Helena Raumolin-Brunberg

Historical sociolinguistics : language change in Tudor and Stuart England

Preface List of Tables List of Figures Publishers Acknowledgements 1. INTRODUCTION: ISSUES IN HISTORICAL SOCIOLINGUISTICS 1.1 Sociolinguistics Backprojection? 1.2 Contemporary Perceptions of Usage 1.3 Sociohistorical Reconstruction 1.4 Research Topics 2. SOCIOLINGUISTIC PARADIGMS AND LANGUAGE CHANGE 2.1 Sociolinguistic Paradigms 2.2 Descriptions and Explanations 2.3 Theoretical Pluralism 2.4 Theory in Historical Sociolinguistics 3. PRIMARY DATA: BACKGROUND AND INFORMANTS 3.1 Data in Historical Sociolinguistics 3.2 Generic and Temporal Concerns 3.3 Tudor and Stuart England 3.4 The Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) 4: REAL TIME 4.1 The S-Shaped Curve 4.2 Timing Linguistic Changes 4.3 Previous Studies 4.4 The Time Courses of Fourteen Changes 4.5 Conclusion 5: APPARENT TIME 5.1 Ongoing Change in Relation to Age 5.2 Apparent Time in Historical Research 5.3 Previous Studies 5.4 Age Cohorts and Individual Participation in Ongoing Changes 5.5 Conclusion Appendix 5.1: The informants for Figure 5.1. Subject YOU vs. YE Appendix 5.2. Informants for Figure 5.2. 3rd sg -s VS. -TH Appendix 5.3. Informants for Figure 5.3. Which Vs. the Which Chapter 6. GENDER 6.1 The Gender Paradox 6.2 Historical Reconstruction 6.3 Previous Studies 6.4 Gender and Real-Time Linguistic Change 6.5 Conclusion 7. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION 7.1 Social Order in Sociolinguistics 7.2 Reconstructing Social Order 7.3 Previous Studies 7.4 Social Order in Language Change 7.5 Conclusion 8. REGIONAL VARIATION 8.1 Regional Dialects in England Today 8.2 Reconstructing Regional Differences in Tudor and Stuart England 8.3 Previous Empirical Studies 8.4 Regional Variation and Late Middle and Early Modern English 8.5 Conclusion 9. HISTORICAL PATTERNING OF SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIATION 9.1 Modelling Variability 9.2 Modelling Sociolinguistic Variation Historically 9.3 Previous Empirical Studies 9.4 VARBRUL Analyses of Five Historical Changes 9.5 Summary and Conclusions 10. CONCLUSION 10.1 The Changes in Retrospect 10.2 The Principle of Contingency 10.3 Uninterrupted Continuity of Change? Appendix I: Methodology: how to Count Occurrences Appendix II: Numerical Information Appendix III: The Letter Collections References Author Index Subject Index

How to Handle Small Samples: Bootstrap and Bayesian Methods in the Analysis of Linguistic Change

Estimating the relative frequencies of linguistic features is a fundamental task in linguistic computation. As the amount of text or speech that is available from a given user of the language typically varies greatly, and the sample sizes tend to be small, the most straightforward methods do not always give the most informative answers. Bootstrap and Bayesian methods provide techniques for handling the uncertainty in small samples. We describe these techniques for estimating frequencies from small samples, and show how they can be applied to the study of linguistic change. As a test case, we use the introduction of the pronoun you as subject in the data provided by the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (c. 1410-1681).

The diffusion of subject YOU : A case study in historical sociolinguistics

Based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) and the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HC) , this study describes how the second-person object form you diffused among the population of England during the late middle and early modern period (1350–1710). After the take-off in c. 1480, you replaced the old subject form ye very rapidly, in about three generations of speakers. This article shows that this was a change from below in terms of social awareness, because you was preferred in oral genres and informal registers in the earliest stages of its use. The study suggests that the social origin of you was among the middle ranks, and women led the change in its critical period of diffusion. No specific region has been found as the origin of this change, but London and the Court adopted it before the North and East Anglia. The research reported here was supported in part by the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence funding for the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English at the Department of English, University of Helsinki. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Language change in adulthood

This article, based on the electronic Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC), argues that adults change their language, at least in quantitative terms. By studying the shift from -th to -s of the third person singular suffix in Early Modern English, the author shows that the relative frequencies of the two variants underwent changes within individual lifespans. The article also claims that the shift followed both the communal and generational patterns of change. Historical letters are shown to be excellent material for the study of language change from a longitudinal perspective, because many such letters have survived for long periods of time. On the whole, letters form good data for research in historical sociolinguistics, since the backgrounds of the people involved (both as writers and as recipients) can be traced and used for analysis.

Historical sociolinguistics: The corpus of early english correspondence

The Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) was compiled within the Sociolinguistics and Language History research project, which was funded by the Academy of Finland and the University of Helsinki in 1993–97. After that date, the researchers concerned with this project formed the core of the Historical Sociolinguistics team in the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English (VARIENG) at the University of Helsinki, which was chosen as one of the national Centres of Excellence by the Academy of Finland for 2000–05 and 2006–11. During this period the CEEC has been enlarged, and work with grammatical annotation and methodological development will continue.