The Loss of English Directional Adverbs: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Language as a constantly changing aspect of life experiences different changes that include, inter alia, vocabulary, grammar, sounds. Some of the words that were used in Old English are no longer in use. This paper deals with the loss of a number of directional adverbs that were vitally in use in Old English while disappeared in Present Day English (PDE). A group of seven adverbs were selected to serve as data for this research. Each adverb is examined separately in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), and Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to find their frequency, meaning, and the context of their usage within two centuries. The results showed that there was a prominent decline in the frequency of the given adverbs. Nevertheless, the frequency rates fluctuated through decades to reach an absolute disappearance in Present Day English. Due to the lack of the scholarly work on this issue, the reason behind the loss of these adverbs is remained unclear.