Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog.
Note: Contents data are machine generated based on pre-publication provided by the publisher. Contents may have variations from the printed book or be incomplete or contain other coding.
Table of Contents Proem Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1. Aims and contents 1 1 1.1. Empirial objectives, historical embedding 1 1 1.2. Structure of the book 6 6 Chapter 2 Historical sociolinguistics 8 1. What is historical sociolinguistics? 8 8 1.1. Social sciences - history - linguistics 9 9 1.2. Historical sociolinguistics 12 12 1.2.1. The object of investigation 13 13 1.2.2. Research material 14 14 2. Summary 21 21 Chapter 3 Social network analysis - present and past 22 1. Introduction 22 22 2. Social netork analysis 22 22 2.1. The development of network theory 22 22 2.1.1. Elements and constructs of network theory 24 24 2.1.2. Attitudes and behavior in networks - network roles 27 27 2.2. Social network analysis, language variation, and language change 30 30 2.3. Principles of language change 37 37 2.4. Historical network analysis 43 43 2.4.1. Background 43 43 2.4.2. The principle of uniformity 43 43 2.4.3. Data problems 45 45 2.5. Micro- versus macro-studies 52 52 2.6. Developing a network for (late) medieval England 55 55 3. The network(s) of the Paston family 60 60 3.1. Biographical sketches 60 60 3.2. The network(s) 68 68 4. The corpus 76 76 4.1. Scribes and authors 79 79 4.2. Methodology 80 80 Chapter 4 Personal pronouns 83 1. The development of personal pronouns in Middle and Early Modern English 83 83 1.1. Sources: dialect geography 84 84 1.2. Sources: internal factors 89 91 1.2.1. Therapeutic change in the pronoun system 91 93 1.2.2. Analogy 94 96 1.2.3. Formatives and analogical levelling 96 98 1.2.4. Frequency and analogy 99 101 2. Pronouns in the Paston letters 101 103 2.1. General developments 101 103 2.2. Distribution across time 102 104 2.3. Individual patterns 106 107 2.4. External factors 108 109 2.4.1. Gender of the speaker 108 109 2.4.2. Addressee and relationship to addressee 109 110 2.5. Internal factors 113 113 2.5.1. Syntactic function 114 114 2.5.2. Gender of the referent 115 116 2.5.3. Animacy of the referent 117 118 2.5.4. Stress and phonetic environment 119 119 3. Summary 125 126 4. Ye and You 129 129 Chapter 5 Relative clauses 132 1. Introduction 132 132 2. Relativization - some technical remarks 132 132 3. Relativization and the history of English 138 138 4. Relative clauses in the Paston letters 144 144 4.1. Methodology 145 144 4.2. Results: a community grammar 149 149 4.2.1. Restrictiveness 151 150 4.2.2. Animacy 152 151 4.2.3. Definiteness 166 165 4.2.4. Number 168 167 4.2.5. Syntactic function 169 168 4.2.6. Distance 179 178 4.3 Results: a social grammar 180 179 4.3.1. Gender of the author 181 180 4.3.2. Gender of the addressee 183 181 4.3.3. Relationship between author and addressee 184 183 4.3.4. Variation across time 185 184 4.4. Results: individual grammars 189 188 5. Summary 209 207 Chapter 6 The light verb construction 213 1. Introduction 213 210 2. The structure of the light verb construction 210 3. Historical developments 218 215 4. The light verb construction in the Paston letters 220 217 4.1. Methodological issues 220 217 4.2. Results: A community grammar 225 222 4.2.1. Number, determination, modification 230 227 4.2.2. Syntax 234 231 4.3. Results: A social grammar 237 234 4.3.1. Temporal factors 237 234 4.3.2. Gender 243 240 3.4. Results: individual grammars 246 243 Chapter 7 Conclusion: a network perspective 250 1. A historical whodunit 250 246 1.1. Personal pronouns, relativizers, and light verb constructions 250 246 1.2. Corroborative data 252 248 2. Networks and language use in the Paston family: Take One 258 254 2.1. Why network strength scales should not simply correlate 255 with historical data - at least in this case 259 2.1.1. Now you see it, now you don't 259 255 2.1.2. The times they are achanging - ans so are the networks 261 257 3. Networks and language use in the Paston family: Take Two 265 260 4. Social networks and language use: a new perspective 267 263 Notes 270 266 References 275 271 Author index 305 Subject index 311
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication:
Sociolinguistics -- England.
Historical linguistics -- England.
English language -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- Grammar, Historical.
English language -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- Variation.
Paston letters.