Abstract :
In this article we offer a diachronic analysis of simultaneity subordinator as against the
background of simultaneity subordinators while, whilst, when from 1650 to the end of the
twentieth century. The present surveymakes use of data extracted from the British English
component of ARCHER (version 3.1), focusing in particular on fiction, the register par
excellence for the use of simultaneity subordinators. We analyse our data according to a
selection of parameters (ordering, verb type, duration, tense and aspect, subject identity,
simultaneity type) and show that, against a background of relative stability, the major
change is a dramatic increase in the frequency of simultaneity as-clauses from the first
half of the nineteenth century onwards. Adapting the historical work on stylistic change
by Biber and Finegan (1989, 1997), as well as theoretical and experimental accounts of
the semantics of English simultaneity markers, we highlight an interesting parallelism
between the spread of as-clauses in oral narrative from childhood to adulthood and the
spread of as-clauses in modern fiction. In either case, the spread of as may be symptomatic
of an evolution in narrative techniques, particularly in respect of the means by which
complex events are typically represented.
