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SHIBASAKI Reijirou
Department Undergraduate School , School of Interdisciplinary Mathematical Sciences Position Professor |
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| Date | 2023/07 |
| Presentation Theme | 'On the decline of iwis, i-wis and I wis' |
| Conference | The 22nd International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL22) |
| Promoters | University of Sheffield |
| Conference Type | International |
| Presentation Type | Speech (General) |
| Contribution Type | Individual |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Venue | Sheffield, UK |
| Holding period | 2023/07/03～2023/07/06 |
| Details | Abstract (short version):
This study aims to account for the decline of iwis ‘certain(ly)’ in Middle English (ME) through Early Modern English (EModE) in terms of analogy and reanalysis. An adjective of certainty iwis became adverbialized in the course of ME, while it began to be reanalyzed as i-wis and I wis ‘I know.’ What may have facilitated the reanalysis of iwis as I wis is the rise of the capital I from ic(h) ‘I’ (presumably following diphthongization due to the Great Vowel Shift). Despite such an analogy-based reanalysis, both iwis and I wis followed a course of decline from EModE onward because of the dramatic decrease of the verbs wit and wot, each of which was an anchor to the survival of I wis. |
| URL for researchmap | https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/icehl22 |