Tamsin Blaxter
Biographic Data
| ID | 6560234 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tamsin Blaxter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tamsin |
| FAMILY NAME | Blaxter |
| SIGNATURE | BLAXTER T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1466-8306 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Caroline Bergvall's Medievalist Poetics
Diachronic dialectology
Hands off the metadata
In this article we assess the extent to which we can collect plausible data about regional dialect variation using crowdsourcing techniques – the BBC Future Survey – without explicitly gathering any user metadata, but relying instead on background information collected by Google Analytics. In order to do this, we compare this approach with another crowdsourced survey, operated from a smartphone application, which examines the same site – the Brit…
Sussex by the sea
Dialects in the South East of England are very often perceived as one homogenous mass, without much regional variation. Rosewarne introduced the notion of Estuary English and defined it as ‘variety of modified regional speech [ . . . ] a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation’ (Rosewarne, 1984). However, studies such as Przedlacka (2001) and Torgersen & Kerswill (2004) have shown that, at least on the…
East Anglian English in the English Dialects App
East Anglian English was the first British variety of English to be subject to dialectological scrutiny using sociolinguistic techniques (Trudgill, 1974, and his subsequent work) and since then has been subject to only sporadic investigation (e.g. Britain, 1991, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Kingston, 2000; Straw, 2006; Amos, 2011; Potter, 2012, 2018; Butcher, 2015). Recent research has suggested that, in those few locations that have been investigated, Ea…
Ther varom mid j hia
Tracing the diffusion of linguistic innovations in space from historical sources is challenging. The complexity of the datasets needed in combination with the noisy reality of historical language data mean that it has not been practical until recently. However, bigger historical corpora with richer spatial and temporal information allow us to attempt it. This paper presents an investigation into changes affecting first person non-singular pronoun…
Each p[ɚ]son does it th[εː] way
This paper examines individual differences in constraints on linguistic variation in light of Labov's (2007) proposal that adult change (diffusion) disrupts systems of constraints and Tamminga, MacKenzie, and Embick's (2016) typology of constraints. It is shown that, in pooling data from multiple speakers, some of the complexity in structured community variation may be overlooked. Data on rhoticity from speakers of Bristol English are compared to…
Pragmatic differentiation of negative markers in the early stages of Jespersen’s cycle in North Germanic
This article investigates the pragmatic function of new negative markers during incipient renewal of negation in ‘Jespersen’s cycle’. We outline a typology of these markers, suggesting a pathway by which they begin as specialized for use with discourse-old propositions and later expand to inferred propositions before finally becoming possible with discourse-new propositions. This framework is applied to an overlooked case of Jespersen’s cycle in …
Gender and language change in Old Norse sentential negatives
One consistent finding across sociolinguistic studies is the tendency for female speakers to lead in ongoing change. Different explanations have been proposed for this and a key method of testing these explanations is to identify whether the pattern occurs in the languages of a wider range of societies than have been studied thus far. Historical societies are relatively understudied in this regard, but undertaking variationist research into gende…
Applying keyword analysis to gendered language in the Íslendingasögur
Keyword analysis has been used to investigate properties of style and genre, as a tool in discourse analysis, and as a method of identifying differences between the speech of distinct social groups. It has often been criticised as a blunt tool which can exaggerate what differences are present and fails to distinguish between quite distinct phenomena. However, it remains a very powerful tool for wide analysis of systematic differences between corp…
Each p[ɚ]son does it th[εː] way
This paper examines individual differences in constraints on linguistic variation in light of Labov's (2007) proposal that adult change (diffusion) disrupts systems of constraints and Tamminga, MacKenzie, and Embick's (2016) typology of constraints. It is shown that, in pooling data from multiple speakers, some of the complexity in structured community variation may be overlooked. Data on rhoticity from speakers of Bristol English are compared to…
Applying keyword analysis to gendered language in the Íslendingasögur
Keyword analysis has been used to investigate properties of style and genre, as a tool in discourse analysis, and as a method of identifying differences between the speech of distinct social groups. It has often been criticised as a blunt tool which can exaggerate what differences are present and fails to distinguish between quite distinct phenomena. However, it remains a very powerful tool for wide analysis of systematic differences between corp…
Gender and language change in Old Norse sentential negatives
One consistent finding across sociolinguistic studies is the tendency for female speakers to lead in ongoing change. Different explanations have been proposed for this and a key method of testing these explanations is to identify whether the pattern occurs in the languages of a wider range of societies than have been studied thus far. Historical societies are relatively understudied in this regard, but undertaking variationist research into gende…
Pragmatic differentiation of negative markers in the early stages of Jespersen’s cycle in North Germanic
This article investigates the pragmatic function of new negative markers during incipient renewal of negation in ‘Jespersen’s cycle’. We outline a typology of these markers, suggesting a pathway by which they begin as specialized for use with discourse-old propositions and later expand to inferred propositions before finally becoming possible with discourse-new propositions. This framework is applied to an overlooked case of Jespersen’s cycle in …
Ther varom mid j hia
Tracing the diffusion of linguistic innovations in space from historical sources is challenging. The complexity of the datasets needed in combination with the noisy reality of historical language data mean that it has not been practical until recently. However, bigger historical corpora with richer spatial and temporal information allow us to attempt it. This paper presents an investigation into changes affecting first person non-singular pronoun…
Each p[ɚ]son does it th[εː] way
This paper examines individual differences in constraints on linguistic variation in light of Labov's (2007) proposal that adult change (diffusion) disrupts systems of constraints and Tamminga, MacKenzie, and Embick's (2016) typology of constraints. It is shown that, in pooling data from multiple speakers, some of the complexity in structured community variation may be overlooked. Data on rhoticity from speakers of Bristol English are compared to…
Sussex by the sea
Dialects in the South East of England are very often perceived as one homogenous mass, without much regional variation. Rosewarne introduced the notion of Estuary English and defined it as ‘variety of modified regional speech [ . . . ] a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation’ (Rosewarne, 1984). However, studies such as Przedlacka (2001) and Torgersen & Kerswill (2004) have shown that, at least on the…
East Anglian English in the English Dialects App
East Anglian English was the first British variety of English to be subject to dialectological scrutiny using sociolinguistic techniques (Trudgill, 1974, and his subsequent work) and since then has been subject to only sporadic investigation (e.g. Britain, 1991, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Kingston, 2000; Straw, 2006; Amos, 2011; Potter, 2012, 2018; Butcher, 2015). Recent research has suggested that, in those few locations that have been investigated, Ea…
Diachronic dialectology
Hands off the metadata
In this article we assess the extent to which we can collect plausible data about regional dialect variation using crowdsourcing techniques – the BBC Future Survey – without explicitly gathering any user metadata, but relying instead on background information collected by Google Analytics. In order to do this, we compare this approach with another crowdsourced survey, operated from a smartphone application, which examines the same site – the Brit…
Caroline Bergvall's Medievalist Poetics
Linguistic Variation and Morphology (9 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · History (6 works) · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies (5 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Geography (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Art (2 works) · Epistemology (2 works)