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8
Introduction
orderchangesalsoenabledustotakeintoaccounttheentiretextsofsome
manuscripts,likethatoftheAnglo-SaxonChronicle(boththeParkerand
thePeterboroughManuscript)andtheOldEnglishOrosius,aswellassome
lengthysamplesofothertexts.Moreover,thankstothetaggedcorpuswe
wereabletomakeaparallelcomparisonofthosetexts.Apartfromthepre-
sentationoftheresultsthatweobtained,wealsopresent,andthisisoneof
thecrucialpointsofthisbook,thewayinwhichweconstructedthecorpus
itself.Wehopethatduetothefactthatwefocusedonlyonprosetexts,and
thattheywerequitelengthy,wewereabletoobtainmoreobjectiveresults
astothephenomenaofwordorderchangeinEnglish.Althoughtheword
orderchangesthattookplacewithintwolargeperiodsoftimeinthehistory
ofEnglishwereofourmainconcern,wesituatedthemwithinthebroader
historicalcontextofwordorderchangesthatextendsfromtheProto-Indo-
EuropeanperioduptothelateMiddleAges.Thiswidercontextwasmeant
toprovidesomebackgroundfortheanalysisofthechangesinEnglishword
ordersoastoavoidtheirbeingtreatedinisolation,aswebelievethatifa
givenproblemisplacedintoalargercontext,itcanbeunderstoodbetterand
moreobjectively.
Thestructureofthebook
Thebookconsistsoffivechapters.Chapter1startswithashortoutline
ofthemostinfluentialwordordertheories,andthenwediscussthewayin
whichweconstructedthetaggedcorpusfordifferenttexts,bothEnglish
andnon-English,thatweusedinouranalysisofwordorderchanges.The
purposeofthediscussionistodemonstratehowonecancreateone’sown
taggedcorpusforasystematicandlarge-scaleapproachtothephenomena
ofwordorderchange.Wewouldalsoliketoencouragetheconstructionof
taggedcorpora,ascorpuslinguisticsisaveryrecentphenomenonandcom-
parativelylittlehasbeendoneinthisfield.However,bythedemonstration
ofhowataggedcorpuscanbeconstructedwedonotmeantosuggestthat
itisthebestcorpusfortheanalysisofwordorderchanges.Onthecontrary,
weleavealotofspaceforthereader’screativityintheconstructionof
hisowntaggedcorpus,andwhatwehopetodoistosomehowguidehim
throughthistask.Bythepresentationwewouldalsoliketoimplythatin
theconstructionofataggedcorpusitisnecessarytochoosecriteriathat
willnotbetoonumerous,toocomplicatedandtooelaborate,butwhich
atthesametime,byusingaminimalnumberofcodes,willallowoneto
encodeasmanysyntacticstructuresaspossible.Inotherwords,weinsist