Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics

Studies in Morphosyntactic Variation in the Paston Letters (1421-1503)

Alexander Bergs

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9783110183108
• eBook ISBN: 9783110923223
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The book presents an analysis of selected domains of morphosyntactic variation in a 250,000 word collection of the Middle English Paston Letters (1421-1503) from a historical sociolinguistic point of view. In the three case studies, two nominal and one verbal variable are described and discussed in detail: the replacement of Old English <h-> pronouns by borrowed <th-> pronouns, the introduction and spread of the <wh-> relativizers, and the spread and routinization of light verb constructions (take, make, give, have, do plus deverbal noun).

While the study aims at a balanced integration of theories and methods from a number of different approaches in sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, typology, and language change, its main focus is social network theory and the role of the linguistic individual in the formation and change of language structures. Questions of individual language use and of deliberate versus unmonitored changes in the (individual) system take center stage and are discussed in the light of social network analysis. Traditional empirical social network analysis is carefully revised. Despite its many merits in present-day sociolinguistics, it often needs to be supplemented by hermeneutic-biographical analyses of the individual speakers' lives when applied to historical data. With this background, common theories and models of language change, such as grammaticalization, paradigmatic pressure, typological alignment, and generational shifts, are illustrated and evaluated from the point of view of single speakers and social groups, and their particular embedding in the speech community through various network structures.

The book is of interest to advanced students and researchers in English and general linguistics, Middle English, historical linguistics and language change, corpus linguistics, as well as sociolinguistics.

Table of contents

• Proem
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• 1. Aims and contents
• 1.1. Empirial objectives, historical embedding
• 1.2. Structure of the book
• Chapter 2 Historical sociolinguistics
• 1. What is historical sociolinguistics?
• 1.1. Social sciences - history - linguistics
• 1.2. Historical sociolinguistics
• 2. Summary
• Chapter 3 Social network analysis - present and past
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Social netork analysis
• 2.1. The development of network theory
• 2.2. Social network analysis, language variation, and language change
• 2.3. Principles of language change
• 2.4. Historical network analysis
• 2.5. Micro- versus macro-studies
• 2.6. Developing a network for (late) medieval England
• 3. The network(s) of the Paston family
• 3.1. Biographical sketches
• 3.2. The network(s)
• 4. The corpus
• 4.1. Scribes and authors
• 4.2. Methodology
• Chapter 4 Personal pronouns
• 1. The development of personal pronouns in Middle and Early Modem English
• 1.1. Sources: dialect geography
• 1.2. Sources: internal factors
• 2. Pronouns in the Paston letters
• 2.1. General developments
• 2.2. Distribution across time
• 2.3. Individual patterns
• 2.4. External factors
• 2.5. Internal factors
• 3. Summary
• 4. Ye and You
• Chapter 5 Relative clauses
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Relativization - some technical remarks
• 3. Relativization and the history of English
• 4. Relative clauses in the Paston letters
• 4.1. Methodology
• 4.2. Results: a community grammar
• 4.4. Results: individual grammars
• 5. Summary
• Chapter 6 The light verb construction
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The structure of the light verb construction
• 3. Historical developments
• 4. The light verb construction in the Paston letters
• 4.1. Methodological issues
• 4.2. Results: A community grammar
• 4.3. Results: A social grammar
• 3.4. Results: individual grammars
• Chapter 7 Conclusion: a network perspective
• 1. A historical whodunit
• 1.1. Personal pronouns, relativizers, and light verb constructions
• 1.2. Corroborative data
• 2. Networks and language use in the Paston family: Take One
• 2.1. Why network strength scales should not simply correlate with historical data - at least in this case
• 3. Networks and language use in the Paston family: Take Two
• 4. Social networks and language use: a new perspective
• Notes
• References
• Author index
• Subject index