Return to Coronet Books main page

Preterite & Past Participle Forms in English 1680-1790
Standardisation Processes in Public & Private Writing

By Larisa Oldireva Gustafsson
June 2002
Uppsala University Press
ISBN: 91-554-5254-X
245 pages, illustrated
$57.50 paperback

---

The present study surveys variation and standardisation processes in the use of preterite and past participle forms in English texts included in A Corpus of Public and Private Writing (1680-1790), PPW. In this study, the corpus-based evidence of usage is compared to the evidence of contemporaneous grammars, rhetoric books, and dictionaries. The data provided by the corpus reveal that the contrasts of usage in public and private registers of writing are crucial to our understanding of variation and standardisation processes. The study also shows that the corpus-based evidence of usage may be at variance with the evidence of precept as the register of writing was not a factor relevant to the grammatical codification of the time. This factor is nonetheless pivotal when we describe the diversity of standardisation processes.

(Ph.D. thesis)

Language Studies
Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia, No. 120