Orientation reflected on register: from historical perspectives

Languages can be classified into three types, e.g. situation-oriented (e.g. Russian, Chienese, etc.), speaker-oriented (e.g. Bulgarian, Turkish, etc.) and hearer-oriented (e.g. English, Danish, etc.) (Durst-Anderssen 2005, 2006, 2008). In this paper, it is argued that the difference in spoken and written discourse can be compared to different patterns in these classificatory types, and historical changes in register can be explained through changes in these types. A particular example analysed here is inversion in English. Inversion involving negative adverbials such as Never have I seen such a scene is still possible in PDE, and it is more frequent in the written discourse than the spoken one. However, although this structure is still possible, it is becoming rather obsolete in the spoken discourse and the canonical order I have never seen such a scene is increasingly becoming more standardised. This is so, since inversion and freer word are common in speaker-orientation, but not in hearer-orientation. English has seen a change into hearer-orientation and inversion is not really suitable in this orientation type. Due to gradualness of changes, one can find overlap in features, but orientation types presented here can be a useful indicator of register, especially from historical perspectives.