Eighteenth-Century English Grammars database (ECEG)

ECEG is an electronic resource for the study of the eighteenth-century grammatical tradition which contains bibliographic information about grammars of the English language written between 1700 and 1800, enhanced with biographical information about their writers. ECEG aims to provide scholars with an up-to-date resource based on a variety of bibliographies, online collections, facsimile reprints and seminal works published from 1903 to 2011, thereby meeting the demands of the growing research community in the field of the Late Modern English period in general and the eighteenth-century normative grammatical tradition in particular.

The database consists of 323 grammars written by 275 different authors. Each item has been thoroughly examined and annotated in twenty-one different fields, thematically grouped in three major categories (grammars, authors, references). ECEG is highly valued for its interdisciplinary and innovative design, especially with regard to the broader approach to the notion of ‘English grammar’.

Project members: Nuria Yáñez-Bouza and María E. Rodríguez-Gil
Time of compilation: 2006–2010
Size: n/a
Language: English
Number of texts/samples: 323 grammars, 275 authors
Period: 1700–1800
Released: 2012 [slightly updated version of 2010]
Funding: British Academy Small Research Grant (SG-50585); The University of Manchester, July 2008 – December 2010.

Reference line and copyright

ECEG = Eighteenth-Century English Grammars database, 2010. Compiled by María E. Rodríguez-Gil (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) and Nuria Yáñez-Bouza (The University of Manchester, UK). https://eceg.iatext.ulpgc.es/

Copyright is retained by María E. Rodríguez-Gil and Nuria Yáñez-Bouza (© 2010).

Manual

Guidelines are available in the section ‘Technical information’.

Compilers

Nuria Yáñez-Bouza (then at The University of Manchester, UK; now at University of Vigo, Spain)
María E. Rodríguez-Gil (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain)

Student assistants

Purva Bachani (January – May 2008), Marije van Hattum (May – July 2010).

Technical support

  • MS Access Database design: Antonio Torres (2006–2010)
  • Web interface development at The University of Manchester: Chris White (March–November 2010)

Computer science staff of IATEXT-Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2019–2020):

  • Web interfaces design and development: Carlos Martel Lamas
  • Web service design, development and implementation: Carlos Martel Lamas
  • Project supervisor: Francisco Javier Carreras Riudavets
  • Zenón José Hernández Figueroa and Gustavo Rodríguez Rodríguez have contributed to the development of the current project through suggestions and corrections

Access

ECEG is freely available online as a digital database for research and educational purposes, hosted by the Institute of Text Analysis and Applications (IATEXT) web farm at https://eceg.iatext.ulpgc.es/

The current release was migrated in November 2019. [ECEG was previously hosted at the University of Manchester from 2010 to 2016.] Two layouts were built in the web-based application: browse and search. The data results can be downloaded as a .CSV file or a .JSON file. The original format of the database, in which the data were entered by the compilers, is a relational database in Microsoft Access consisting of three ‘forms’ and twenty-one separate ‘fields’. It contains 323 items (English grammars) written between 1700 and 1800 by 275 different authors (as of July 2012).

Associated support

Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria. School Support Research Fund 2009–2010. School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, The University of Manchester (UK), Ref. AA03368.

Research Institute of Text Analysis and Applications (IATEXT) at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2019).