Looks impressive, yes? Acutally, it looks a lot more impressive with the x & y axis labels in place (which for some reason didn't copy) and with the accompanying data table explaining what it all means. In essence, it's mathematical proof that a linguist, NB, is wrong about his assertion that the rise in intensifiers in the English language in the later Middle Ages is linked to the genres of fabliaux and satire. So I've disproved that frequency of intensifiers has a causal relationship to genre, at least as far as Chaucer is concerned (the above data are all taken from The Canterbury Tales). Now the million-dollar question is: SO WHY THE FUCK DID THE USE OF INTENSIFIERS INCREASE IN THAT PERIOD?!?!?!?
Hell if I know.
4 comments:
Increase in use of the vernacular in official documentation as opposed to Latin; increased dissemination of documentation during the period leading to increased production of documentation; increase in number of people reading and writing (movement of learning and teaching from clerical control to secular bodies - esp. the institutions of the monarch, the law courts and the clerical classes) and rise of public entertainments and production of literature.
More people using words means more words being used. Der.
See ya Tuesday.
as if i don't know all that, you pretentious twit. the use of intensifers incresed not only in absolute number, but began to constitute a greater proportion of the language. (example: instead of "a faire mayde," you see an increase in phrases like "a ful faire mayde." ful is intensifying the degree of faire, like 'really' in modern usage.) this indicates both a symantic shift (because ful goes from being used almost exclusively as an adjective to the adverbial role of intensifer), and a stylistic shift, one which displays a greater degree of description and hyperbole. the question is why. what triggered/inspired/drove this change? der.
See my answer above. More people using language means more people using language differently.
symantic shift? Same as a semantic one but with a y instead of an e?
a, fuck off.
b, i'm a medievalist. spelling for me is not fixed, but fluid and changeable and beeooteeful.
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