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best that has been thought and said—these are the qualities that account for the importance of Chaucer”. It is seen that Chaucer’s contribution to English language is eventful.

Scholars make studies on Chaucer’s English in his works, especially Chaucer’s vocabulary. Mersand (1939, p. 53) analyzes 1180 words in Oxford English Dictionary and 1830 words from Chaucer’s works in Middle English Dictionary, attempting to preserve the portrait of Chaucer as the father of French loanwords in the modern English lexicon. However, in a comparison of first attestations to Chaucer in the Oxford English Dictionary with identical entries in the Middle English Dictionary, Cannon (1998) has demonstrated that many of the loanwords the Oxford English Dictionary ascribes to Chaucer had already been in use in his day. 

2.2 Previous Studies on The Canterbury Tales

2.2.1 Studies on The Canterbury Tales Abroad

Norman Conquest has changed the process of English language development. At that time, English language had a lower social status and it was mostly used by the people of lower class. During that period, Chaucer, “the Father of English Poetry”, consisted to complete Tales It was the first English poetry in the history of English literature in London dialect. Since the publication of the Tales, it has attracted many scholars to study on it from various perspectives.

There are many researches focusing on the words in Tales. Child (1863) made 111 observations on the language of Chaucer by analyzing nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in this book. In 1979, the nonce words in Tales were discussed by Scheps, who found that nonce-word frequency was fairly constant in the “marriage group” tales, giving them yet another feature in common, and is lowest in the Physician’s Tale. 

Besides, metaphors in Tales were also studied by some scholars, and the figurative applications of phrases containing words connected with human seeing were analyzed to show the motivation for metaphoric expressions used by Chaucer to express his thoughts and the further development in the language system (Gąszcz, 2012). In 2014, Wawrzyniak investigated cognitive metaphors of the mind in Tales. His research presented an analysis of a number of cognitive metaphors pertaining to the concept of mind, heart, and fire. It was argued that many apparently similar concepts can evoke semantically conflicting metaphors, while concepts that appear to be mutually exclusive can sometimes evoke common associations and thereby similar metaphors. Furthermore, the research about the historical ideal of Chaucer and Tales was discussed, which made some distinctions between medieval attitudes and assumptions concerning the individual and his relationship to society (Wood, 1970).

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework .............................. 16

3.1 Introduction ..................................... 16

3.2 A Brief Overview of Cognitive Sociolinguistics ........................... 17

3.3 Theory of Covariance ................................... 19

Chapter Four  Data Analysis and Discussion ................................ 41

4.1 Data Description ........................................ 41

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