[Lexicog] Re: Shakespeare's contribution

[bolstar1]

Rudy -- Yes, that's what I was referring to -- private letters of 
local folk, etc. However, those sources aid in understanding 
underlying semantic & grammatical norms of an era, and, perhaps, 
glacial shifts in a language, but not generally useful in pinpointing 
particular origins of particular words, which was my main point. 
    Two things come to mind about the weakness of relying on local 
writings in the area of etymology. Very few people were even capable 
of reading or writing in a local, or any, language until Guttenberg, 
and then the Renaissance. "Writers," till then, wrote formal 
documents. After education became more common, the local "writers" 
had to be educated by well-educated teachers, or scholars, or by 
ecclesiasticals, who passed on words and phrases that itself may have 
been the source of a word/phrase (or word/phrase usage). If it could 
be shown someone saying in a letter to a friend, "Hey, 
Henry... "Knock, knock? (Who's there?)..." pre-Shakespeare, then it 
would debunk Shakey's attributability (Macbeth) for that particular 
coinage. (I'm wondering if someone ever used onomatopoeia and 
said, "Clunk, clunk! Who's there? Alaska. Alaska who? I don't know, 
I'll aska nother person." -- time warp notwithstanding). The history 
of childhood-English could be shifted.   
    Another sub-point about 'local' writing. All regions, 
communities, and families have their own coinages. Mention my 
grandmother Benson's cow, and we all know what it means, but those 
allusions rarely enter the general vernacular. But if someone 
says "He is the 'Fonzie' of the modern generation, most people 
immediately know what it means. But that's because the TV show "Happy 
Days" was so popular to the mass audience, something that only 
writers of note could pull off in that era (e.g. Shakey, Bacon, 
Marlowe, etc. -- who were famous and popular in their own time).
    Even pinpointing sources, or reasons, for shifts in a language is 
a tricky business (e.g.'the great vowel shift' of 1500 (1400-1600) -- 
logically tagged as the line between middle and modern English). 
There is still disagreement on the reasons behind such a sea change 
(Shakespeare coinage), the mass migration to SE England after the 
black death being one of them.
   I truly would like to see uncovered an expression from a local-
yokel with the cogency, efficiency, and elegance of "Friends, Romans, 
countrymen, lend me your ears." I would like to read that person's 
autobiography. 

Scott Nelson

- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com, rtroike at ... wrote:
>
> 
> Scott,
> 
>    Re your point:
> 
> "Or obviously if further documents in the vernacular of the common 
people,
> or of commentators, or of scholars are uncovered, we could be 
helped in
> this area. The problem here is the very medium of 
historical "written
> documentation." Traditionally it is formal, structured, and 
conservative
> (linguistically), expunged of jargon, clichés, 
localisms/regionalisms,
> and as high-brow as the author's erudition and eloquence can 
concoct --
> not conducive to excavating the "norms" of the language of that 
era."
> 
>    You are certainly right regarding the better-known (and 
historically
> the only regarded sources), but large amounts of archival research 
into
> the lesser-known writings of local folk, letters, ledgers, etc., is 
having
> an enormous impact on our understanding of the dynamics of language 
change
> in England during the early modern period and even earlier and 
later.
> Charles Fries was one of the earliest to look at that dimension, 
though he
> missed the sociolinguistic dynamics of emerging class distinctions 
in usage
> (writing of "shall" vs "will"), as one of my students showed some 
years ago.
> This is where corpus linguistics is helping, as with the Helsinki 
corpus of
> early modern English.
> 
>    Rudy Troike
>




 
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