Lisa Gotthard
Published: 21 January 2019
A comparative-syntactic study of 16th to 18th century Scots and English.
University of Edinburgh
A comparative-syntactic study of 16th to 18th century Scots and English.
There is a gap in our knowledge of 16th-18thC Scots syntax, exact- ly the period when Scots became increasingly anglicised, i.e. lost many distinctively (pre-16thC) Scots grammatical features in favour of English ones. This anglicisation is visible in the Scots lexicon and sound system, but we have less knowledge of deeper effects on Scots syntax. Therefore, I will examine 16th-18thC Scots data for evidence of syntactic developments parallel to those attested in English, to investigate the extent of influence of English syntax on Scots. Quantitative studies of syntactic change require syntactically-annotated (’parsed’) digital collections of texts (’corpora’).
As there is no pre-existing parsed corpus of historical Scots, my project will involve building a new parsed corpus of 16th-18thC Scots. With this corpus, I will investigate changes known to have affected both Scots and English, but differently, and changes which affected English but whose impact on Scots is unknown. My methods may additionally uncover changes which affected Scots alone, which are hitherto unnoticed due to the lack of research on historical Scots syntax. This project will shed new light not only on the syntax itself, but also on linguistic outcomes of socio-political changes, e.g. the balance of power between nations.
First published: 21 January 2019