Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T03:29:55.700Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The diffusion of language change in real time: Progressive and conservative individuals and the time depth of change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2011

Terttu Nevalainen ,
Helena Raumolin-Brunberg  and
Heikki Mannila
Terttu Nevalainen
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
Helena Raumolin-Brunberg
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
Heikki Mannila
Affiliation:
Aalto University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A major issue in the study of language change is the degree to which individual speakers participate in ongoing linguistic changes as these progress over time. In this study, we examine the hypothesis, suggested by research based on the apparent-time model, that in any given period most people are neither progressive nor conservative with regard to ongoing changes, but rather fall between these polarities. Our data come from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, which spans over 270 years. A computational model was developed to establish which language users were progressive and which conservative with respect to several ongoing changes that progressed in real time between the early 15th and late 17th centuries. The changes studied ranged from morpheme replacements to more abstract structural patterns. Our results indicate that the degree to which language users participated in changes in progress depended on the type of language change analyzed, the stage of development of the change, and the rate of diffusion of the process over time. The model also enabled the identification of groups of leaders of linguistic change in Tudor and Stuart England.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 1 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, Will, Beal, Joan C., Corrigan, Karen P., Maguire, Warren, & Moisl, Hermann L. (2007). A linguistic “time capsule”: the Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English. In Beal, J. C., Corrigan, K. P., & Moisl, H. L. (eds.), Creating and digitizing language corpora. Vol. 2. Diachronic databases. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. 16–48.Google Scholar
Ammon, Ulrich, Mattheier, Klaus J., & Nelde, Peter H. (eds.). (1999). Historische Soziolinguistik = Historical sociolinguistics = La sociolinguistique historique. Sociolinguistica 13. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy. (2004). Real and apparent time. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 312–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, J. K. (1998). Social embedding of changes in progress. Journal of English Linguistics 26(1):5–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, J. K.. (2009). Sociolinguistic theory. Rev. ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. (1991). The UK and the USA. In Cheshire, J. (ed.), English around the world: Sociolinguistic perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 13–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conde Silvestre, Juan Camilo. (2007). Sociolingüística histórica. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Corpus of Early English Correspondence. (1998). Compiled by Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Jukka Keränen, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi, & Minna Palander-Collin at the Department of English, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Cressy, David. (1980). Literacy and social order: Reading and writing in Tudor and Stuart England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Mark. (2009). The 385+ million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (1990–2008+): Design, architecture, and linguistic insights. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14(2):159–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. (2008). Functional motivations in the development of nominal and verbal gerunds in Middle and Early Modern English. English Language and Linguistics 12(1):55–102.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Efron, Bradley, & Gong, Gail. (1983). A leisurely look at the bootstrap, the jackknife, and cross-validation. The American Statistician 37:36–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Efron, Bradley, & Tibshirani, Robert. (1993). An introduction to the bootstrap. London: Chapman and Hall.Google Scholar
Fanego, Teresa. (1996). The gerund in Early Modern English: Evidence from the Helsinki Corpus. Folia Linguistica Historica 17:97–152.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Charles. (1996). Variation and drift: Loss of agreement in Germanic. In Huebner, T. (ed.), Sociolinguistic perspectives: Papers on language in society, 1959–1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 241–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Elizabeth, Maclagan, Margaret, & Hay, Jennifer. (2007). The ONZE Corpus. In Beal, J. C., Corrigan, K. P., & Moisl, H. L. (eds.), Creating and digitizing language corpora. Vol. 2. Diachronic databases. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. 82–104.Google Scholar
Hassell Smith, A. (2004–5). Bacon, Sir Nathaniel (1546?–1622). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/998. Accessed December 31, 2010.Google Scholar
Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel, & Conde Silvestre, Juan Camilo (eds.). (forthcoming). The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinneburg, Alexander, Mannila, Heikki, Kaislaniemi, Samuli, Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2007). How to handle small samples: Bootstrap and Bayesian methods in the analysis of linguistic change. Literary and Linguistic Computing 22:137–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmqvist, Bengt. (1922). On the history of the English present inflections, particularly -th and -s. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd. (2006). Syntactic variation in English: A global perspective. In Aarts, B. & McMahon, A. (eds.), The handbook of English linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 603–624.Google Scholar
Kretzschmar, William A Jr., Anderson, Jean, Beal, Joan C., Corrigan, Karen P., Opas-Hänninen, Lisa Lena, & Plichta, Bartlomiej. (2006). Collaboration on corpora for regional and social analysis. Journal of English Linguistics 34(3):172–205.Google Scholar
Kurki, Tommi. (2005). Yksilön ja ryhmän kielen reaaliaikainen muuttuminen: Kielenmuutosten seuraamisesta ja niiden tarkastelussa käytettävistä menetelmistä [Real-time language change of group and individual: On following linguistic changes in apparent time and real time, and on the methods used in the study of language change]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.Google Scholar
Kytö, Merja. (1993). Third-person present singular verb inflection in early British and American English. Language Variation and Change 5:113–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 1. Internal factors. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 2. Social factors. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2006). The social stratification of English in New York City. 2nd ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald. (2006). Pure grammaticalization: The development of a teenage intensifier. Language Variation and Change 18(3):267–283.Google Scholar
Maclagan, Margaret A., Gordon, Elizabeth, & Lewis, Gillian. (1999). Women and sound change: Conservative and innovative behavior by the same speakers. Language Variation and Change 11:19–41.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. (1999). Towards a typology of linguistic variables. Unpublished paper presented in a special session on variation and formal linguistic theory, organised by Julie Auger. NWAV28, University of York and University of Toronto. Available at: http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/LanguageVariation. Accessed October 5, 2010.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. (2001). Dynamics of differentiation: On social psychology and cases of language variation. In Coupland, N., Sarangi, S., & Candlin, C. N. (eds.), Sociolinguistics and social theory. Harlow, UK: Longman. 61–87.Google Scholar
Milroy, James (1992). Linguistic variation and change: On the historical sociolinguistics of English. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Milroy, James, & Milroy, Lesley. (1985). Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics 21:339–384.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley, & Gordon, Matthew. (2003). Sociolinguistics: Method and interpretation. Malden, MA: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nahkola, Kari, & Saanilahti, Marja. (2004). Mapping language changes in real time: A panel study on Finnish. Language Variation and Change 16(2):75–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. (1998). Social mobility and the decline of multiple negation in Early Modern English. In Fisiak, J. & Krygier, M. (eds.), Advances in English historical linguistics (1996). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 263–291.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. (2006a). Historical sociolinguistics and language change. In van Kemenade, A. & Los, B. (eds.), The handbook of the history of English. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 558–588.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. (2006b). Negative concord as an English “vernacular universal”: Social history and linguistic typology. Journal of English Linguistics 34(3):257–278.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. (2006c). An introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena (eds.). (1996). Sociolinguistics and language history: Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Language and Computers 15. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2000). The third-person singular (e)s and -(e)th revisited: The morphophonemic hypothesis. In Dalton-Puffer, C. & Ritt, N. (eds.), Words: Structure, meaning, function: A Festschrift for Dieter Kastovsky. Trends in Linguistics 130. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 235–248.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2003). Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2005). Sociolinguistics and the history of English. International Journal of English Studies 5(1):33–58.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, & Trudgill, Peter. (2001). Chapters in the social history of East Anglian English: The case of third person singular. In Fisiak, J. & Trudgill, P. (eds.), East Anglian English. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 187–204.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, Taavitsainen, Irma, Pahta, Päivi, & Korhonen, Minna (eds.). (2008). The dynamics of linguistic variation: Corpus evidence on English past and present. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Nurmi, Arja, Nevala, Minna, & Palander-Collin, Minna (eds.). (2009). The language of daily life in England (1400–1800). Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 183. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogura, Mieko, & Wang, William S-Y. (1996). Snowball effect in lexical diffusion: The development of -s in the third person singular present indicative in English. In Britton, D. (ed.), English historical linguistics 1994: Papers from the 8th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 119–141.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (1991). The noun phrase in sixteenth-century English. Mémoires de la Société Néophilogique de Helsinki 50. Helsinki: Société Néophilogique.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2000). Which and the which in Late Middle English: Free variants? In Taavitsainen, I., Nevalainen, T., Pahta, P., & Rissanen, M. (eds.), Placing Middle English in context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 209–226.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2005). The diffusion of you: A case study in historical sociolinguistics. Language Variation and Change 17:55–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2006). Leaders of linguistic change in Early Modern England. In Facchinetti, R. & Rissanen, M. (eds.), Corpus-based studies of diachronic English. Frankfurt a/M: Peter Lang. 115–134.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, & Nevalainen, Terttu. (2007). Historical sociolinguistics: The Corpus of Early English Correspondence. In Beal, J. C., Corrigan, K. P., & Moisl, H. L. (eds.), Creating and digitizing language corpora. Vol. 2. Diachronic databases. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. 148–171.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. (2006). Age: apparent time and real time. In Brown, K. (ed.-in-chief), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics. 2nd ed.Oxford: Elsevier. 110–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schendl, Herbert. (1997). Morphological variation and change in Early Modern English: my/mine, thy/thine. In Hickey, R. & Puppel, S. (eds.), Language history and linguistic modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th birthday. Vol. I. Language history. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 179–191.Google Scholar
Shephard, Alexandra, & Withington, Phil (eds.). (2000). Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, place, rhetoric. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer (2001). Negative concord in the Old and New World: Evidence from Scotland. Language Variation and Change 13(2):109–134.Google Scholar
Sundgren, Eva. (2002). Återbesök i Eskilstuna: En undersökning av morfologisk variation och förändring in nutida talspråk. [Eskilstuna revisited: An investigation of morphological variation and change in present-day spoken Swedish]. Skrifter utgivna av Institutionen för Nordiska Språk vid Uppsala Universitet 56. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet.Google Scholar
Sundgren, Eva. (2009). The varying influence of social and linguistic factors on language stability and change: The case of Eskilstuna. Language Variation and Change 21(1):97–133.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2007). Frequency and variation in the community grammar: Tracking a new change through generations. Language Variation and Change 19:199–217.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2009). Peaks beyond phonology: Adolescence, incrementation, and language change. Language 85(1):58–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1999). The dialects of England. 2nd ed.Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Vuorinen, Anni. (2002). The gender role of Queen Elizabeth I as reflected by her language. Helsinki English Studies 2: Corpora in Today's English Studies. Available at: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/hes-eng/volumes/volume-2-corpora-in-todays-english-studies/. Accessed October 5, 2010.Google Scholar
Warner, Anthony. (2005). Why DO dove: Evidence for register variation in Early Modern English negatives. Language Variation and Change 17(3):257–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar