Standardising English spelling : the role of printing in sixteenth and seventeenth-century graphemic developments

Bibliographic Information

Standardising English spelling : the role of printing in sixteenth and seventeenth-century graphemic developments

Marco Condorelli

(Studies in English language)

Cambridge University Press, 2022

Available at  / 9 libraries

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Note

Bibliography: p. 224-250

Index: p. 251-262

Description and Table of Contents

Description

The standardisation of English spelling that resulted from the advent of printing is one of the most fascinating aspects of the history of English. This pioneering book explores new avenues of investigation into spelling development by looking at the Early Modern English period, when irregular features across graphemes became standardised. It traces the development of the English spelling system through a number of 'competing' standards, raising questions about the meaning of 'standardisation'. It introduces a new model for the analysis of large-scale graphemic developments from a diachronic perspective, and provides a new empirical method geared specifically to the study of spelling standardisation between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The method is applied to four interconnected case studies, focusing on the standardisation of positional spellings, i and y, etymological spelling and vowel diacritic spelling. This book is essential reading for researchers of writing systems and the history of English.

Table of Contents

  • 1. Introduction
  • Part I. Context: 2. Theoretical framework
  • 3. Pragmatic framework
  • Part II. Empirical method: 4. Corpus material
  • 5. Rationale
  • 6. Foundational explorations
  • Part III. Case Studies: 7. The standardisation of positional spellings
  • 8. The standardisation of i and y
  • 9. The standardisation of etymological spelling
  • 10. The standardisation of vowel diacritic spelling
  • 11. Conclusion.

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