Same time, across time: simultaneity clauses from Late Modern to Present-Day English

Abstract

In this article we offer a diachronic analysis of simultaneity subordinatorasagainst the background of simultaneity subordinatorswhile, whilst,whenfrom 1650 to the end of the twentieth century. The present survey makes use of data extracted from the British English component of ARCHER (version 3.1), focusing in particular on fiction, the registerpar excellencefor the use of simultaneity subordinators. We analyse our data according to a selection of parameters (ordering, verb type, duration, tense and aspect, subject identity, simultaneity type) and show that, against a background of relative stability, the major change is a dramatic increase in the frequency of simultaneityas-clauses from the first half of the nineteenth century onwards. Adapting the historical work on stylistic change by Biber and Finegan (1989, 1997), as well as theoretical and experimental accounts of the semantics of English simultaneity markers, we highlight an interesting parallelism between the spread ofas-clauses in oral narrative from childhood to adulthood and the spread ofas-clauses in modern fiction. In either case, the spread ofasmay be symptomatic of an evolution in narrative techniques, particularly in respect of the means by which complex events are typically represented.