英語史研究会第20回大会発表要旨



Charting obsolescence: language change across the generations in the Shetland Islands, Northern Scotland

Jennifer Smith (University of Glasgow) & Mercedes Durham (University of Aberdeen)

Sociolinguistic research on varieties of English in the British Isles over the past 100 years indicates widespread loss of traditional dialect forms, resulting in dialect ‘attrition’ across many speech communities (e.g. Britain 2005). Young speakers in particular are noted to avoid ‘variants which they perceive to be particularly indicative of their local roots’ (Foulkes & Docherty 1999:13). Even one of the most remote communities in the UK, the Shetland Islands in Northern Scotland, may not be immune to these changes. It is said to represent ‘the best examples of a relic speech form’ (Johnston 1997:447), due to its unique historical, cultural and geographic context. However, recent socio-economic and demographic changes are said to have led to ‘an unprecedented levelling of the local varieties in recent years’ (van Leyden 2004:18). This is said to be particularly true of the main town of Lerwick where ‘the change which is taking place is not a gradual blending of one form of speech into another: it is the abrupt replacement of one language … by another’ (Tait 2007). In this paper we explore these claims by conducting a quantitative, sociolinguistic analysis of a number of variables, encompassing lexical (1), phonetic (2) and morphosyntactic (3) forms, across three generations of speakers in Lerwick.

(1) a. It was too far to go when she was peerie.
b. I used to play the fiddle when I was small.
(2) a. /d/ere was a lot of /d/at boys.
(3) a. Then the other two boys is both finished.
b. I 'm sure those boys are the same.

   Analysis of over 3000 contexts of use in the 280,000 word corpus reveals a complex process of attrition, involving rapid obsolescence with some variables and much more gradual change with others. Further examination of the younger speakers only--the locus of change--reveals a polarisation of use: some members of this group don’t use the traditional forms at all, while others use them even more than the older speakers. These findings provide a snapshot of change in progress, and highlight the multifaceted sociolinguistic processes involved in dialect attrition in a traditionally relic area.


Little Dorrit におけるメタファー考察――「人間化」と「非人間化」の技法を中心に――

冨田佐央子(福岡大学)

 ディケンズの小説にみられる言語的特徴として興味深いのは、あらゆる登場人物や事物がシミリーやメタファーなどの修辞法によって繊細に、かつ生き生きと描写されている点である。これらの役割は、作者が読者に対して、それぞれの場面や出来事を具体的に記憶やイメージとして脳裏に植え付けるだけではなく、様々な登場人物の視点を通して、主人公、或いは作者自身が、19世紀当時の時代的、もしくは文化的背景を基盤として抱く見解や心理状態を描写の中に暗示する。
 そこで本発表では、Little Dorrit (1855-1857) に用いられるメタファーに着目し、先行研究に基づく文構造や語彙の分析を通して、「喩えられるもの」(主体)と「喩えるもの」(媒体)との相互関係を意味論に立脚しながら掘り起こしていく。そして、ディケンズの比喩表現において顕著に見られる、あらゆる人物を人間以外の生き物や事物に置き換える「非人間化」(dehumanization)の技法や、逆にあらゆる事物や現象を人間であるかのように見立てる「人間化」(humanization)の技法に焦点をあてながら、本作品におけるディケンズのメタファーの意義と効果を明らかにする。さらに、他の散文や韻文との比較を通して、メタファーの通時的な展開とディケンズの比喩との関わりについても考察する。



初期近代英語期の散文における「〜するとすぐに」の意味を持つ時の副詞節を導く接続詞

原口行雄(熊本学園大学)

 本発表では、初期近代英語期(1501年〜1700年)の散文における、「〜するとすぐに」の意味を持つ、時の副詞節を導く接続詞を対象とする。具体的には、as soon as (ever), so soon as (ever), no sooner〜but (that), no sooner〜than, anon as, scarce/scarcely で始まるもの、hardly で始まるものを扱う。当時の接続詞は、現代英語の接続詞に比べて種類が少なく、現在では使われていない(廃れた)ものがある。資料として、16世紀英語に関しては、30のテキストを、17世紀英語については37のテキストを使用した。
 当時の接続詞に関しては、Charles BarberのEarly Modern English (初版1976、改訂版1997)、Manfred Görlach のIntroduction to Early Modern English (1991), Terttu Nevalainen のAn Introduction to Early Modern English (2006), Laurel Brinton & Leslie Arnovick のThe English Language: A Linguistic History (2006) のいずれにも一切言及がない。
 今回取り上げるものは以下の通りである
 ・各接続詞は初期近代英語期のいつ頃現れるのか。 
 ・as soon as (ever)so soon as (ever) との競合関係とその変遷。 
 ・no sooner〜but (that) no sooner〜than との競合関係とその変遷。 
 ・no sooner, scarce/scarcely, hardlyのいずれかが文頭に来ると、主語と述語動詞との間に倒置が生じる。倒置が起こる割合はどの程度であるか。 
 ・接続詞の中で使用頻度が高いものはどれか、また、16世紀と17世紀とではどのような違いがあるのか。
 ・scarce/scarcely、あるいはhardly で始まる接続詞の場合、対応する語にはどのようなものがあるのか、また、16世紀と17世紀とでは対応する語には違いがあるのか。 
 ・各接続詞はどの時制と一番多く共起するのか。

主要参考文献
Jespersen, Otto. (1986). “Time.” A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part V. Syntax (Fourth Volume). Tokyo: Meicho Fukyu Kai. Rep. of 1940. 347-357. 
Poutsma, H. (!929). “Adverbial Clauses of Time.” A Grammar of Late Modern English. Part I The Sentence Second Half The Composite Sentence. Second Edition. Groningen: P. Noordhoff, 661-680.
Rissanen, Matti. (1999). “4.6.2.3.5 Temporal clauses.” The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume III, 1476?1776. Ed. by Roger Lass. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 310-314.



‘Some whynes lyke a Pig’: Early Modern comment on‘outlandishe Englishe’

Jonathan Hope (Strathclyde University)

What did Shakespeare and his contemporaries make of linguistic variation (and change) in English? This is hardly a new question, but it is, I think, one that requires more work--particularly in terms of rereading the ‘standard’ Early Modern commentators who are most frequently quoted in relation to the topic (Puttenham, Gil, Wilson et al.). It is very tempting to read much of what they say in terms of later prescriptivism: apparent condemnation of variation and change, and calls for a ‘common’ standard which we equate easily with Standard written English. But this is to ignore the historical difference of the Early Modern context: a still largely oral society, without comprehensive vernacular dictionaries, where linguistic judgments are informed by the (again oral) rhetorical tradition, which prized effective, stylish writing (‘bene’) over correctness (‘recte’).
   I will consider several commentators on language to ask what it is they are really commenting about--especially Thomas Wilson, George Puttenham, and Edmund Coote. I will argue that their approach to variation is rather more sophisticated and subtle than that of later prescriptivists. I also suggest that there is virtually no contemporary evidence for the stigmatisiation of regional or class-based phonetic features: the phonetic features of speech people noticed were those controlled by the learned, rhetorical field of ‘pronuntiatio’ (conscious performance/delivery).
   Shakespeare only very rarely depicts dialect--and then almost always without stigmatizing it. His characters are far more likely to notice how well someone speaks than to look for reasons to disapprove. Linguistic variation was a given in Early Modern England, and cultural attitudes to language were fundamentally different to those which were to arise in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately, modern Anglophone historians and critics tend to read these later attitudes back into the Early Modern period.




Orality and frame narrative in the Canterbury Tales: Influences from the East

Simona Alias (Trento University)

The frame narrative structure and the oral nature of the narration are perhaps the most distinguishing features of the Canterbury Tales. The choice of the genre operated by Chaucer for his masterpiece has been consciously made, among other reasons, also to give orality a preeminent position in the work.
   The genre of the frame narrative was particularly popular during the Middle Ages, as it was used to collect exempla (short narratives with didactic and moralistic purpose) in such works as the “specula principis”, which were meant to educate young princes to a proper behavior.
   It is through a tremendous work of translation which took place in Spain that the tradition of the frame narrative from the East spreaded throughout Europe, particularly from the 12th century, when Petrus Alfonsus wrote his Disciplina Clericalis, and also as a result of translations and adaptations of the famous Kalilah wa Dimnah, which was the Arabic version of the ancient Sanskrit Pañcatantra, probably one of the first or at least one of the most important and influential frame narratives. Spaniards, though, not only translated the Arabic texts of this literary tradition, but also internalized this way of writing and were capable to produce frame narratives of their own, which had a strong influence on later writers in other European countries as well.
   Even if the main story of a frame narrative at times sets the approximate number of tales to be told in the course of a certain stretch of time, the oral tradition which constitutes this form of narration sometimes upsets these plans, and the frame thus becomes looser and less rigid. The very nature of its storytelling also contributes to the sense of incompleteness or of boundlessness, as each tale reenacts the same process in almost a cyclic and therefore potentially infinite narration.
   The frame story sometimes also informs the content of the stories it contains; it can be looser at times, especially when its narrative artifice is occasional and merely entertaining. This is the case of the Canterbury Tales, where storytelling has the sole function of entertaining the pilgrim on their way to Canterbury. The frame story proves in fact to be very loose indeed, as the innkeeper’s plan fails time and again; moreover, the tales are extremely varied in form and content and we can see digression and variation even within a single tale (cf. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”).
   This lack of definition, this potential boundlessness is in keeping with the Eastern and Arabic tradition, and with the Spanish works that were written in accordance with these Eastern models, which show what some critics have considered to be lack of organization, but which is indeed the result of the power of narration to re-generate itself ad infinitum.
   It is through orality that this power can be best shown and understood, and the choice of the frame narrative allowed Chaucer to represent this characteristic, in a time when literacy was spreading at a higher rate, but when orality was still highly valued. In addition to this, the flexible nature of oral short tales provided him a safe terrain on which to experiment various genres, themes, characters, and also a more varied audience, which was in fact becoming wider and more varied.



Ancrene Wisse, Cleopatra 版、Part 1 における書記BのLatin incipit に対するemendation の意味について

井野崎千代子(近畿大学非常勤講師)

 Ancrene Wisse の本質を決定する上で最も重要とされるPart 1 (Ackerman, Dahood) に見られるラテン語引用句は、写本間で比較した場合、同一箇所であっても必ずしも一字一句同じではないケースが見られる。Corpus 版に非常に近くなるような形で修正を行ったとされるCleopatra版のB 書記は、vernacular へと同時にラテン語引用句にも修正を加えているが、その意図するところは何であったのか。非聖職者である読者、あるいは利用者が、vernacular text 中に組み込まれているラテン語を読むというプロセスを踏まなければならない場合、本来incipit として引用されているラテン語のあり方自体に変化が起っているのではないか、そして書記 B の修正はその傾向に関係しているのではないかということを提議してみたい。他の写本との比較検討も行いながら検証する予定である。



ish 語の通時的発展

堀田隆一(中央大学)

 接尾辞 -ish をもつ派生形容詞(以降 ish 語)の通時的発展については、古くは Bradley、最近では一部だが清水(2006)によって言及されてきた。しかし、特に近年の研究では、現代英語の ish 語についての語用論や認知意味論の方面からの関心が多く、音韻論、形態論、語彙論を含めた多角的な視点かつ通時的な視点からの詳細な研究はなされていない。
 歴史的にみると、ish 語は古英語以来、接尾辞の付加される基体の種類を増やすことによって、およそ次の経路で拡大してきたと考えられている。「民族名」(“English”)→「人を表す名詞」(“childish”)→「動物を表す名詞」(“sheepish”)→「一般名詞」(“bookish”)→「色彩名詞」(“bluish”)→「形容詞」(“coldish”)。しかし、ish 語の拡大を詳細に分析すると、実際にはこのように一面的な経路で拡大したわけではないことがわかる。また、従来の研究では、拡大の各段階の接点に関する考察が十分になされてない。
 本発表では、主に OED を対象として、(1) ish 語の通時的発展を詳細に跡づけ、(2) とりわけ拡大の各段階の接点について論じる。本発表を通じて、通時的にみて -ish がもっとも successful な英語の接尾辞の一つであることを示したい。



中世英国韻文ロマンスの中のキリスト教徒と異教徒

今井光規(摂南大学)

 中世英国韻文ロマンスには、しばしばキリスト教徒と異教徒の対立場面がみられる。ただし、対立の描写は一律ではない。作品のテーマや作られた年代などによって描き方が異なるのだろうか。ほとんどの場合、異教徒とはキリスト教徒からみた呼び名なのであろう。たいていは異教徒を見下す視点で描かれている。この発表ではKing Horn, Havelok the Dane, The King of Tars などの作品を取りあげて、対立が物語の構成にどのように係わっているか具体例を観察してみたい。
 「見知らぬ他者と遭遇したときに、彼らのふるまいや言葉の意味をおのれの手持ちの度量衡によって考量し、理解しえぬものを自動的に「未開」に格付けする西欧的知性の定型性 . . .」(毎日夕刊2009年11月11日「レビストロース氏を悼む」)は、中世ロマンスの中にも読み取れるのであろうか。ロマンスの異教徒はギリシャ人からみた「野蛮人」と通じるものがあるのだろうか。とにかく作品に当たってみたい。


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