Patterns of Change in 18th-century English A sociolinguistic approach
Produktdetaljer
This excellent collection delivers more than the sum of its parts. [...] In all cases, the authors are long-term experts on their variables. Across their studies, interesting and significant variation arises from the team’s rigorously coherent approach. Their array of perspectives should attract and satisfy a broad audience. [...] Scholars in other disciplines can rely on this team’s key findings.
- Carol E Percy, University of Toronto, on Linguist List 32.874 (9 March 2021),
This book offers important insights into linguistic variation and change in 18th century England. Across morpho-syntactic variables, multiple methods and embedding their analyses in broader context, the authors demonstrate well-known sociolinguistic principles, e.g. women lead change. Yet important nuances emerge, e.g. synthetic resources increase over time (<i>-ity, -ness</i>). Together, these findings provide a critical real time backdrop for contemporary studies. It’s the next best thing to time travel!
- Sali A. Tagliamonte, University of Toronto,
The studies are contextualized by discussions of the normative tradition and the correspondence corpus, and of eighteenth-century English society and culture. Basing their work on a variationist sociolinguistic approach, the authors introduce the models and methods they have used to trace the progress of linguistic changes in the “long” eighteenth century, 1680–1800. Aggregate findings are balanced by analysing individuals and their varying participation in these processes. The final chapter places these results in a wider context and considers them in relation to past sociolinguistic work.
One of the major findings of the studies is that in most cases the overall pace of change was slow. Factors retarding change include speaker evaluation and repurposing outgoing features, in particular, for certain styles and registers.