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Books by Stephen Howe

The PhraseBook for Writing Papers and Research is designed to help non-native speakers write pape... more The PhraseBook for Writing Papers and Research is designed to help non-native speakers write papers, books and theses at university and research level in English. It includes about 5000 words and phrases for university and research writing. Phrases are divided into around 30 main sections that follow the structure of university and research texts, such as Introducing a study, Defining the scope of a study, Arguing for and against, Reviewing other work, Summarizing and Conclusions.

Book Chapters by Stephen Howe

Southern English Varieties: Then and Now, 2016

This chapter looks at emphatic yes and no in the East of England. In a variety of East Anglian En... more This chapter looks at emphatic yes and no in the East of England. In a variety of East Anglian English, non-emphatic forms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are, as in much of English, yeah and no. However, emphatic forms are jearse and dow. This East Anglian dialect thus has a multi-form ‘yes’–‘no’ system, with yeah–jearse and no–dow. The chapter will examine the origins and use of jearse and dow, neither of which is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary or the Survey of English Dialects. The author will also compare other forms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in English, including the standard yes and informal yeah, non-emphatic un, and regional or archaic aye, yea and nay, as well the earlier ‘yes’–‘no’ system in English. The chapter will conclude by reviewing ways of answering in the affirmative or negative in other languages.

Papers by Stephen Howe

It is a great puzzle that although we all instinctively ‘know’ what human language is, it is surp... more It is a great puzzle that although we all instinctively ‘know’ what human language is, it is surprisingly difficult to nail down concrete, incontrovertible universals. Naively, one might assume that it would be easy to state such apparent truisms as ‘all languages have nouns and verbs’, but even this is more problematic than one might believe (cf. Croft 2003: 13–19, Tomasello 2003: 17–19). Nevertheless, if we hear people chatting in an unfamiliar foreign tongue on a train, although we cannot understand what they are saying, we sense they are using a human language like ours in a way that we do not with the whistles of dolphins, songs of birds or dances of bees. And the fact that, with sufficient exposure, any human child can learn any human language provides ample and repeated proof of the universals that must be present. It is indeed astonishing that human languages can appear outwardly so different in their sounds, grammar and vocabulary, yet any human child can learn any human language without instruction. Even as adults, although learning a new language is often laborious, it is not impossible, given sufficient exposure, practice and motivation.

This paper will examine pronouns and social deixis in English, Japanese and other languages. Resp... more This paper will examine pronouns and social deixis in English, Japanese and other languages. Respect, politeness, social distance and formality are complex areas of language use, particularly in Japanese. This short working paper will focus only on personal pronouns and their use (or non-use). The paper will first discuss respect degrees in pronominal reference based on a survey of over a hundred languages worldwide, followed by a brief examination of reciprocity and non-reciprocity. It will then look at English and Japanese pronouns, and 2nd person, 1st person and 3rd person reference – referring to you, me and others – followed by a discussion of avoidance of pronominal reference. The final sections of the paper examine the use of names and titles and change in forms of reference.

The first question to be asked in a study such as this is of course whether Japanese actually has... more The first question to be asked in a study such as this is of course whether Japanese actually has personal pronouns in the sense of English and other European languages. Many Japanese specialists, for instance Suzuki (1978, see e.g. p.112), do not treat pronouns as a separate class. Smith terms them ‘personal referents’ and goes as far as saying that a ‘characteristic of the language is the absence in Japanese of anything remotely resembling the personal pronoun’ (1983: 74, my emphasis). Takeuchi (1999: 1) refers to forms such as watakusi, watasi, boku and zibun as ‘nouns of self-reference’, stating (1999: 64) that ‘morphologically, they do not form regular paradigms’. Hinds (1986: 238) states that ‘The primary problem is that, from a historical perspective, the group of words which is typically thought of as being pronouns, have nominal origins.’ Similarly, on forms such as watasi, anata, kare and kanozyo, Shibatani (1990: 371–2) writes that while they ‘are usually identified as personal pronouns, they are characteristically different from the personal pronouns in European languages’. Like Hinds, he states that etymologically most of the forms derive ‘from regular nouns’, citing watakusi from ‘private (thing)’, kimi from ‘emperor’ and anata from ‘yonder’.

Conference Presentations by Stephen Howe

This paper looks at emphatic yes and no in East Anglian dialect. In a variety of East Anglian Eng... more This paper looks at emphatic yes and no in East Anglian dialect. In a variety of East Anglian English, non-emphatic forms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are, as in much of English, yeah and no. However, emphatic forms are jearse and dow. This East Anglian dialect thus has a four-form ‘yes’–‘no’ system, with yeah–jearse and no–dow. The paper will examine the origins and use of jearse and dow, neither of which is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary or the Survey of English Dialects. The author will also compare other forms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in English, including the standard yes and informal yeah, non-emphatic un, and regional or archaic aye, yea and nay, as well earlier ‘yes’–‘no’ systems in English. The paper will conclude by briefly reviewing ways of answering in the affirmative or negative in other languages.

This paper will examine the etymologies of the Old Frisian 2nd and 3rd person plural pronouns iem... more This paper will examine the etymologies of the Old Frisian 2nd and 3rd person plural pronouns iemma(n) and himmen. There are two main explanations for these forms: one by Siebs (1901) that they derive from the dative plural, the other by Van Helten (1889) that they derive from addition of ‘man/men’. Neither theory is entirely satisfactory. Although distinction by analogical extension is relatively well attested in the personal pronouns in Germanic languages (Howe 1996), Siebs’ explanation envisages a somewhat complex sequence of case distinction followed by levelling, followed by redistinction, followed again by levelling. A problem with Van Helten’s man, men explanation is that 3rd person plural forms such as hi(a)rem seem unlikely phonetically to derive, directly at least, from a combination with man, men, suggesting rather the addition of dative plural inflection to a genitive base.

Personal pronouns are often described as a ‘closed class’, but in fact new pronouns can and do de... more Personal pronouns are often described as a ‘closed class’, but in fact new pronouns can and do develop, and pronouns can be lost (as demonstrated by English ‘thou’). This paper examines how new personal pronouns arise, and why pronouns are lost from a language. It also examines the sources of new personal pronouns, including directional deictics, reflexives, borrowing, compounding (including addition of lexical plurals), sandhi and pronominalisation of titles. The paper draws on English and Japanese as well as other languages. It considers why Old English had around 36 personal pronouns but Modern English only about 19. It also looks at possible ‘depronominalisation’, the replacement of pronouns by lexical forms, in Japanese. Examination of these types of developments can allow us to evaluate uncertain etymologies in the light of empirical evidence (one obvious example being the origin of English ‘she’). It may also help us put forward hypotheses for the origins of personal pronouns in human language.

This paper examines the degree of regularity–irregularity and the complex morphology of personal ... more This paper examines the degree of regularity–irregularity and the complex morphology of personal pronouns. Theoretically, the morphology of the personal pronouns is analysed as representing two different systematic types: either systematic in terms of marking property connections or systematic in terms of marking property differences. The morphology of personal pronouns is in many cases grammatically, semantically and formally complex. Further, the paper discusses how accented and unaccented forms of the same pronoun can vary in their connection to one another. Not only can the personal pronouns show suppletive or suppletive-like distinctions between separate pronouns, i.e. not derivable by general synchronic rule, but also non-synchronically-derivable variants of the same pronoun can occur. Finally, the author examines to what extent the factors discussed can be applied to comparable paradigms in other languages – the ‘irregularity’ of the personal pronouns and of comparable forms in many languages suggesting some common factors.

What can we learn from best practice in countries with successful foreign language teaching? And ... more What can we learn from best practice in countries with successful foreign language teaching? And what can we learn from worst practice? This paper will examine various factors, both inside and outside the classroom.

By the time they graduate, school-leavers and university students in Scandinavia are almost all fluent in English, while their Japanese counterparts lag well behind. In fact, if we were to place two students of average ability side by side, one from Scandinavia, the other from Japan, the difference would be astounding. Furthermore, Scandinavian schools achieve good levels of English across the ability range. Nor is Japan unique in achieving low levels of foreign language ability – the English-speaking countries, too, achieve only very modest fluency in French, German or Spanish. The fact that Scandinavians speak excellent English is something we take for granted, but it is not a matter of course. Nor should it be treated as a matter of course that Japanese or native English speakers are ‘poor at foreign languages’. It is the result of a number of factors that Scandinavian students can speak a foreign language very well by the time they graduate, while most Japanese, British and US students cannot. What do Scandinavian schools and universities do, and what factors in Scandinavian society produce such excellent English ability? The aim of this paper is to make a preliminary attempt to unravel and outline what these might be.

Talks by Stephen Howe

The starting point of this presentation is the forms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in my home dialect of Eas... more The starting point of this presentation is the forms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in my home dialect of East Anglian English. In this dialect, unemphatic forms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are, as in much of English, yeah and no. However, emphatic forms are jearse and dow; neither is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary or the Survey of English Dialects. The paper will suggest a possible origin of these forms. The presentation then examines the origin and meaning of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ particles in language more generally. It asks how languages express ‘yes’ and ‘no’, what ‘yes’ and ‘no’ stand for, and whether ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are universal. It also examines the well-known difference between English and Japanese and other languages in answering negative questions (such as Don’t you love me anymore?), where ‘yes’ in one language corresponds to ‘no’ in another. Finally, I will discuss paralinguistic ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (as in English uh-huh, uh-uh, Japanese un, uun) and ‘yes’ and ‘no’ gestures, also asking whether these are universal. The presentation will conclude by suggesting a possible origin of forms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

Media by Stephen Howe

Talking about research on jearse and dow, emphatic words for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in the East of England.

Interview about research on jearse and dow, emphatic words for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in East Anglia.

Southern English Varieties: Then and Now, 2016