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SUMMARY: Change\, Choice and Functional Ecology: The case of the historica
 l present - Sylvia Adamson\, University of Sheffield
DTSTART:20140306T170000Z
DTEND:20140306T183000Z
UID:TALK47978@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Alison Biggs
DESCRIPTION:In 1791\, Alexander Tytler dismissed the historical present (t
 he use of the present tense to report past events) as 'contrary to the gen
 ius of the English language' and therefore not to be used in translating t
 he form when it appears in French or Latin narratives. A contributor to a 
 modern translation website seems to agree with him:\n“I am currently tra
 nslating a French text on psychotherapy whose author uses the historic pre
 sent when describing her interation with a patient in a clinical session: 
 'Il me dit...' 'Je vois comment...' \n'Il me regarde...' and so on. Can I 
 use the present in English here? The events of course are all in the past\
 , the session happened some time ago. French often uses the present tense 
 in this way\, but I'm not sure about using it in English. It sounds a bit 
 'breathless'. What do other people think?”\n\nDespite these doubts\, the
  historical present was common in Middle English literary narrative and is
  well-attested in conversational narrative in contemporary spoken English 
 as well as in contemporary novels. On the other hand\, its presence in Old
  English is disputed\, it occurs only rarely in novels written before the 
 mid-19th century (Dickens and Bronte)\, and its frequency in recent writer
 s (such as Hilary Mantel) has been deplored by Philip Pullman and others a
 s a temporary fashion or a form of 'cultural affectation'. \n \nThe descri
 ptive section of this paper will try to make sense of a tranche of the his
 tory of the historical present by charting its synchronic/diachronic varia
 tion with other verb forms that seem adapted to the function of making the
  non-present present\, notably 'gan' in Middle English and the 'was-now pa
 radox' in Early and Late Modern English (i.e. the simple past tense in com
 bination with present time adverbials).  \n\nOn the theoretical level\, I 
 hope the data presented will bring together and illuminate a number of unr
 esolved controversies:\na) whether the function of the historical present 
 is primarily to mark aspectual distinctions or to demarcate narrative even
 t-units\;\nb) whether the linguistic strategies of of oral and literary na
 rration are 'contradictory and mutually exclusive' (such that the historic
 al present should not be considered a unified phenomenon)\; or whether (as
  Fleischman argued) there is an 'oral residue' that 'persists in written t
 exts and takes on new functions as textuality evolves from more oral to mo
 re literate'\;\nc) whether linguistic elements undergoing functional-pragm
 atic change follow a pathway leading from non-pragmatic to pragmatic (Trau
 gott's view) or in the reverse direction (Hopper's view).\n\nAs my title i
 ndicates\, I will be particularly interested in the light this case-study 
 sheds on the relation between language change and stylistic choice and on 
 the question of whether the outcome of their interaction is to maintain or
  disrupt a language's functional ecology.\n
LOCATION:GR06/7 English Faculty\, Sidgwick Site
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