From quantitative data to qualitative analysis: on language change in Latgale (original) (raw)
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Comparative sociolinguistic perspectives on the rate of linguistic change
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This issue of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics aims to contribute to our understanding of language change in real time by presenting a group of articles particularly focused on social and sociocultural factors underlying language diversification and change. By analysing data from a varied set of languages, including Greek, English, and the Finnic and Mongolic language families, and mainly focussing their investigation on the Middle Ages, the authors connect various social and cultural factors with the specific topic of the issue, the rate of linguistic change. The sociolinguistic themes addressed include community and population size, conflict and conquest, migration and mobility, bi-and multilingualism, diglossia and standardization. In this introduction, the field of comparative historical sociolinguistics is considered a cross-disciplinary enterprise with a sociolinguistic agenda at the crossroads of contact linguistics, historical comparative linguistics and linguistic typology.
Language profile and syntactic change in two multilingual communities
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America
This paper explores variables that can explain contact-induced linguistic variation and change in a situation where diachronic data is lacking and number of speakers is small. For example, in contexts involving language endangerment traditional sociolinguistic variables such as age, gender, and social class will not apply due to small number of participants. Furthermore, additional sociolinguistic variables such as degree of language use, language attitudes, etc. are needed to explaining contact-induced variation. The target language is Transylvanian Saxon (hereafter TrSax), an endangered language that coexists with German and Romanian in Romania and in émigré communities in Germany. I collected sociolinguistic and questionnaire data from two groups of trilingual speakers of TrSax, German, and Romanian. Six participants are from Viscri, Romania and six participants are part of a community of Transylvanian Saxons from Viscri, who moved to Nuremberg, Germany approximately 30 years ag...
Cuadernos De Filologia Inglesa, 1999
Of thr .sei~ercrl regiotial dicrlrct .suri.ry.v ~vllicli haiv hertz carried o~i t irz tlle British I,slc.c, thr Survey of English Dialects (SED) is ii~ithout douht the hest knoitltl arld tlze rt7ost ii3ide(y u.red m prinmt? data for langrrage ilariation studies ofrricinv kinds. As i1.r take stock of our iuhject cit thr turrz c?f /he Millentiiurn, tl1i.v pcrper tcrkes the opporturiih to puf on record tlzr SED n~rthod. br-ieJy einlriates its past and cot~tinrring contrihrrtion, riild offers an indicatiorl oflroit1 somr itr [he English dicilet.tologica1 crrld .sociolingui.rtic communities nia? rnoije on,fi'on~ data Ircrlf cr cer~tur?' old itith e1 hopr (f d o i n g ,f¿)r regional ijariation toda? it~liat SED did i r7 nziclc'erltur?. (KEYWORDS: dialectology. n~ethods in dialectology. Enslish dialects. linguistic atlases). De los muchos estudios sobre diolectos regionales que se han llevado a cabo en lcrs Islas Britcínicas, el Survey of English Dialects (SED) e.s, sin dudo. el ni~ís conocido y el que más crrr~pliarncntr se hci utilizado rn dii3rrsos estrrclios sobrr ilarinción lingüística. Estr trabqjo quiere hacer f~alarlce de la utilidad del SED al$final del rnilenio, dejar constancirr del niétodo rr71~leado por sus ror7y?iladore.r eialuar. hreiwnentr .su pascido su contiiluci ccintrih~rcicír7. Por otro lado, también apunto al rnodo cónio en In actualidad se puede cotiseguir lzacer porrl estudio de la i,oriación regional lo que el SED h i~o o tnitad de este .siglo para 1ci.s cornimidades dialrctológicas y litigüisticas itlglesas. (PALABRAS CLAVE: dialectología. métodos dialectológicos. dialectos del InglCs, atlas Iingüísticos) 1. SED: Employing the 'fundamental instrument of the Survey' The SED method begins with the Questionnaire. the 'fundamental instrument of the Survey' (Orton 1962: 15). This is of the 'direct interview with direct questioning' type (Johnston 1985: 82). containing 1092 nurnbered questions which expand with transformations to 1322 questions in total. and is structured to obtain specific and comparable data from the 313 localities
Concepts and methods for integrating language typology and sociolinguistics
2021
Concepts and methods for integrating language typology and sociolinguistics Questo articolo presenta le componenti costitutive di un programma di ricerca per lo studio tipologico dell'adattamento linguistico, ovvero del modo in cui le lingue cambiano in relazione ai contesti socio-storici e ambientali in cui sono utilizzate. Illustriamo una batteria di concetti e metodi volti a comparare sistematicamente contesti sociolinguistici e strutture linguistiche attraverso lo studio di comunità in contatto. Dimostriamo che questi concetti e metodi possono essere usati per studiare i correlati sociolinguistici della diversità e del mutamento linguistico in almeno tre modi: (1) per comprendere le cause del cambiamento linguistico, (2) per creare una base di dati rappresentativi di comunità, fattori sociolinguistici e linguistici, (3) per formulare generalizzazioni sulla base di studi comparativi a livello interculturale e interlinguistico. This paper presents the building blocks of a comprehensive framework for the typological study of linguistic adaptation, i.e. how languages change in relation to the socio-historical and environmental contexts in which they are used. We showcase a battery of concepts and methods that are geared towards systematically comparing sociolinguistic environments and linguistic structures through the study of communities in social contact. We show that these concepts and methods can be used to investigate sociolinguistic correlates of linguistic diversity and language change in at least three ways: (1) to unravel causal factors related to language change, (2) to create datasets simultaneously addressing selection of communities, sociolinguistic features, and linguistic features, and (3) to formulate generalizations from empirically-grounded cross-cultural and cross-linguistic comparisons.
New horizons in sociophonetic variation and change
New horizons in sociophonetic variation and change Arguably the main concern of modern linguistics has been to put forward evidence of an unchangeable and stable grammar in humans. At the same time variability remains a very fundamental property of human language. Language varies across communities, individuals and speech acts, and with language variability comes language change. The question at heart of the scientific endeavour concerned with linguistic variability is what causes language to change? This question is present at the core of disciplines such as historical linguistics, contact linguistics and, especially, (variationist) sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics as a discipline has made great contributions to our understanding of variability in language and the complex workings of the human communicative faculty by showing that variation in speech follows quite robust patterns that bear relationships with social variables. The papers in this issue of Lingua are concerned with some of the key topics of modern sociolinguistics, namely to which extent individuals' and communities' social histories are reflected in the production of language and to which extent our social experiences influence our perception of language. The current issue even touches upon the question of how linguistic variation commences at an individual level. Phonetic issues have played a central part in studies of linguistic variation and change since the birth of sociolinguistics. William Labov's seminal studies in the 1960s were concerned especially with phonological or phonetic variation and change, and throughout the last half century sound change has remained a core focus of studies concerned with synchronic language variation. This issue of Lingua brings together six studies of phonetic variation and change in the English language. The articles have in common that they use sophisticated methodologies or innovative experimental designs to further our knowledge of exactly how and why language varies and changes and how variation and change relate to social factors. They also fall into the category that one might label sociophonetic research. The merger of the two fields of phonetics and sociolinguistics in sociophonetics has been described by Foulkes et al. (2010:704) as having 'the aim of identifying, and ultimately explaining, the sources, loci, parameters and communicative functions of socially structured variation in speech'. This aim thus applies to a large proportion of work done in the field of sociolinguistics, but also to work done in the discipline of phonetics. The specifically sociophonetic field of research can therefore be viewed as an overarching area of enquiry that contributes fundamental knowledge and theory to both sociolinguists and phoneticians. These two groups of linguists, although both benefitting from work done within the field of sociophonetics, do not necessarily share much more common ground, however. A focus on sociophonetics as a field of linguistics in its own right is therefore part of the motivation for publishing this special issue. Motivation for this issue is also found in the fact that sociophonetic work can help refine general linguistic theories, such as that of exemplar theory. As argued in Pierrehumbert (2001:1) typical phonological theories struggle to account for some of the detailed phonetic knowledge that speakers have, and the variability that exist in one individual's realisation of the same phonological categories in different lexical items. A usage-based component must therefore be included to such theories to account for why perception and production targets vary across lexical items, people, and communities. Exemplar theory does this by allowing for the possibility that informants store and categorise individual instances of sounds and lexical items in memory (cf. e.g. Pierrehumbert, 2001). When accounting for language production and perception the theory also necessarily comprises social exemplars, meaning that speakers can store social information alongside linguistic input. What is more, exemplar theory partly accounts for communal generational differences in language, i.e. observable language change, by suggesting that older speakers' amounts and types of exemplars differ from those of younger speakers simply through an increased amount of experience (cf. Pierrehumbert, 2001:11). Sociophonetic work can inform us of the role of exemplars in our linguistic system by showing variability in how social categories and linguistic detail are connected by listeners. Furthermore, work in sociophonetics can show how linguistic exemplars connected with particular social categories can lose out (or win) in processes of language change. A further motivation for the current special issue is to promote innovativeness in methodology as a general concern for current sociolinguistic research. A heightened awareness of methodological concerns is perhaps something that sets sociophonetic work apart from a lot of other work concerned with language variation and change. As mentioned above, investigations of the relationship between production of fine phonetic detail and social belonging have been prominent in the field of variationist linguistics since the 1960s (from the studies collected in Labov (1972), to more recent work such as Lingua 122 (2012) 749-752
Dialect change and variation: the "Atlas de la Península Ibérica
Linguistic geography came into being as an auxiliary method of historical linguistics; subsequently as it established itself as an autonomous discipline it gradually shed its links to diachronic studies. With the development of sociolinguistics from the nineteen-sixties onwards, the data provided by projects in linguistic geography again became relevant to studies concerning language change. This paper examines the usefulness of language atlases for analysing language change in real time, taking the Atlas Lingüístico de la Península Ibérica (ALPI) as an example. A comparison of some of the ALPI data with atlases of more limited geographic scope produced from the fifties onwards will serve to illustrate the benefits of such analyses. Data in linguistic geography studies can be used to track changes over time as well as to determine the direction of their spread over space. The illustrations given show how language atlases may offer an invaluable data source for the study of language ...
A Sociolinguistic Investigation of Language Variation in the Speech Community of Nedroma
2012
The present research work is an attempt to analyse the sociolinguistic situation of an Algerian town and one of the seven districts of Tlemcen, Nedroma. The area is situated 57 km North West of Tlemcen. The main purpose of this research work is to describe and shed light on the linguistic features characterizing the speech community of Nedroma, mainly the phonological, the morphological and the lexical. This research work consists of three chapters. The first one provides an overview of the field of sociolinguistics in general through defining the key concepts that we have dealt with. The second chapter draws an overall picture of the sociolinguistic situation of Algeria in general then of Nedroma in particular. And the third chapter provides a description of the linguistic aspects of the area under investigation; on this chapter we try to show how these features differ from other varieties and how it also differ from one speaker to another in the same speech community, through relating these linguistic features to social variables namely age and gender in addition to education on language change in the speech community of Nedroma. In doing so, we have collected data through using different methods. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results, help us a lot in understanding the reasons behind such behaviour, and we have come up with the fact that the population mobility and the social and political factors that had affected the area led to linguistic consequences.