LINGUIST List 11.615

Sat Mar 18 2000

Sum: Change of English Usage

Editor for this issue: Lydia Grebenyova <lydialinguistlist.org>

Directory

  • Atsuko Umesaki, Change of English Usage

    Message 1: Change of English Usage

     Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 22:47:39 +0900
    From: Atsuko Umesaki <umesakipigeon.tezukayama-u.ac.jp>
    Subject: Change of English Usage


    For Query: Linguist 11.549

    With many thanks to those who volunteered to help us, here is a tentative summary of the survey we conducted on English usage.

    1. Sent questionnaire to 46 volunteers, and collected from 36. 2. Breakdowns in terms of: (a) Nationality: 23 Americans, 8 British, 1 Canadian, 4 Australians (b) Gender: 19 females, 17 males (c) Age bracket: (3 -60s), (7 -50s), (5 -40s), (12 -30s), (9 -20s) 3. The sentences asked were: (1) The police accused him as a murderer. (Meaning the police or something prosecuted him as a murderer) (2) He is not easy of access (Meaning he is such an important person that it is not easy to approach him.) (3) She was sitting on the chair with her legs across. (Meaning she was sitting on the chair with her legs crossed.) (4a) He admonished me that I be punctual. (4b) He admonished me that I should be punctual. (Meaning I am often late so that he advised me to be punctual.) (5) The music is alien from Europe. (Meaning the music sounds exotic and does not sound like European music.) (6) He is amorous of the girl. (Meaning he is in love with the girl.) 4. Summary of responses: figures in the order: OK Possible but (archaic, too formal, etc.) No (1) 1-4-31 (2) 0-3-33 (3) 1-0-35 (4a) 8-2-16 (4b) 18-2-5 (5) 1-0-35 (6) 2-4-30 5. A tentative analysis: Most of these expressions were used in 16-19century English as is found in OED and in earlier versions of COD, therefore we have no intention to put blame on English-Japanese dictionaries for retaining such archaic or impossibly old-fashioned expressions. Many of the respondents told us that most of those sentences are archaic or extremely old-fashioned or impossibly formal; some of these seem to sound foreign or non-native, but we do not find any significant differences either among nationalities or among age-brackets or among genders. We will use this data for the analysis of changes in the English language during the past one hundred or so period of time.

    Atsuko F. Umesaki (Tezukayama College) Katsumasa Yagi (Kwansei Gakuin Umiversity)