439 Modern English, Contrastive Studies and Translation Studies life remains are both residues of the longer phrase used in epistolary style, but while life remains, hence the domination of the former over but remain. Next, no cases of and/also remain(s) have been recorded in Private Voices, hence we cannot discuss the validity of hypothesis 3 mentioned in Section 5. Additionally, we cannot discuss the dependence of remain(s) on its geographical distribution (remains in the closing expressions is said to be the residue of Scottish-Irish letter-writing tradition whose remnants are to be found in the American south) due to the nature of the database which is ostensibly biased toward letters penned down in the southern states, which makes indepth comparisons impossible. Finally, letter writers did cling to the formulaic expressions they had learned, but their writing skills and this oft-repeated imperfect rendering of the learned phrases lead to an array of hybrid forms (but I remain, while I remain, I hope to remain, and but remaining) or the truncation to the sole verb remain(s) unaccompanied by any other element. References Primary sources Private Voices. [Within:] Michael Ellis, Michael Montgomery (directors) Corpus of American Civil War Letters (CACWL) Project. Retrieved from https://altchive.org/ private-voices/ Special studies Allen, Barbara (2015) “A Non-Standard Standard? Exploring the Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Vernacular Letters and Diaries.” [In:] Anita Auer, Daniel Schreier, Richard J. Watts (eds.) Letter Writing and Language Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 202–222. DOI: 10.1017/ CBO9781139088275.012 Bailey, Guy, Natalie Maynor, Patricia Cukor-Avila (1989) “Variation in SubjectVerb Concord in Early Modern English.” [In:] Language Variation and Change 1(3); 285–300. DOI: 10.1017/S0954394500000193 Beal, Joan (1993) “The Grammar of Tyneside and Northumbrian English.” [In:] James Milroy, Lesley Milroy (eds.) Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. London, UK: Longman; 187–213. Beal, Joan (1997) “Syntax and Morphology.” [In:] Charles Jones (ed.) The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press; 335–377.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE5NDY5MQ==