Official Program for NARNiHS 2027
Ninth 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 2027 Annual Meeting ]
==> Find the NARNiHS 2027 program also in the full LSA program.
==> download the official NARNiHS 2027 program as PDF
Important (money-saving) note from the LSA about registration:
(for those attending NARNiHS 2027 in San Francisco)
“NARNiHS is an LSA Sister Society presenting a series of sessions at the 2027 LSA Annual Meeting. Members of the Sister Society [NARNiHS] who wish to participate in the LSA Annual Meeting must register and pay for registration for the LSA Meeting and will receive the LSA member rate on their LSA registration. NARNiHS members are also eligible for the LSA-negotiated rate on the hotel room block.”
Become a NARNiHS member: NARNiHS membership instructions.
All times below are listed in U.S. Pacific time (San Francisco)
==> Move your mouse over each presentation title,
==> or tap each presentation title on your tablet,
==> to see a short abstract!
Date [TBD]
Historical Sociolinguistics I : Change from Above?
Time: [TBD] (San Francisco)
Location: [TBD] (San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel)
Chair: [TBD]
| [time] |
From Vernacular to Standard Norm: Oral-to-Written Transitions and Elite Bilingual Grammar-Writing in the Genesis of Standard Mandarin.Between 1850 and 1950, Standard Mandarin emerged not just through top-down standardization, but also through koineization – the gradual fusion of competing dialectal systems. Combining a dual corpus of nineteenth-century vernacular sources (opera librettos, novels, conversational dialogues) with Western missionary grammars, we trace two mechanisms: textualization of oral vernaculars and elite bilingual grammar-writing. Two cases illustrate this: lexical leveling of the zuó-/yè- ('yesterday') isogloss, and diffusion of the gěi passive from Nánjīng into Běijīng Mandarin. Principal Component Analysis shows Standard Mandarin clusters closer to nineteenth-century Nanjing than to Beijing Mandarin, suggesting standardization narratives may be more nuanced than a top-down model implies.
Lin Xiao (École Normale Supérieure de Paris, France). [full abstract] |
| [time] |
The ‘Age of Prescriptivism’ and the reversion of /e/-lowering in 18C Cheshire.[short abstract]
Ileia Goode (University of Calgary, Canada). [full abstract] |
| [time] |
Who Could Claim to Know? Social Position, Procedural Role, and Epistemic Stance in Judicial Testimony from Colonial New Spain.[short abstract]
Alan Emmanuel Pérez Barajas & Roberto A. Ortiz León (Universidad de Colima, Mexico & University of Akron, USA). [full abstract] |
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Date [TBD]
Historical Sociolinguistics II: Languages in Contact
Time: [TBD] (San Francisco)
Location: [TBD] (San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel)
Chair: [TBD]
| [time] |
Bilingualism as Protection and Resistance on an Egyptian Jewish Proseuche.[short abstract]
Madeleine Riskin-Kutz (University of Oxford, England). [full abstract] |
| [time] |
A Hydro-Koine Along the Grand Canal: Phonological, Lexical, and Syntactic Intersections in Early Mandarin Dialects, 1415–1901.This paper presents an initial framework for a project tracing the history of Mandarin along China's Grand Canal, linking Běijīng and Hángzhōu via the tribute-grain system. Framing the canal as a 'hydro-koine' corridor, we map phonological (-ér vs. -zǐ), lexical (kuàizi vs. zhù; zuó- vs. yè-), and syntactic (gěi, shénme) isoglosses across Běijīng, Jì-Lǔ, Jiāo-Liáo, and Jiāng-Huái Mandarin (1415–1901), testing whether isogloss permeability is level-dependent and whether waterway connectivity, rather than geographic proximity, drove convergence. Drawing on our first fieldwork corpus of living canal-zone dialects, we systematically apply comparative historical linguistics and koineization theory to the analysis.
Lin Xiao & Richard Van Ness Simmons (École Normale Supérieure de Paris, France & University of Hong Kong, China / Rutgers University, USA (emeritus)). [full abstract] |
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Date [TBD]
NARNiHS General Meeting (open to all)
Time: [TBD] (San Francisco)
Location: [TBD] (San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel)
Chair: [TBD]
Note that this meeting is planned for 90 minutes.