Spelling Variation in the History of English: The Case of -ic vs -ick

Abstract

[ES] This dissertation deals with spelling fluctuation in the history of English, focusing mainly on the origins and development of the -ic suffix and its variants in order to determine whether there was a linguistic competition between them and, if so, which one finally became the dominant suffix. This study uses corpus-driven analysis to explain the development of the ten most frequent two or more syllable nouns with this ending from the Early Modern English onwards. The study also explains why some words did not develop as expected, with influencing phenomena such as blocking or linguistic specialization. The corpora used as sources of evidence are the Early English Books Online corpus from the 1470s to the end of the EModE period, the Google Books Corpus from 1700 to 1850, and the Corpus of Historical American English for the analysis of spelling in American English.[EN] This dissertation deals with spelling fluctuation in the history of English, focusing mainly on the origins and development of the -ic suffix and its variants in order to determine whether there was a linguistic competition between them and, if so, which one finally became the dominant suffix. This study uses corpus-driven analysis to explain the development of the ten most frequent two or more syllable nouns with this ending from the Early Modern English onwards. The study also explains why some words did not develop as expected, with influencing phenomena such as blocking or linguistic specialization. The corpora used as sources of evidence are the Early English Books Online corpus from the 1470s to the end of the EModE period, the Google Books Corpus from 1700 to 1850, and the Corpus of Historical American English for the analysis of spelling in American English.