Weaving data strands together
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Anita Auer
Abstract
The important role of historical cities as centers of higher literacy and text production in the standardization processes of written languages has been recognized some time ago by scholars working on different languages. The current article, which is couched in the study of urban vernaculars in the field of historical sociolinguistics, focuses on written language use in Norwich during the period 1422–1760. Within the context of the city’s socio-economic history, the article investigates two linguistic variables, notably the third person present tense forms and periphrastic DO, in the manuscript-based Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD) and An Electronic Text Edition of Depositions 1560–1760 (ETED) and compares them to findings from other urban centers. Despite the restricted data set, the study shows that the supralocalization processes and the speed of change differ from one linguistic feature to another in the different urban datasets. The Norwich data confirms previous findings of other urban datasets that the supralocalization of the morphological feature precedes that of the syntactic feature.
Abstract
The important role of historical cities as centers of higher literacy and text production in the standardization processes of written languages has been recognized some time ago by scholars working on different languages. The current article, which is couched in the study of urban vernaculars in the field of historical sociolinguistics, focuses on written language use in Norwich during the period 1422–1760. Within the context of the city’s socio-economic history, the article investigates two linguistic variables, notably the third person present tense forms and periphrastic DO, in the manuscript-based Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD) and An Electronic Text Edition of Depositions 1560–1760 (ETED) and compares them to findings from other urban centers. Despite the restricted data set, the study shows that the supralocalization processes and the speed of change differ from one linguistic feature to another in the different urban datasets. The Norwich data confirms previous findings of other urban datasets that the supralocalization of the morphological feature precedes that of the syntactic feature.
Chapters in this book
- 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 i
- Table of contents v
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Part I. Introduction
- Investigating West Germanic Languages 2
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Part II. Linguistic structure and change
- Homorganic lengthening in late Old English revisited 14
- Meter, syntax, and the use of punctuation in the Leipzig fragment of the Hêliand 32
- The semantics and grammatical status of - frei 51
- Een mooi paar mouwen 69
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Part III. Migration, contact, and change
- Sound change, analogy, and urban koineization in the regularization of verbs in late fourteenth-century English 80
- Vowel lowering, consonant cluster simplification, and koineization in the history of Pennsylvania Dutch 107
- Lexicalizing vernacular architecture in the Cape Dutch Vernacular 131
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Part IV. Vernacular sources and change
- Weaving data strands together 164
- Investigating change from a perspective of continuity 188
- Non-native communication in eighteenth-century maritime circles 225
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Part V. Historical sociolinguistics
- The dialect of Vriezenveen 260
- Exploring past and present layers of multilingualism in Flemish-emigrant writing 276
- An excursion into the lost history of historical sociolinguistics 301
- Index 325
Chapters in this book
- 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 i
- Table of contents v
-
Part I. Introduction
- Investigating West Germanic Languages 2
-
Part II. Linguistic structure and change
- Homorganic lengthening in late Old English revisited 14
- Meter, syntax, and the use of punctuation in the Leipzig fragment of the Hêliand 32
- The semantics and grammatical status of - frei 51
- Een mooi paar mouwen 69
-
Part III. Migration, contact, and change
- Sound change, analogy, and urban koineization in the regularization of verbs in late fourteenth-century English 80
- Vowel lowering, consonant cluster simplification, and koineization in the history of Pennsylvania Dutch 107
- Lexicalizing vernacular architecture in the Cape Dutch Vernacular 131
-
Part IV. Vernacular sources and change
- Weaving data strands together 164
- Investigating change from a perspective of continuity 188
- Non-native communication in eighteenth-century maritime circles 225
-
Part V. Historical sociolinguistics
- The dialect of Vriezenveen 260
- Exploring past and present layers of multilingualism in Flemish-emigrant writing 276
- An excursion into the lost history of historical sociolinguistics 301
- Index 325
