Nevalainen Terttu, Palander-Collin Minna, Säily Tanja (eds.) Patterns of Change in 18th-Century English: A Sociolinguistic Approach

John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2018. — 323 p. — (Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 8). — ISBN 9027263833, ISBN 9789027263834.Eighteenth-century English is often associated with normative grammar. But to what extent did prescriptivism impact ongoing processes of linguistic change? The authors of this volume examine a variety of linguistic changes in a corpus of personal correspondence, including the auxiliarydo, verbal-sand the progressive aspect, and they conclude that direct normative influence on them must have been minimal.
The studies are contextualized by discussions of the normative tradition and the correspondence corpus, and of eighteenth-century English society and culture. Basing their work on a variationist sociolinguistic approach, the authors introduce the models and methods they have used to trace the progress of linguistic changes in the "long" eighteenth century, 1680-1800. Aggregate findings are balanced by analysing individuals and their varying participation in these processes. The final chapter places these results in a wider context and considers them in relation to past sociolinguistic work.
One of the major findings of the studies is that in most cases the overall pace of change was slow. Factors retarding change include speaker evaluation and repurposing outgoing features, in particular, for certain styles and registers.Introduction and background
Approaching change in 18th-century English
Terttu Nevalainen
Society and culture in the long 18th century
Terttu Nevalainen
[Infobox] Range of writers in the CEECE
Terttu Nevalainen
[Infobox] Polite society and rhetoric
Arja Nurmi and Minna Nevala
Grammar writing in the eighteenth century
Nuria Yáñez-Bouza
The corpus of early English correspondence extension (CEECE)
Samuli Kaislaniemi
[Infobox] Data retrieval
Mikko Hakala
Research methods
Quantifying change
Terttu Nevalainen
Basic methods for estimating frequencies
Terttu Nevalainen
Methods for studying changes lacking a variable
Tanja Säily, Arja Nurmi and Anni Sairio
Studies
“Ungenteel” and “rude”? On the use of thou in the eighteenth century
Minna Nevala
Going to completion: The diffusion of verbal ‑s
Terttu Nevalainen
Periphrastic do in eighteenth-century correspondence: Emphasis on no social variation
Arja Nurmi
Indefinite pronouns with singular human reference: Recessive and ongoing
Mikko Laitinen
Ongoing change: The diffusion of the third-person neuter possessive its
Minna Palander-Collin
Incipient and intimate: The progressive aspect
Anni Sairio
Change or variation? Productivity of the suffixes ‑ness and ‑ity
Tanja Säily
Studies
Zooming out: Overall frequencies and Google books
Normalised frequencies of the phenomena studied
Tanja Säily
Google Books: A shortcut to studying language variability?
Mikko Laitinen and Tanja Säily
Conservative and progressive individuals
Tanja Säily
Changes in different stages
Anni SairioMinna Palander-Collin
From incipient to mid-range and beyond
Minna Palander-Collin, Mikko Laitinen, Anni Sairio and Tanja Säily
From nearing completion to completed
Terttu Nevalainen, Mikko Laitinen, Minna Nevala and Arja Nurmi
A wider sociolinguistic perspective
Terttu NevalainenAppendix: Editions in the Corpora of early English correspondence
Arja Nurmi and Samuli Kaislaniemi