Preface

During the past three decades, with sociolinguistics emerging as a major field
of linguistic research, historical sociolinguistics has been established as an
important subfield of historical linguistics.
The papers in the present volume - most of which were first presented at
the Twelfth International Troms0 Symposium on Language: Historical Socio-
linguistics, held at the University of Troms0 on June 9-11, 1994 - contribute
to a much needed theoretical discussion of this subfield as well as bringing
together a considerable body of empirical data pertaining to the description
and analysis of historical sociolinguistic conditions.
The papers by Els Oksaar, James Milroy and Wieslaw Awedyk raise the-
oretical questions regarding historical sociolinguistics in general. Agnieszka
Kielkiewicz-Janowiak uses a study of changes in child-to-parent modes of
address in Polish to exemplify possible methods in historical sociolinguis-
tics.
The principle problems concerning sociolinguistic descriptions of dead
languages - with data mainly from Tocharian Β - are treated by Werner Win-
ter. Folke Josephson then gives an example of how a sociolinguistic model
which is established on the basis of synchronic present-day studies can be
employed in the analysis of old, dead languages - here Hittite.
Historical multilingualism is treated in three papers. Laura Wright de-
scribes code-switching over 500 years in business writing in London. Ernst
Häkon Jahr gives an overview of problems in and perspectives of the study of
the medieval contact between Low German and Scandinavian. Anna-Riitta
Lindgren gives an account of the morphological variation exhibited in Finnish
dialects of Northern Norway and explains this variation as a result yielded by
long-standing bilingualism.
A group of four papers deals with different varieties of English: Middle En-
glish in London, with Laura Wright showing the sociolinguistic significance
of morphological variation among the scribes for ten guild certificates from
the late 14th century; Peter Trudgill discusses a certain stage in the devel-
opment of New Zealand English; Dublin English, where Raymond Hickey
describes certain changes which originated in the upper classes, i.e. 'from
above'; and African American English, for which Wolfgang Viereck explains
the development of specific features from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Brought to you by | Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Econo

Authenticated | 187.113.74.136
Download Date | 5/6/13 12:24 AM
vi Preface

Two papers concern Norwegian in particular. Endre M0rck shows how

the medieval Norwegian charters (of which some 18,000 are printed) can be
analyzed in order to establish linguistic differences between various social
groups, and Arnold Dalen describes the development of a post-medieval ur-
ban dialect in the city of Trondheim.

Troms0, July 1997 Ernst Häkon Jahr

Brought to you by | Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Econo

Authenticated | 187.113.74.136
Download Date | 5/6/13 12:24 AM