Table Of ContentLanguage Change
m
1749 g
I 1999
Trends in Linguistics
Studies and Monographs 114
Editor
Werner Winter
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Language Change
Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics
edited by
Ernst Häkon Jahr
W
Mouton de Gruyter
DE
G
Berlin · New York 1999
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.
® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication-Data
Language change : advances in historical sociolinguistics / ed-
ited by Ernst Häkon Jahr.
p. cm. - (Trends in linguistics. Studies and mono-
graphs ; 114)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 3-11-015634-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Historical linguistics. 2. Sociolinguistics. I. Jahr, Ernst
Häkon, 1948- . II. Series.
P140.L25 1998
417'.7-dc21 98-39239
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication-Data
Language change : advances in historical sociolinguistics /
ed. by Ernst Häkon Jahr. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de
Gruyter, 1998
(Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 114)
ISBN 3-11-015634-2
© Copyright 1998 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., D-10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan-
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Printed in Germany.
Preface
During the past three decades, with sociolinguistics emerging as a major field
of linguistic research, historical sociolinguistics has been established as an
important subfield of historical linguistics.
The papers in the present volume - most of which were first presented at
the Twelfth International Troms0 Symposium on Language: Historical Socio-
linguistics, held at the University of Troms0 on June 9-11, 1994 - contribute
to a much needed theoretical discussion of this subfield as well as bringing
together a considerable body of empirical data pertaining to the description
and analysis of historical sociolinguistic conditions.
The papers by Els Oksaar, James Milroy and Wieslaw Awedyk raise the-
oretical questions regarding historical sociolinguistics in general. Agnieszka
Kielkiewicz-Janowiak uses a study of changes in child-to-parent modes of
address in Polish to exemplify possible methods in historical sociolinguis-
tics.
The principle problems concerning sociolinguistic descriptions of dead
languages - with data mainly from Tocharian Β - are treated by Werner Win-
ter. Folke Josephson then gives an example of how a sociolinguistic model
which is established on the basis of synchronic present-day studies can be
employed in the analysis of old, dead languages - here Hittite.
Historical multilingualism is treated in three papers. Laura Wright de-
scribes code-switching over 500 years in business writing in London. Ernst
Häkon Jahr gives an overview of problems in and perspectives of the study of
the medieval contact between Low German and Scandinavian. Anna-Riitta
Lindgren gives an account of the morphological variation exhibited in Finnish
dialects of Northern Norway and explains this variation as a result yielded by
long-standing bilingualism.
A group of four papers deals with different varieties of English: Middle En-
glish in London, with Laura Wright showing the sociolinguistic significance
of morphological variation among the scribes for ten guild certificates from
the late 14th century; Peter Trudgill discusses a certain stage in the devel-
opment of New Zealand English; Dublin English, where Raymond Hickey
describes certain changes which originated in the upper classes, i.e. 'from
above'; and African American English, for which Wolfgang Viereck explains
the development of specific features from the 1930s to the 1970s.
vi Preface
Two papers concern Norwegian in particular. Endre M0rck shows how
the medieval Norwegian charters (of which some 18,000 are printed) can be
analyzed in order to establish linguistic differences between various social
groups, and Arnold Dalen describes the development of a post-medieval ur-
ban dialect in the city of Trondheim.
Troms0, July 1997 Ernst Häkon Jahr
Contents
Preface ν
Historical sociolinguistics - theories and methods
Social networks, communicative acts and the multilingual individual.
Methodological issues in the field of language change 3
Els Oksaar
Toward a speaker-based account of language change 21
James Milroy
Traditional historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics . . .. 37
Wiestaw Awedyk
Child-to-parent address change in Polish 45
Agnieszka Kielkiewicz-Janowiak
Historical sociolinguistics - dead languages
Sociolinguistics and dead languages 67
Werner Winter
Decay of suffixation in a corpus language 85
Folke Josephson
Historical code-switching and bilingualism
Mixed-language business writing: five hundred years of code-switching 99
Laura Wright
Sociolinguistics in historical language contact: the Scandinavian lan-
guages and Low German during the Hanseatic period 119
Ernst Häkon Jahr
viii Contents
Linguistic variation and the historical sociology of multilingualism in
Kven communities 141
Anna-Riitta Lindgren
Historical sociolinguistics - varieties of English
Middle English variation: the London English Guild Certificates of
1388/89 169
Laura Wright
The chaos before the order: New Zealand English and the second stage
of new-dialect formation 197
Peter Trudgill
Developments and change in Dublin English 209
Raymond Hickey
African American English: verbal -s and be2 in Hyatt's earlier and later
corpus 245
Wolfgang Viereck
Historical sociolinguistics — Norwegian
Sociolinguistic studies on the basis of medieval Norwegian charters 263
Endre M0rck
Contributing factors in the making of the post-medieval urban dialect
ofTrondheim 291
Arnold Dalen
Subject index 305
Historical sociolinguistics - theories and methods
