nonstandard forms of the preterite negative of "to be" in nineteenth century New England Civil War letters and literary dialect portrayals
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Pablé, Adrian; Dylewski, Radosław; Urbańska, Agnieszka
    The present paper presents the preliminary results of the study of were in nonstandard positions as well as nonstandard preterit negative forms of to be in mid- and late nineteenth century New England folk speech. More specifically, the aim of the study is to investigate whether the grammatical feature at issue, deemed to have been confined to the Mid- and South Atlantic states in several scholarly publications, is also attested in the verbal repository of New Englanders of the mid- and late nineteenth century. The analysis relies mainly on the scrutiny of two types of primary sources: informal Civil War letters penned by less literate individuals, and fictional portrayals written by New England regionalists. The data retrieved from the inspected body of material confirms the presence of were/weren’t/wa’n’t (and other spellings) in nonstandard contexts, preponderantly in the literary dialect portrayals, whereas Civil War correspondence seems rather devoid of the traits at issue. As indicated above, the paper presents the preliminary results of the study: it is believed that an analysis of a bigger corpus of Civil War material, which is currently being compiled, might identify more instances of forms at issue in nonstandard environments.
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    The advice genre (1400-1599). Genre and text type conventions
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Ortega Barrera, Ivalla
    The aim of this paper is to characterize the advice text as a genre in the late medieval and early modern English periods. This genre is very popular during this time and is usually found within medical remedy books. For this reason, it has been generally studied within the scope of medieval recipes in historical discourse analysis. In this paper my intention is to show the independent status of the advice text as a genre. A first step for this lies in the characterization of the linguistic features pertaining to the sections that compound this genre and its comparison with the recipe genre. The corpus for this study has been collected from several sources, both edited and unedited. The description of the text type features will be illustrated with examples taken from this corpus. As I show in the conclusion, the advice text is an independent genre with a clear communicative purpose and addressed to an intended audience.
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    Middle English medical recipes: A metadiscursive approach
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Quintana-Toledo, Elena
    This paper seeks to explore Middle English medical recipes from a metadiscursive perspective. This study will draw on Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model where code glosses, endophoric markers, evidentials, frame markers and transition markers are included in the interactive dimension, and attitude markers, boosters, engagement markers, hedges and self mention are to be found within interactional metadiscourse. I shall apply this framework for the identification and analysis of data in a corpus which comprises a selection of recipes taken from both Middle English Medical Texts (Taavitsainen – Pahta – Mäkinen 2005) and The corpus of early English recipes. The metadiscursive approach to the study of medical recipes will allow us to establish links between authors, texts and audience of the recipe genre and, consequently, to affirm their status as products of social engagement.
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    The monophthongisation of diphthongs before dorsal fricatives: A corpus study
    (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2009) Wełna, Jerzy
    The paper discusses the geographical distribution of the monophthongisation of (1) the diphthong [ei] (< [e:ç]) before the palatal fricative [ç] (i.e. [eiç > i:ç]) and (2) the diphthong [ou] (< [o:x]) before the velar fricative [x] (i.e. [oux > u:x] in words like high an bough. The resulting monophthongs became the input to the diphthongisation rule, a part of the Great Vowel Shift. On the basis of forty-nine Middle English poetic texts from the Chadwyck-Healey online corpus an effort is made here to establish temporal and dialectal conditioning of the change.