internal evidence

In HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS and PHILOLOGY, a term summarizing the linguistic features in a text which indicate when or where the work was written, or who the author was. Handwriting, idiosyncratic spellings and other features of GRAPHIC SUBSTANCE play an important role, as do favorite patterns of VOCABULARY and GRAMMAR. A contrast is intended with external evidence, such as might come from historical records or archaeological findings. In generative PHONOLOGY, a distinction is sometimes made between corpus-internal and corpus-external evidence to justify an analysis, the latter referring to speaker judgements of rhymes, spoonerisms, and other LUDIC linguistic behavior.