RELATIVE MARKERS IN LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITTEN BRITISH ENGLISH

Authors

  • José Ramón Varela-Pérez

Keywords:

British English, Relative Markers, Parallel Corpora, change in progress

Abstract

This paper deals with the study of language change in progress by using two parallel corpora of written British English sampled within a period of thirty years. The constructions analysed are two sets of competing relativisers: non-subject who vs. whom and possessive whose vs. od which. The data show that, with the exception of the otherwise in frequent relativizer who, there has been a decrease in the distribution of case-marked whom and whose as well as of the analytic form a ehich. Furthermore, it is argued that these smaller figures are the result of the interaction of grammatical and stylistic developments. Thus such formally and semantically complex relativisers as whom, whose, and of which seein to have been replaced by other simplex relative and non-relative alternative constructions, and this process in turn might be a reflection of other stylistic developments affecting written English over the last thirty years

Author Biography

José Ramón Varela-Pérez

Departamento de Filoloyía Inglesa y Alemana Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

Issue

Section

Artículos