Abstract This paper proposes a method that is designed to facilitate diachronic speech act analysis. The proposed method draws on the corpus linguistic concept of local grammar – an approach which seeks to account for, not the whole of a language, but one meaning or function only. Local grammar descriptions capture both formal and semantic regularities of speech act realisations, and local grammars offer a more reliable way to quantify speech act realisations across time. It is particularly in this respect that it is argued that a local grammar approach can be useful for diachronic speech act studies, which is demonstrated subsequently by tracing one particular speech act, namely “apology”, in a sample of the Corpus of Historical American English (coha).

中文翻译：

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局部语法和历时言语行为分析

摘要 本文提出了一种旨在促进历时言语行为分析的方法。所提出的方法借鉴了本地语法的语料库语言概念——一种寻求解释的方法，不是整个语言，而只是一种含义或功能。局部语法描述捕获了言语行为实现的形式和语义规律，并且局部语法提供了一种更可靠的方法来量化跨时间的言语行为实现。特别是在这方面，有人认为局部语法方法对于历时言语行为研究是有用的，随后通过在历史美国英语语料库样本中追踪一个特定的言语行为（即“道歉”）来证明这一点。 （呵呵）。