PDF superior TítuloA multidimensional analysis of late Modern Englis scientific texts from the "Coruña Corpus"

Among the many definitions found in the literature, some appear to be looser, or more “flexible” than others. For instance, early definitions of corpus by Leech include “a source of systematically retrievable data and…a testbed for linguistic hypotheses” (1991: 9), focusing on its serviceability in research, or, otherwise, “a helluva lot of texts, stored in a computer” (1992: 106), referring to its actual shape and content. Kilgarriff & Grefenstette (2003: 334) also emphasise the practical side of corpora, stating that “[a] corpus is a collection of texts when considered as an object of language or literary study” (in Saldanha 2009: 2). From this definition, any collection of texts can be considered a corpus when used in linguistic or literary research. On the other end of the scale, Sinclair (1994: 14) defines corpus as “a collection of pieces of language that are selected and ordered according to explicit linguistic criteria in order to be used as a sample of the language”, while McEnery & Wilson (1996: 24) characterise it as “[a] finite-sized body of machine-readable texts sampled in order to be maximally representative of the language variety under consideration”. Biber et al. (1998: 4), in turn, list four main characteristics of a “corpus approach”: it is empirical, in that it analyses the actual patterns of language use in natural texts; the collection of natural texts has to be large and principled; computers are used in its analysis; and this analysis combines quantitative and qualitative techniques. All in all, despite the flexibility of the term, there seems to be a general consensus among corpus linguists (Biber 1993; McEnery & Wilson 1996; Martí & Castellón 2000; Tognini-Bonelly 2001; Baker 2002; Bowker & Pearson 2002; McEnery 2003; Taavitsainen 2005) that a corpus, rather than being a mere collection of electronic texts, has to be compiled according to certain criteria. These include size, representativeness, balance and time-span, as well as register selection and research scope.

In what concerns the first of the criteria, Gray distinguishes three different possibilities for the scope of the research. The first is studying a single linguistic feature in detail (be it a word, a grammatical structure or “a set of related items”) and focusing on its different variants. An example of this type of study is, for instance, a study on the prefixes and suffixes of nouns in astronomy and philosophy texts (Camiña 2012), or a study of deverbal nominalizations in astronomy texts (Bello 2014). The second type examines a series of related features which share a common communicative purpose, such as extenders in scientific discourse (Sánchez Barreiro, forthcoming). Finally, the third type focuses on a large set of non-necessarily-related linguistic features which help describing a language or linguistic variety. An example of such a study could be a Multidimensional Analysis (Biber 1988) on the scientific register in the eighteenth and nineteenth century (Monaco, forthcoming). These three categories are somewhat in a continuum, with certain studies presenting traces of both the first and second or the second and third types (Gray 2011: 20). This criterion was also defined by Biber (1988), who distinguished between macroscopic and microscopic studies: a microscopic study of textual variation “provides a detailed description of the communicative functions of particular linguistic features”, while a macroscopic one “attempts to define the overall dimensions of variation in language” (Biber 1988: 61)

Thus, the time span selected follows unambiguous motives. In general, the late Modern English period is characterised by antagonistic tendencies regarding language. A movement that purported the customary use of Latin in scientific texts coexisted with another that suggested that disseminating knowledge in the vernacular would undoubtedly reach a wider audience. Also, to make matters worse a third movement intended to create a universal scientific language from scratch. Though the date for the vernacularisation of science has been set as early as 1375 (Taavitsainen & Pahta 2004), it is nonetheless certain that we cannot talk about an outburst of texts written in English until the turn of the seventeenth century, with a consolidation in the eighteenth, since even the most important promoters of the scientific revolution published their works in Latin in the first place (Bacon’s Novum Organum, Newton’s Principia). In sum, the eighteenth century seems, therefore, a fairly reasonable moment in the history of the English language to begin an approach to the morphological devices employed in the period to coin new linguistic elements. We must bear in mind, however, that changes happening in the eighteenth century are not likely to be largely observed until the following century, especially those closer to the turn of the century. Future studies using the nineteenth century section of the Coruña Corpus will definitely address this issue.

Authorial presence in Late Modern scientific writing can be detected, among other linguistic devices, through the use of stance adverbs. We are aware of the restrictions of the current study, in which we have not searched for all the possible types of stance adverbs but have limited ourselves to an initial list proposed by Quirk et al. (1985) and Biber (1988). Nevertheless, some preliminary conclusions can be drawn from the findings. Not all the types from this list have been traced in the corpora examined, and many more occur just once. This gives the impression of a high degree of lexical richness to express stance through this word class. Yet, the three most frequent items, indeed, generally and perhaps, all transmit a particular author position: emphasis, inclusiveness and tentativeness, respectively. These are the main traces that authors leave in their texts to render themselves visible. It is also remarkable that we have found a dissimilarity of frequencies across disciplines, with Life Sciences showing the highest rates of occurrence and History the lowest. This runs contrary to our expectations, and no coherent explanation appears feasible until we turn to the variables of sex and genre.

It is the aim of the current paper to examine late Modern English scientific texts in order to ascertain whether scientific writing was wholly vernacularised, as claimed by some, and to what extent not only isolated terms but also expres- sions of Greek and Latin origin are still to be found in scientific works of dif- ferent technical levels. A further goal here is to compare the behaviour of these forms in disciplines which today we would call hard or soft sciences. To this end, section two provides a short overview of the scientific and linguistic situation in the English-speaking world during the eighteenth century, and also sets out the initial working hypothesis for this study. Section three describes the material and methodology used, followed by a section presenting the findings of the analysis, both in general terms and in a more detailed way, offering a perspective on the kind of terms predominating in each of the disciplines analysed, plus their type and distribution. Finally, some conclusions will be presented.

lled collocations in Mel’čuk’s (1994) terminology— were dealt with in Lareo and Esteve (2008) and Lareo (2009) or conditional structures were delved into by Puente-Cas- telo and Monaco (2013) or Puente-Castelo (2016). Our interest for the socio-historical dimension of the English language has recently grown into several and gra- dual forays into the wide field of discourse analysis. In those we have studied written texts from various discur- sive perspectives such as stance, persuasion, abstraction, involvement, modality and women’s scientific writing. The triggering effect of all this was the creation of what has been and still is MuStE’s flagship, the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing (CC for short). Designed to be a generic or specific corpus —as opposed to a gene- ral corpus—, it is now well known and respected within the academic community. An electronic corpus is not a mere juxtaposition of texts —as sometimes understood in the field of literary studies. It is not a simple bunch of scanned images either as these formats cannot possibly be read and processed by a computer. On the contrary, the same as Biber (1993), Meyer (2002) and Crystal (2003), we agree that a corpus should be briefly defined as a “principled” collection of machine-readable texts. The truth is that the idea of creating a corpus, a speciali- sed one focusing on scientific English, first arose in 2003 when some members of the MuStE group were awarded funding from the University of A Coruña to explore the historical background of English as the language of scien- ce. We soon realised that the compilation of a corpus of scientific texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies would fill a gap in the field of English historical linguistics. At that moment, we had the examples of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (Rissanen et al. 1991) and the Lampeter Corpus of English Tracts (Schmied et al, 1999). In Helsinki, Prof. Taavitsainen and her colleagues were working on the compilation of MEMT (Middle English Medical Texts) and we thought our corpus would complement theirs in the history of scientific English as, initially, the Helsinki project was intended to cover the Middle Ages and the early Modern period, focusing on medical texts.

Abstract: This paper complements previous research into the late Modern English scientific writing uses of the adverbs possibly and perhaps as manifestations of either subjectivity or intersubjectivity, as presented in the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. In order to have a better understanding of the uses of these adverbs as markers of tentativeness, we will explore their syntagmatic relations with modal verbs. It is widely assumed that scientific discourse has an objective nature, although it has been questioned by its use of hedging and other expressions of stance. In the present study, we will assess how modal verbs accompanying these stance adverbs modulate the expression of tentativeness. The use of stance adverbs shows authorial presence and a covert interaction with the reader. The paper examines different degrees of hesitancy depending on the type of modal verb accompanying these adverbs. The analysis has been carried out on four subcorpora of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. Our findings will be presented from a more general to a more detailed account for each of the forms under investigation and interpreted taking into account the variables ‘date of publication’ and ‘genre’ for the text, and ‘sex’ for the author.

One of the most important defenders of women in the seventeenth century was François Poulain de la Barre. This French philosopher studied at the University of Paris, where he received a training that stipulated that women were inferior to men. He then refused this scholastic antiwomanism and turned to Descartes' teachings about the aptness of both sexes for learned activities. He attributed women's lack of advance in the sciences to the fact that they employed more time in housewifery. He advocated for high education for women; for Poulain de la Barre, women and men were not equal but each sex could be socially useful for different tasks. Taking into account that at that time men and women were thought to be physically different, his ideas should be considered revolutionary. In his work De l'Egalité des Deux Sexes (1679) he made a thorough review of the scientific disciplines of the time and pointed out in what way women could be apt for those activities. He (1679) claimed that women could be good teachers, doctors, officials in the army or even dictators. This aptness for social tasks is partly derived from woman's discourse. His idea (1679, p. 40) was that women had a more direct style and their message was conveyed more clearly: “On diroit que se que les hommes ſe mettent dans la teſte en étudiant ne ſert qu'à boucher leur esprit, & à y porter la confusion. […] Les femmes au contraire, diſent nettement & avec ordre ce qu'elles ſçavent: les paroles ne leur coûtent rien.” The issue of woman's discourse as opposed to

and benefactive alternation. To that purpose, she has analyzed the semantics of for- ditransitives against the background of the debate between projectionist and constructionist accounts of syntactic alternations and, at the same time, has tried to show that an alternation- based methodology can be used to explore the semantics of the benefactive construction and of the verb classes that are compatible with it. Revisiting the topic of the English for-dative alternation, she concludes that alternations can indeed serve as a heuristic to identify verb meanings and to interpret the semantic difference between for-ditransitives and to- ditransitives, associated with different verb classes and showing different passivization possibilities, in spite of their “shared surface form”.

Resumen: Este artículo estudia el desarrollo de los estudios históricos sobre la delincuencia juvenil bri- tánica en las últimas dos décadas, con algunas re- ferencias a influencias europeas y norteamericanas. Analiza los primeros trabajos sobre la criminalidad juvenil en la historia, especialmente en relación a la influencia de las tesis de la ‘historia desde abajo’, y la historia de la infancia. Posteriormente se detiene en los debates sobre la ‘invención’ del delincuente juvenil, con especial atención a los inicios del siglo XIX como un período relevante en el estableci- miento de un primer sistema judicial juvenil. El eje del artículo gira en torno a los principales temas de investigación acerca del crimen juvenil, sobre todo lo relativo al género, política social, y la aparición de instituciones penales específicamente juveniles. Además, considera la delincuencia como un am- plio paradigma que afecta a las actitudes frente a jóvenes y adolescentes, en particular revisando las cuestiones analizadas por Geoffrey Pearson en su significativo libro de 1983, Hooligans: A History of Respectable Fears. En la conclusión se consideran brevemente ‘nuevas direcciones’ y oportunidades de investigación en este tema.

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Scientific discourse has been traditionally described as a register deprived of subjectivity, where the presence of the author is rarely felt. However, recent studies (Swales, 1990; Hyland, 1998) have shown that authors take a stance on what is being argued by using modality (among other devices), which is conveyed not only by means of modal verbs, but also by way of other lexical items (namely nouns, adjectives, adverbs and lexical verbs). In the light of this, the aim of this paper is to explore the use of these lexical expressions in a corpus of scientific research articles amounting to 170, 339 tokens. For the purpose, the devices used to convey certainty will be grouped into word classes, paying attention to any outstanding differences between the abstracts and the articles themselves.

The crawler processing worked as follows – my algorithm defined the strings in the sources' HTML code that specified the contents, metadata and language of each individual treaty. Then, it stored them in a given folder. After developing a basic algorithm on each single source, I obtained the texts that served my purpose and were to be included in my corpus. I developed the automatic extraction of the titles of treaties and the function that split the derived documents into paragraphs. In addition, I tuned the automatic sorting of the retrieved documents according to the source (target) language and its sequence

The era of Modern Science, beginning sometime in the seventeenth century (Valle, 1999; Hoskin, 1999; Beal, 2004), entailed certain changes related to the way in which knowledge was transmitted. Along history knowledge of all sorts, either theoretical or practical, has been classified according to different taxonomies and has been accordingly named and renamed in different ways. The term Philosophy is defined in the OED as “advanced knowledge or learning, to which the study of the seven liberal arts was regarded as preliminary in medieval universities”. As a subject of study, philosophy was variously subdivided at different times. Many universities adopted a threefold division into natural, moral, and metaphysical philosophy. Depending on the institutions, philosophy could also include other elements or subjects that were necessary for the degree of M.A. During the eighteenth century this use of the term declines (OED) and Natural Philosophy was soon replaced by others such as Biology in the following century.

As regards the section of the questionnaire dealing with the genres which had been previously analysed, our primary aim was to monitor if the students considered that there were remarkable differences in terms of the level of usefulness, suitability and adequacy of the texts to improve their linguistic or scientific competence. Moreover, they had to indicate if they were capable of detecting a different level of complexity when comparing original, review and opinion articles or if they were familiar with a more complex genre apart from the three types included in the study. They also had to specifically state which one of the texts read in class had been the most complex or hardest to understand. Additionally, the students were told to determine which particular linguistic feature was an indicator of a higher level of complexity. These were the options: complex terminology, complex noun phrases, abbreviations, impersonal structures, the use of the passive voice, the constant use of figures (numbers) or formulae. Furthermore, an open-ended option was provided so that they could emphasise other significant features apart from the ones listed in the survey. Moreover, the participants had to decide on the least complex text seen in class or if they would replace any of the texts provided. They also had to explain the reasons behind that particular decision.

The second variable used to present our material is that of genre. The present classification of genres in the CC includes 8 different categories: Treatise, Letter, Lecture, Essay, Textbook, Article, Dialogue and Other. However, our material contains no examples of Article or Dialogue. This is so, first, because the samples of these genres had no preface and were therefore disregarded, and second, because no Dialogues were among the samples by women in the CC. As Graph 3, below, makes clear, Treatise is the genre with the highest number of words, both in prefaces and main texts. Letter is second, although the proportion of words in prefaces and main texts here is unbalanced as compared with some of the other genres. The third genre is Textbook, with the split of words into prefaces and main texts reversed in comparison to that in Letter. Obviously, textbooks tend to require longer introductions, as a means of explaining students the purpose and possible use of the works in question. The three remaining genres are more or less evenly distributed as regards the number of words in front matter and main texts. The issue of note here is the fact that Lectures are the genre with the highest number of words in their prefaces. The reason for this could be that these lectures were first delivered in public and were subsequently published, and hence needed some kind of introductory material when offered to the readers.

Of course, some plague of irrationality is present as a mandatory feature even in fundamental physics. But the mythology of “new scientific rationality” has spread in the social background of immoralism in science politics. According to it, the boundary between the irrational and rational is blurred, and the paradoxical nature of the theory has become almost a criterion of its adequacy to reality [1]. Thus, not “the obvious is incredible”, but the “incredible”, paradoxical is presented as “obvious”, although every paradox is evidence of a concept error. Unfortunately, people begin to recognize for truth not what is true, but what is understandable. Of course, a person learned to connect in thoughts those things that he/she found to be interconnected in reality still in a lower mental state. However, such a connection is perverted, if one accepts the conclusion that an association in thought shall assume the same connection in reality. The analogy of such transcendental deduction is found in the philosophy of Parmenides. Moreover, the changes in mentality that are taking place, in our opinion, can be reduced to the fact that samples and associations of deep memory (archetypes) emerge from the depths of consciousness, the abilities, which were inherent in people of archaic eras or limitedly developed in the "spirit laboratories" of various spiritual systems, are revealed and rediscovered. One way or another, the socio- psychological background in the XXI century turned out to be such (not without the influence of science) that it is the irrational component of modern theories that gives them a high social status. All this deprives us of the remnants of self- criticism and creates a vicious circle of irrational myths and a torn human consciousness. Thus, two inherent features of the modern worldview — irrationalism and eclecticism — have always been the essence of the recent social and psychological background. This unexpected ideological inadequacy is completely abnormal and tells us the prospect of inevitable demythologization. Unfortunately all this is not obvious for most of us.

Before introducing the contributions that con- form this volume, a last question needs to be addressed because it has been an implicit con- cern for most of the authors. Do democracies devote as many resources to building national identity as stronger/authoritarian states do? Approximately fifty years of standard scholarly arguments about the weak connection between democratic rule and nation worshiping have been undermined by globalization and democ- ratization itself. It has become apparent that authoritarian or populist states are not the only ones that are encouraging nation worshiping and strong nationalism. 3 Actually, contempo- rary democracies do likewise. Both in Europe and Latin America rural and urban sites repre- senting nationality as well as museums and memorials have been eagerly reconstructed, renewed, and preserved. Civil society and reli- gious organizations have not stood idly behind. They have indeed joined the state in defending national values, customs, cultures and ways of life. Unlike what it was argued during the Cold War, at the time of this writing nation building is part of the open agendas of democracies and counts with the full support of important sec- tors of civil society. To this we should add the almost complete cooperation of regional bu-

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As regards the use of adverbial subordinators across genres, it appears to be very similar to that found in earlier studies (Moskowich 2013; Moskowich and Monaco 2014), and is unequally represented across the seven genres for which we have samples. Adverbial subordinators abound in Treatise (5.5 nf) and Textbook (5.3 nf). Such a distribution, which is to be expected overall, is in fact very much unexpected in the genre Letter (4.5 nf), since authors of this type of writing would not, a priori, resort to a style where complex ideas need to be expressed. Let us bear in mind, however, that the genre is here represented by fake letters in the sense that they appear to be addressed to a friend or relative, and thus to be informal, yet are in fact very formal and highly technical in nature. It is the use of this rhetorical device that favours the whole discursive pattern to be found later in the text, where logical thinking is reflected in the abundant use of adverbial subordinators as the description and explanation proceeds. Adverbial subordinators are only half as frequent in the four remaining genres, which, surprisingly, include Article and Essay, whose nature would seem to demand a greater use of such devices.