Socio-Historical Linguistics: Its Status and Methodology

Suzanne Romaine

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511720130

Synchronic sociolinguistics has been particularly convincing in its use of quantitative models to demonstrates how 'the present might explain the past'. However, the relevance of sociolinguistics to historical linguistics 'using the past to explain the present', has been largely ignored. In this volume Dr Romaine lays the foundation for a field of research encompassing both historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, which aims to investigate and account for language variation within a particular speech community over time. The socio-historical approach is illustrated here by a detailed analysis of the development of relative clause formation strategies in Middle Scots. This case study raises fundamental questions about the epistemological status of sociolinguistic theory and in particular its claims to an empirical foundation. Her own preliminary suggestions for a truly integrative sociolinguistic theory will be of interest to sociolinguists, historical linguists and general linguists.

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Socio-Historical Linguistics

Its Status and Methodology

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vii

Dedication
pp viii-viii

Preface
pp ix-xi

Dedication
pp xii-xii

1 - Methodology and aims
pp 1-28

2 - Methods for a sociolinguistic study of historical syntax
pp 29-52

3 - The history of the relative clause/markers in English with special reference to Middle Scots
pp 53-80

4 - The linguistic variables
pp 81-104

5 - The extralinguistic variables: methods for the reconstruction of language in its social context
pp 105-138

6 - Analysis of the data by two sociolinguistic techniques: cross-product analysis and implicational scaling
pp 139-182

7 - Variable rule analysis of the data
pp 183-217

8 - The bearing of sociolinguistic data on linguistic hypotheses
pp 218-238

9 - On the epistemological status of sociolinguistic theory
pp 239-289

Bibliography
pp 290-309

Index
pp 310-315

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Its Status and Methodology

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