Official Program for NARNiHS 2022
Fourth Annual Meeting
North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics
A Sister Society of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA)
[ go to the site of the LSA 2022 Annual Meeting ]
This year fully online via video-conference!
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Times are listed in U.S. Eastern Time (New York) with additional indication of Pacific Time (Vancouver), Central European Time (Berlin), and Moscow Standard time (Moscow) for reference.
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Friday, 7 January 2022
Session 1: Socio-historical reconstructions
Chair: Joshua Bousquette (University of Georgia, USA)
Time: 11:00–13:00 (New York) — 8:00-10:00 (Vancouver) | 17:00-19:00 (Berlin) | 19:00-21:00 (Moscow)
| 11:00 08:00 17:00 19:00 |
Using a sociolinguistic database for detecting historical changes in Siberian languages.
Olga Kazakevich ; Elena Klyachko (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences / Russian State University for the Humanities ; Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences / Higher School of Economics).A unified anonymized database of sociolinguistic questionnaires is briefly described. Two case studies of language changes in a Selkup and an Evenki local communities using this database are shown. In the Selkup local community of Farkovo at the Turukhan river two dialects are spoken, one of which has undergone restructuring of the categories of Number and Conjugation type within the last century. The Evenki local community of Uchami at the Lower Tunguska river has changed its Evenki dialect within the last 70 years. Both phenomena can be (at least partly) explained using the data from the database. |
| 11:30 08:30 17:30 19:30 |
Intra-individual register studies in Old High German.
Gohar Schnelle ; Silke Unverzagt (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany).Starting with the language of Notker of St. Gallen (ca 950-1022) and by applying the systematic functional situation Field-Tenor-Mode-model we investigate the establishment of certain situational subdimensions to determine possible registers in OHG. Our findings of situational characteristics are based on close-reading results, interdisciplinary and corpus-based quantitative analysis of linguistic features. We will demonstrate the methodological steps and results for the functional register components of narrativity, instruction, and argumentation and the situational register components of the social role relationship to approach OHG registers through a combination of quantitative and qualitative corpus-based step-by-step description both of their situational and linguistic characteristics. |
| 12:00 09:00 18:00 20:00 |
Reconstructing spoken discourse in writing: an analysis of orality markers in historical witness depositions.
Magda Serwadczak (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium).Linguists interested in studying the spoken word of the past are forced to rely solely on written records as audio- and video material is simply not available. This raises the question whether written sources truthfully and accurately depict the actual spoken interaction. Drawing from a corpus of 18th- and 19th-century Flemish witness depositions and suspect interrogations, this study aims to shed more light on the ways speech is (re)constructed in writing. The results are framed against the background of standardization and entextualization processes as well as their influence on the institutional discourse in the 18th- and 19th-century Flanders. |
| 12:30 09:30 18:30 20:30 |
Verbal –s and –ø in Historic AAL through Black Drama.
John W. W. Powell (University of Arizona, USA).Both (a) null inflected verbs (verbal –ø) for third person singular pronouns, and (b) –s inflection on verbs (verbal –s) with non-third singular subject pronouns are well attested in historic varieties of African American Language. What, if anything, conditions –s inflection? Hypotheses range from free variation to the Northern Subject Rule (NSR), that is verbal –s tends to follow full NPs, but not pronouns. I built a corpus of African American drama of 5.4 million words from the mid-1800s to present. Using computational methods, I show that the NSR cannot account for the distribution of verbal –s in my corpus. |
Saturday, 8 January 2022
Session 2: Linguistic features in their socio-historical context
Chair: Carolina Amador-Moreno (Universitetet i Bergen, Norway)
Time: 11:00–12:30 (New York) — 8:00-9:30 (Vancouver) | 17:00-18:30 (Berlin) | 19:00-20:30 (Moscow)
| 11:00 08:00 17:00 19:00 |
Speech Reflections in Late Modern English Pauper Petitions from Dorset.
Anne-Christine Gardner ; Anita Auer ; Mark Iten (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland).Pauper petitions represent a largely untapped, but valuable resource for historical dialectology. These are letters written by the labouring poor to their home parish to apply for out-relief (financial or other support). We present two case studies based on petitions by paupers with legal settlement in Dorset, identifying dialect features on the basis of unusual spellings and with the help of comparative resources such as modern dialect surveys and contemporary treatises. We also illustrate to what extent these features can be localised, considering issues surrounding the notion of settlement and the significant mobility of the paupers at the time. |
| 11:30 08:30 17:30 19:30 |
Intra-writer Variation in Epistolary Interaction: Audience Design in the use of Synthetic and Analytic Comparative Adjectives.
Tamara García-Vidal (University of Murcia, Spain).The aim of this paper is to account for individuals’ sociolinguistic behavior in interpersonal communication on the investigation of socially-based patterns of style-shifting in private correspondence from 16th to 18th century England. By applying the audience design model (Bell 1984), the study is carried out through the analysis of synthetic and analytic comparative adjectives, focusing on syllable-length and etymology of the adjectives, in letters written by five members ascribed to certain social groups and addressed to recipients from different social orders. Results show variability in comparative alternation when addressing different social-ranked recipients exhibiting upward and downward accommodation patterns. |
| 12:00 09:00 18:00 20:00 |
‘[T]he two eldest boys […] are both in the fifth standard and for grammar and arithmetic far before me’. Language variation and change among nineteenth-century Irish immigrants to New Zealand.
Dania Jovanna Bonness (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway).Drawing on the letters of a nineteenth-century Irish migrant family, this paper investigates whether traces of characteristic Irish English morphosyntactic features brought to New Zealand by some of its early settlers are still present in their colonial-born children’s language, and whether any of these features can confirm or contradict predictions made by Trudgill (2004) and Schneider (2007) regarding the developmental stages of early New Zealand English. Primary focus will be on the indefinite anterior perfective and on non-standard use of the definite article. This paper thus aims to contribute to research on new-dialect formation and on intergenerational language variation in the Irish diaspora. |
Sunday, 9 January 2022
Session 3: Socio-historical interactions between language discourses and practices
Chair: Sandrine Tailleur (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada)
Time: 11:00–12:30 (New York) — 8:00-9:30 (Vancouver) | 17:00-18:30 (Berlin) | 19:00-20:30 (Moscow)
| 11:00 08:00 17:00 19:00 |
The word of God and the language of the people: standardization and variation in Early Modern Welsh manuscript sermons.
Oliver Currie (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia).Early modern manuscript sermons can provide a unique insight into language standardisation processes as well as individual linguistic variation. While preachers are writing in the same genre, they could use very different linguistic registers and preaching styles, choosing, at one extreme, to adopt the Bible as linguistic model, or, at the other extreme, using more colloquial and dialectal language, potentially to accommodate to their congregation. This paper examines individual linguistic variation and the development of a biblical literary standard in Early Modern Welsh based on a corpus of late 16th to early 18th century autograph manuscript sermons. |
| 11:30 08:30 17:30 19:30 |
Which Script for the Czech Language?
Alena Andrlová Fidlerová (Univerzita Karlova, Czech Republic).The paper analyzes the process during which the Czech language community switched from the blackletter to the roman type, on a sample of Czech printed texts published between 1800 and 1850. It tries to verify whether the most important variables influencing the choice of the script were those already mentioned in the literature (the level of education of the author and/or the anticipated reader and the place of print), or whether other variables not considered so far (the genre of the text, the confession of the author and/or anticipated reader) could not play an important role as well. |
| 12:00 09:00 18:00 20:00 |
“Aberration,” or Cultural Fascination? French Gender Inclusive Reforms from the Revolution to the Present.
Jennifer Kaplan (University of California – Berkeley, USA).Using a corpus of French metalinguistic texts from the 18th-21st centuries, I periodize the debates over gender-inclusive French. I first identify (1) the emergence of these debates in metalinguistic texts as part of the language reforms between 1784-1799, which allows me to reframe both (2) the reignition of the debates over feminization in the 20th century (c.1984-1999) and (3) l’écriture inclusive (2010s-Present) as the afterlives of these 18th century debates. Ultimately, the very existence of these early debates counters the conservative, prescriptivist framework (e.g., of the Académie Française) that debates over grammatical gender and social gender were resolved in the 17th century.. |
Break
Time: 12:30–13:00 — 9:30-10:00 (Vancouver) | 18:30-19:00 (Berlin) | 20:30-21:00 (Moscow)
| 13:00 10:00 19:00 21:00 |
NARNiHS General Meeting (open to all) Chair: Israel Sanz-Sánchez (West Chester University, USA) Note that this meeting is planned for one hour: 13:00-14:00 (US Eastern Time) — 10:00-11:00 (Vancouver) | 19:00-20:00 (Berlin) | 21:00-22:00 (Moscow). |