Patterns of stylistic variation in the use of synthetic and analytic comparative adjectives: Evidence from private letters in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century England

García Vidal, Tamara2024-12-162024-12-162023García-Vidal, Tamara. (2023). Patterns of stylistic variation in the use of synthetic and analytic comparative adjectives: Evidence from private letters in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century England. En Intra-Writer Variation in Historical Sociolinguistics (pp. 107-132). Peter Lang.9781800797055https://doi.org/10.3726/B19157https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/24935This chapter aims at exploring socially based patterns of stylistic variation at the individual level through the study of synthetic and analytic mechanisms for the construction of comparative adjectives in English historical correspondence from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. To account for speakers’ sociolinguistic behaviour in interpersonal communication, I investigate intra-speaker variation in letters written by five informants from diverse social ranks when addressing recipients ascribed to different social orders. By focusing primarily on number of syllables and etymology of the adjectives, this study shows that the distribution of comparative adjectives follows addressee-based accommodative patterns when writing upwards, by showing a preference for the analytic form with long and Romance adjectives, and for the synthetic form with short and Germanic/native adjectives when writing downwards.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess57 LingüísticaPatterns of stylistic variation in the use of synthetic and analytic comparative adjectives: Evidence from private letters in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Englandcapítulo de libro