Open Access

Olena Andrushenko

• The current research explores just in Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse and EEBO as a focusing adverb, which demonstrates its standing and development throughout 14-17 century English. Automated data retrieval and analysis provides new insights into the adverb transformation from the contextual perspective, as well as, shows its grammaticalization cline based on various chronological timeframes. The analysis proves that the polysemous meaning of the form correlates with syntactic changes relevant for every time frame and is determined by information-structural considerations. To check the initial hypothesis the study required annotation of giveness-neweness tagging in the text segments retrieved from the corpora. To ensure the automated and semi-automated procedures, the methodology relies on Discourse Representation Theory proving corpus tagging algorithms taking into account discourse, encyclopedic, situational and scenario contexts. Labeling the relevant constituents forThe current research explores just in Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse and EEBO as a focusing adverb, which demonstrates its standing and development throughout 14-17 century English. Automated data retrieval and analysis provides new insights into the adverb transformation from the contextual perspective, as well as, shows its grammaticalization cline based on various chronological timeframes. The analysis proves that the polysemous meaning of the form correlates with syntactic changes relevant for every time frame and is determined by information-structural considerations. To check the initial hypothesis the study required annotation of giveness-neweness tagging in the text segments retrieved from the corpora. To ensure the automated and semi-automated procedures, the methodology relies on Discourse Representation Theory proving corpus tagging algorithms taking into account discourse, encyclopedic, situational and scenario contexts. Labeling the relevant constituents for their information status presupposes employing “coreference resolution” enabled through “Cesax” coreference editor. The further manual study of focusing just centers on its position in the XP along with word-order patterns registered. To observe regularities in word order fluctuations in the models a special attention is given to different Focus types marked by the adverb in XPs, viz. informational, identificational, contrastive, emphatic, etc.…