We explore the necessarily comparative nature of CA’s methodology. We focus less on cross-linguistic comparisons, comparisons between talk-in-interaction in different settings, and comparisons between speakers from diverse speech communities. Instead, we consider the micro ways in which analysts work comparatively, ways that generally go unnoticed in accounts of CA’s methodology but which underpin our approach in data sessions, to building collections of phenomena, and even our research strategies when exploring certain linguistic or interactional forms. We demonstrate what can be learned from comparisons to be found in data, for example between the different responses by different participants to the same observation or question, or between different speakers’ versions of events, or from the different forms used by speakers when referring to the ‘same’ thing but in different action environments. We highlight the significance of speakers’ production of different versions of the ‘same’ something in their self-corrections. Finally, we illustrate the utility of a research strategy in which comparisons are made between speakers’ use of a certain reference form at one point in an interaction and the form they use at other points in the same interaction. In short, we explore the methodological significance of endogenous comparisons in data.

Chapter 2 tells the story of the conversion of the kings of Kongo. Nzinka a Nkuwu (King João) was baptised in 1491 but later apostatised and was succeeded by his son, King Afonso, who established an enduring Catholic dynasty in west central Africa. After acknowledging the significance of religious diplomacy, the chapter shows how the realm of immanent power was the most critical factor in the Kongo case. A close reading of the evidence indicates that the Portuguese or their ruler may have been considered to have a special association with the realm of the ancestors, while baptism was received as an initiation granting unusual powers, particularly in battle. This helps explain King João’s apostasy and is most apparent in the miraculous interpretation of the military victory that brought Afonso to the throne in 1506. However, it is also argued that conversion may have helped Afonso solidify his control of the religious field, as expressed in the iconoclastic sweeps that happened at several points in 1480–1530. The theme of cultural appeal is illustrated by a more general importation of the Portuguese culture by elites. Afonso is presented as a visionary with ambitions for societal recreation.

It has been widely recognized that how languages behave, particularly under conditions of contact with other languages, depends on their context. Using the Ethnolinguistic Vitality framework, this chapter describes the demographics, linguistic attitudes and institutional supports for heritage languages, defining the concepts and illustrating them with examples from Toronto, the context in which the HLVC project is conducted. Demographic information includes population sizes, language shift rates, and history of settlement in Toronto. Status information includes both reflections on the status of heritage languages, as a whole, in Canada and labels attributed to the specific varieties. The institutional support section reports on the number of language classes available for each language. The chapter also includes discussion of language policy, particularly for education, and the demographics of the university where the research is centered, enabling other researchers to best consider what aspects of the project might need adjusting for adaptation in other contexts.

This chapter draws cross-linguistic comparisons among the patterns reported in Chapter 5 for three linguistic variables that occur in at least three languages in the project: (VOT), (CASE), and (PRODROP). Conditioning factors, both linguistic and social, are discussed. Collapsing across rate and constraint hierarchy for each variable, we note any indication of change in either. Half the context we examine exhibit stability. Of the eight that indicate difference, half of these can be attributed to English (including both convergence and divergence). With few differences between homeland and heritage speakers to work with, we find few generalizations about what parts of the language, or which languages, change. We do see more change in one morphosyntactic variable, (CASE), than in the phonetic variable (VOT), but less in the other morphosyntactic variable (PRODROP).

Neither southern Africa’s archaeology nor its history or contemporary social and political structure can be understood without reference to its experience of colonialism and conquest or of the resistance to this. This chapter therefore looks at the archaeology of Portuguese exploration and subsequent settlement in Mozambique, as well as at the much more expansive colonisation of southern Africa set in motion by the establishment of a Dutch East India Company (VOC) base at Cape Town in 1652. It traces the spread of European settlement into the region’s interior, the emergence of new creolised populations on and beyond the frontiers of that settlement, the institutionalisation of the social, economic, and political structures that led to apartheid, and – crucially – the resistance of Indigenous societies to this. Chapter 13 also discusses the Mfecane and the emergence of the Zulu, Basotho, Ndebele, and Swazi states, among others, to emphasise their contemporaneity and potential connections with European settler expansion and to encourage comparative study of processes of state formation, migration, and population incorporation common to both.

The seventeenth century shaped Dai Viet in major ways. Like their counterpart in Cochinchina, the Le-Trinh regime directly involved in the silk for sliver trade. Eight tons of silver flew into Tongking bringing the wealth of the nation to a new level. Commerce changed culture in many ways, from the introduction of Christianity to the emergence of Lieu Hanh, a new religious figure connected to women traders. It modernised Tongking’s firearms and financed the seven campaigns against Cochinchina. It stimulated the import of Chinese books and prints, which had become more accessible and affordable to the literati class. Add to this new wealth in circulation more broadly, a construction boom, and increased participation of women. Like the thirteenth century, the Red River delta saw another political integration, this time between the military group from Thanh Hoa and the literati from the Red River delta. It may not be a coincidence that both eras s saw the extensive and intensive maritime commerce both in the country and with overseas. The synergy brought in by the maritime wealth however created a more systematically Confucianist institution from the village up. The autonomous village now became the fixed image of Vietnam.

The quotative system is routinely adduced as the locus of rapid cross–linguistic change. Aside from the prodigious number of empirical studies investigating English quotatives, quantitatively driven demonstrations of change in the quotative system of other languages remain the exception to the rule. Observing that change in languages other than English has often been intuited from isolated or anecdotal examples, we inaugurated a large–scale study of quotative variation in European and Canadian varieties of French, supplemented by data from Brazilian Portuguese and Italian. Drawing on more than 5,500 tokens representing the targeted varieties, detailed quantitative investigation revealed that only in urban varieties of Quebec and Acadian French does the innovative être comme variant (cf. English be like) qualify as a mid–range – and locally conditioned – change in progress. In other varieties that we examined, including the French and Portuguese spoken in the global cities of Paris and São Paulo respectively, we find little compelling evidence of anything other than relatively incipient change in the quotative system. Taken together, our quantitative results are damaging to ubiquitous claims that simultaneous parallel developments are purportedly affecting the quotative system of numerous languages and point to the primordial importance of community–based speech data in ratifying linguistic change.

The evolution of the Romance languages from Latin was significantly shaped by the numerous language contact environments, which resulted from conquest, colonization, and trade. This chapter traces the development of the largest Romance languages throughout Europe, with emphasis on the known or postulated effects of language contact. The chapter continues with an account of the spread of Spanish, Portuguese, and French to the Americas, together with the ensuing contacts with indigenous languages and languages of voluntary and involuntary immigration and the formation of Afro-Romance creole languages.

The Sultanate was a global state that interacted with regimes in North, West and East Africa, Mediterranean Europe, Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia. Its ideology of diplomacy focused on maintenance of the balance of power extant during the formative stage of its founding: control over the Syrian Littoral and Red Sea nautical routes to South and East Asia. Senior officers appointed from Cairo ruled Syrian provincial capitals as viceroys, tying them directly to the imperial center. On the Red Sea coast of Arabia (Hijaz), the Hasanid Sharifs of Mecca exercised local political authority, but from Baybars’ reign were compelled to comply with the Sultanate’s commercial and fiduciary policies over the spice trade. Tensions in Southeastern Asia Minor heightened when objectives of territorial stasis advocated by the Mamluks clashed with aims of territorial conquest asserted by the Ottomans. Regional principalities pursued their own goals of autonomy with varying degrees of success. The international system of commerce, centered on Venetian and Mamluk exploitation of trade routes to Asia through the Red Sea, was decisively altered by the Portuguese entry to the Indian Ocean. When the Ottomans defeated the Cairo Sultanate, its centrality in the global environment was already diminished.

We present a selective review of studies on Romance languages wherein acceptability experiments played an important role in advancing our knowledge of the grammars of particular linguistic varieties and, by extension, furthering our knowledge of human language and linguistic theory. First, we examine recent studies on word order in wh-questions across varieties of Spanish. Next, we examine the value of acceptability experiments in the study of infrequent structures (e.g. clitic left-dislocation, focus fronting). We highlight the importance of data triangulation by examining studies of information focus in Spanish, emphasizing the impact that methodological choices can have on results. We also examine control and raising structures in Brazilian Portuguese, where conflicting results have required innovative methodological approaches. Since acceptability intuitions may be uniquely nuanced for minority languages, we also briefly discuss how data that is typically used in other theoretical paradigms can contribute to data triangulation with lesser-spoken Romance varieties.

Provides brief details about translations of the CANFOR scales that have been completed along with brief details of those that have been published.

This chapter argues that the policy developed for evangelizing black populations in Spanish America, compared with that of indigenous populations in the same regions, required uniquely validating black interpreters’ roles as evangelical intermediaries. This validation in turn opened a space for important forms of subjectification and authority for black interpreters.

This chapter brings together several objects that demonstrate the reach of Jingdezhen’s ceramics, and shows the ways in which local producers of porcelain connected to consumers distributed throughout the empire and far beyond. Drawing on a shared set of raw resources and skills, workers throughout the wider network of Jingdezhen's production could easily adjust the quality of the goods they produced. By using more refined clay, higher quality cobalt, or more skilled painters, the quality could be more easily guaranteed; by using less carefully prepared clays, more diluted cobalt, less well-trained craftsmen, or by firing the goods in more densely-packed kilns, one could save on expenses and produce lower quality goods. While the manufacturers catered to the demands of different consumers and diverse markets, they were able to create both cohesion and diversity. The focus on a single design element, the motif of deer set in a natural landscape, demonstrates both a visual coherence that suggests interaction and adaptation that suggests a constant process of translation and transformation.