78 research outputs found
Regional Variation in Early Modern English: The Case of the Third-Person Present Tense Singular Verb Ending in Norfolk Correspondence
No full textA well-known example of variation in Early Modern English is found in the morphology of the third-person singular present tense indicative verb. In general terms there was a gradual shift from - th to - s (e.g., pleaseth to pleases). However, previous studies such as Kytö (1993) and Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003) found that this shift was by no means uniform, varying by, for example, region, type of text, and author. More specifically, Nevalainen, Raumolin-Brunberg, and Trudgill (2001) analyzed the distribution of endings for the third-person singular present indicative verb in Early Modern East Anglian English, i.e., the variety of English used in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. However, for the final twenty-year period of their study (1660-1680), they only have four informants. This article analyzes the distribution of verb endings for a larger number of informants during this period, which marks the final stages of - th recession in East Anglian English, using letters written in Norfolk. The corpus based on these letters allows for a detailed analysis of linguistic and extralinguistic factors that influenced this distribution. Linguistic factors include the stem-final sound and verb-type ( have, do, and say are analyzed separately). Among the extralinguistic factors analyzed are the sex of the author and addressee, the level of formality, and the author’s social class. One of the informants in this study is Sir Thomas Browne. The distribution of verb endings in his correspondence makes him an outlier. His usage has led some authors to exclude his results from their analysis. The present article offers a new approach to dealing with such cases. The overall results are compared with those for other parts of England from the same period in order to identify patterns of regional variation. Finally, an analysis of correspondence for the period 1680-1750 indicates that by this time - th had more or less disappeared from Norfolk correspondence.</jats:p
Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan:A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs and Practices
No full textThis is the first book-length study of the reception of Christianity and the epistemic outcomes of contact between Protestant and Catholic missionaries and Indigenous Austronesians in the contact zone of seventeenth-century colonial Taiwan. In the Age of European Expansion, Dutch Reformed and Spanish Catholic missionaries attempted to win the souls of Indigenous Austronesian people in Taiwan. Christopher Joby examines the strategies that the missionaries employed to overcome the gap between their own cultures and languages and those of the Indigenous Austronesians or Formosans in the contact zone of seventeenth-century Taiwan, and evaluates the success of these strategies. As such, this book is a reception history of the texts, beliefs, and practices that Reformed Protestant and Catholic missionaries introduced to convert the Formosans to their mode of Christianity. Using many linguistic and non-linguistic examples, this approach allows for a ‘complementary colour perspective’ by comparing the epistemic outcomes of the Dutch Reformed and Spanish Catholic missions
Is there an evidentiary basis for shaken baby syndrome? The conviction of Joby Rowe
No full textA comprehensive review of the science pertaining to shaken baby syndrome (SBS), commissioned by the Swedish government and published in 2017, found ‘insufficient’, ‘very low quality’ scientific evidence for diagnosing Shaken Baby Syndrome on the basis of particular brain injuries. The review also found only ‘limited’, ‘low quality’ support for the notion that shaking causes the head injuries associated with SBS, let alone that it is the only possible cause. I review these findings and place them within the Australian judicial context by considering Joby Rowe’s 2018 conviction for child homicide. Rowe’s conviction was reliant upon forensic evidence provided by expert medical witnesses, but crucial aspects of the expert’s opinions lacked a scientific basis and were based instead on confession studies. This case raises fundamental questions for forensic science in Australia, primarily: should forensic evidence be scientific? Or should it appeal to authority
Calvinism and the arts: A re-assessment
No full textAlthough many believe John Calvin had a negative attitude towards the arts, particularly visual art, my contention is that we find within his writings and the development of the Reformed tradition a more positive attitude, to the arts than has hitherto been recognized. In chapters one and two, I look in detail at Calvin's own writings. I begin by examining exactly what type of visual art he rejected and what type he affirmed. I then look at how his eschatology and epistemology, particularly his use of the metaphor of mirror, allow us to argue for the placing of certain types of art within Reformed churches, notably history and landscape paintings. In chapters three and four, I consider music and architecture within Calvin's writings and the Reformed tradition. I suggest that the respective ontologies of metrical psalms and Reformed church-buildings both share something with those of history and landscape paintings and that it is inconsistent to allow for the former, but reject the latter. In the last three chapters, I focus on visual art. I examine the development of decoration and forms of visual art such as stained-glass windows in selected Reformed churches and suggest that it naturally follows that history and landscape paintings should be allowed for in such churches. I look at examples of these from seventeenth- century Netherlands, when Calvinism was the pre-dominant mode of religious expression, and argue that their form and content provide us with ontological and epistemological arguments which inevitably lead to the conclusion that their continued exclusion from Reformed churches is no longer tenable. In short, the use of appropriate works of art in Reformed churches is wholly consistent with the fundamental notions underpinning Calvin's theology and liturgical practices in the Reformed tradition, and their continued exclusion from most of these churches is an anomaly
Flemish and Walloon exile communities in sixteenth-century Norwich: A case study of local and national responses to large-scale migration from the low Countries
No full textIn 1565, the Mayor of Norwich, Thomas Sotherton, proposed to his fellow aldermen that the city invite thirty master textile workers from the Low Countries and their households to Norwich to revive its flagging economy. Letters patent were issued by Queen Elizabeth and on 1 June 1566, Sotherton put his seal on an order naming the thirty masters. They would form the basis of two exile communities in Norwich, one Flemish and one Walloon. This article aims to analyse what the birth of these exile communities tells us about local and national positions and practices adopted in response to migration from the Low Countries in the mid-sixteenth century. Furthermore, it examines the role of specific individuals and groups of individuals in the establishment of these communities. These include not only civic and national leaders in England, but also members of the English and exile clergy, members of exile communities in other towns, and English and Flemish nobles. Moreover, the article analyses the prosopographies of the thirty masters, providing previously unpublished details on several masters, and allowing an evaluation of the success of Sotherton’s policy. Finally, the article places the case of Norwich in a broader context by comparing it with attempts to establish exile communities in other English towns
Norwich, an English Quadrilingual City in the Early Modern Period
No full textIn the middle of the sixteenth century, religious persecution and economic hardship drove thousands of people to leave the southern Netherlands for the relative safety of England. Several thousand of them settled in Norwich, the second largest city in the kingdom after London. Most of those seeking refuge spoke varieties of Dutch, primarily Flemish, as a first language. The rest spoke varieties of French, above all Picard, as their first language. They joined thousands of inhabitants of Norwich who, of course, spoke varieties of English. As a result, there were three vernacular communities in early modern Norwich for at least one hundred years. Furthermore, well-educated members of each language community could read and write Latin. Therefore, early modern Norwich can be called a quadrilingual city
De invloed van het Nederlands op de syntaxis en de woordenschat van het Japans
No full textThe Netherlands traded extensively with Japan between 1609 and 1854. During this period the Dutch exported not only goods into Japan, but also books which they sold to the Japanese. In due course, Japanese interpreters and intellectuals began to translate these books into Japanese and by about 1850 they had translated around 1,000 Dutch books. This article examines the influence of the Dutch language on Japanese, resulting from the translation of these books and from language contact. This influence was twofold, syntactic and lexical. As for the former, in order to render Dutch texts into Japanese, translators introduced several features including a new relative pronoun, tokoro no, and a new compound word, ni yotte, in order to translate the Dutch word door’(‘by’) in passive sentences. As concerns the latter, Japanese translators used a number of approaches in order to render new objects and ideas in Japanese. They occasionally created a new compound word from the constituent parts of a Dutch compound word. In other cases, they formed new compounds from Dutch and Japanese words and morphemes, or transcribed Dutch words in the Japanese katakana syllabary. This final approach was also used for loanwords which Japanese adopted as a result of language contact with Dutch, such as, for example, in the case of kokku (コック) from the Dutch kok
The Dutch Language in the Muslim World (1600-1800)
No full textThere was much contact between the Dutch Republic and Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) (1602-1799) undertook extensive commercial activity in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago, where many Muslims lived. The VOC established trading posts in Bengal, across the Indian sub-continent, in Persia, the Yemen, and at its headquarters in the East Indies at Batavia. Whilst people in these areas practised several religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, most of these areas had significant Muslim populations, often with Muslim rulers. I am undertaking a project to analyse who spoke and wrote Dutch to whom and when in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Given the scale of the Muslim world, it will be useful to divide it into two parts: one that focuses on the Indonesian archipelago and another on other countries with Muslim populations. This article examines what the second part of this project might look like, mapping out the form and content of a project on contact between Dutch and languages spoken in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Language revitalisation using historical texts: The case of Siraya
No full textTo achieve national recognition, Plains Indigenous people (aka Pingpu) in Taiwan need an ethnolect. The language of one Plains Indigenous group, the Siraya, was extinct for most of the twentieth century. However, one advantage they have over other Plains Indigenous groups seeking national recognition is that much of their language was written down by Dutch missionaries in the seventeenth century with the assistance of their Siraya forefathers. This has allowed Siraya language activists to revitalise their language by producing textbooks, songbooks, and other material for learning and using the language. This article analyses how Siraya language activists have used the Dutch texts to breathe new life into their language. It focuses on two features of the language, phonology and lexis, and examines the choices that the language activists have made, differences between the revitalised language and the language recorded in the Dutch texts resulting from these choices, and possible reasons for these differences
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