Dynamics of Change in Early English: Managing, Interpreting and Explaining Linguistic Data Using GIS

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K16774
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Kyushu University
• Principal Investigator: Laker Stephen 九州大学, 言語文化研究院, 准教授 (10741548)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: Englsh / GIS / Corpus Linguistics / Dialectology

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The project led to detailed phonological and morphosyntactic studies that integrated many strands of data onto maps using GIS. The approach allowed for richer analyses of phonological and morphosyntactic developments in the history of English, including the development of dental fricatives, palatal velars, and personal pronouns. Also as part of the project, a large searchable dataset of over 2000 georeferenced Brittonic place-names in England and Scotland was created in order to understand how these names underwent change in Early English.

Free Research Field

English Historical Lingistics, Dialectology

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

The results showed that large amounts of linguistic and non-linguistic data can be effectively managed using maps. Because of the growing amount of data available, this approach is fast becoming a necessity in historical linguistics.