Preface

Anneli Meurman-Solin, Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English (VARIENG), University of Helsinki
Ursula Lenker, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

As the name of the Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English (VARIENG) suggests, one of the research goals of the VARIENG unit is to investigate linguistic systems from a comparative perspective. With this goal in mind, Anneli Meurman-Solin organised the symposium “Connectives in Synchrony and Diachrony in European Languages” in Helsinki on 16 April 2010, which set out to offer a discussion forum for research on sentence connection in various European languages. Funding from the Research Unit and the Department of English permitted the invitation of Ursula Lenker, University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany, whose monograph Argument and Rhetoric. Adverbial Connectors in the History of English had just come out. Altogether nine papers by linguists working in departments of Finnish, Scandinavian languages, English and French were presented at the symposium. The refereed and revised papers are published here as a volume in the e-series Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English.

The papers collected in this volume examine connectives in both spoken and written and both historical and present-day data of various Indo-European languages from their earliest attestations, such as Old English, to their present-day use.

Two of the papers focus on various connective and interactional functions of specific linguistic items in Present-Day English and Present-Day Icelandic. Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, who has been a Finland Distinguished Professor in the Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Helsinki since 2009, presents a study on interactional syntax, investigating turns starting with Present-Day English because. Helga Hilmisdóttir discusses the various functions of the syntactically non-integrated nú and núna ‘now’ in Icelandic conversation, drawing on a representative corpus of spoken Present-Day Icelandic. All of the other papers are basically historical in approach since they either track long- or short-term developments of certain groups of connectives, in particular adverbial connectors and subordinators (Lenker, Rissanen, Meurman-Solin), or of individual linguistic items which may serve connective functions (Lehti-Eklund). Other papers based on historical data investigate the connective functions of certain linguistics items in particular periods of the respective languages (Kilpiö & Timofeeva, Härmä, Wårvik).

The contributions by Ursula Lenker and Matti Rissanen provide surveys in long diachrony of English adverbial connectors and adverbial subordinators respectively, both stressing more general aspects of language change, such as typological and information-structural aspects or borrowing. The semantic polyfunctionality and grammaticalisation of one of the Old English subordinators – be þæm þe ‘by that; insofar as; because’ – is examined in a corpus-based study by Matti Kilpiö & Olga Timofeeva. Juhani Härmä investigates the development of the Old French connective ains ‘before, earlier; but’, focussing on the functions of ains and its connections with what is considered as its modern French equivalent, mais ‘but’, in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Three diachronic studies apply methods of discourse analysis, pragmatics, and text linguistics. Hanna Lehti-Eklund analyses discourse functions and grammaticalisation of hoppas / hoppas jag ‘hope / I hope’ in Swedish. Brita Wårvik investigates whether Old English þa ‘then, when; there, where’ is a connective or rather a “disconnective” discourse marker in narrative structuring of Old English. Text types are also central to Anneli Meurman-Solin’s contribution, which discusses categorial fuzziness and polyfunctionality of utterance-initial adverbial connectors in early Scottish epistolary prose, identifying some general trends in the changing mean frequencies of various connectives and connectors.

Our deepest debt of gratitude is to the authors of the various chapters; their unfailing spirit of happy co-operation, has made this volume a reality. We are also greatly indebted to the following colleagues, who acted as external reviewers of the various chapters: Karin Aijmer, Kristin Bech, Laurel Brinton, Hilde Hasselgård, Thomas Kohnen, Bettelou Los, Corinne Rossari, and Henrik Rosenkvist, from whose very valuable comments both the authors and the editors have benefited greatly.

Many thanks are also due to Henri Kauhanen at the VARIENG unit for his innovative thinking and ambition in developing principles and practices of e-publishing and to Christine Elsweiler and Jonas Bodensohn, University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, for their much appreciated assistance in the editorial work.

Helsinki and Eichstätt, December 2011