Diachronic relations among speech-based and written registers in English 1

Abstract

Many scholars studying historical change in English have begun to use corpus-based analyses. This trend has become especially productive since the completion of the Helsinki Corpus in the late 1980s. The Helsinki Corpus is the most ambitious of these projects in terms of its diachronic scope, extending from the earliest periods of Old English up to Early Modern English. Based on analysis of ARCHER, the present study uses Multi-Dimensional Studies (MD) analysis to compare the patterns of historical change among written and speech-based registers of English, from 1650 to the present. This chapter considers the patterns of variation among the full range of registers in ARCHER. It seems equally apparent, however, that these generalizations provide a useful framework for future research; and that corpus-based analyses on bodies of texts such as the Helsinki Corpus and ARCHER will continue to provide new insights into the patterns of change in English.