The volume collects original studies highlighting contemporary trends in historical sociolinguistics, as well as current research on the relationship between sociolinguistics and historical linguistics, social motivations of language variation and change, and corpus-based studies. Distinctive features of the book, which make it appealing to a wider audience, are the interdisciplinary nature of the chapters and the range of languages addressed.

Current Trends in Greek Linguistics is a collection of fifteen papers written by junior researchers of Greek linguistics, aiming to highlight the ongoing linguistic research on Greek. The collected papers present original research from a fresh perspective, and bring to the fore aspects of the Greek language that have not been extensively examined so far. The authors provide a concise overview of their field and address problems in a variety of theoretical frameworks, including cognitive linguistics, formal linguistics, corpus linguistics, variational sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. The volume comprises four sections: Aspects of Meaning, Textual and Sociolinguistic Approaches, Phonetics and Phonology, and Clinical Linguistics and Language Teaching. The first section includes chapters exploring lexical temporal expressions, the conceptualisation of time and the semantic properties of the subjunctive mood. The second section discusses issues relating to adjective evaluation, strategies of verbal humour, the role of social variables, media and political discourse. The section on phonetics and phonology includes three experimental studies that explore segmental and supra-segmental phenomena. The last section of the volume combines papers from two different fields, dealing with aphasic speech and the teaching of idioms. This collection of papers will appeal to researchers, students of linguistics and educators who are interested in Greek and/or the implications of its study for other languages and linguistic theory.

Written by a team of global scholars, this is the first Handbook covering the rapidly growing field of historical orthography. Comprehensive yet accessible, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students in the field, and in related areas such as morphology, syntax, historical linguistics, linguistic typology and sociolinguistics.

This volume offers a selection of papers presented during the 14th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS XIV, Paris, 2017). Part I brings together studies dealing with descriptive concepts. First examined is the notion of “accidens” in Latin grammar and its Greek counterparts. Other papers address questions with a strong echo in today’s linguistics: localism and its revival in recent semantics and syntax, the origin of the term “polysemy” and its adoption through Bréal, and the difficulties attending the description of prefabs, idioms and other “fixed expressions”. This first part also includes studies dealing with representations of linguistic phenomena, whether these concern the treatment of local varieties (so-called patois) in French research, or the import and epistemological function of spatial representations in descriptions of linguistic time. Or again, now taking the word “representation” literally, the visual display of grammatical relations, in the form of the first syntactic diagrams. Part II presents case studies which involve wider concerns, of a social nature: the “from below” approach to the history of Chinese Pidgin English underlines the social roles of speakers and the diversity of speech situations, while the scrutiny of Lhomond’s Latin and French textbooks demonstrates the interplay of pedagogical practice, cross-linguistic comparison and descriptive innovation. An overview of early descriptions of Central Australian languages reveals a whole spectrum of humanist to positivist and antihumanist stances during the colonial age. An overarching framework is also at play in the anthropological perspective championed by Meillet, whose socially and culturally oriented semantics is shown to live on in Benveniste. The volume ends with a paper on Trần Đức Thảo, whose work is an original synthesis between phenomenology and Marxist semiology, wielded against the “idealistic” doctrine of Saussure.

This volume brings together two particularly dynamic areas of contemporary research on the French language. The chapters showcase the most innovative current scholarship in historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and in the burgeoning field of historical sociolinguistics which lies at their intersection. The research across the volume is strongly data-centred, drawing on a wide range of both well-established and more novel theoretical and methodological approaches in order to open up new perspectives on the study of the French language in the twenty-first century. Although it is written in English, the work presented here is underpinned by a range of different approaches from across the Francophone and Anglophone worlds. Particular emphasis is placed on combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, on diversifying tools, methods, and objects of inquiry, and on adopting comparative and multilingual perspectives where these shed new light on important questions relating to French. In these ways, Historical and Sociolinguistic Approaches to French highlights some of the most exciting new directions for linguistic research on the French language.

This edited volume explores the scope of interdisciplinary linguistics and includes voices from scholars in different disciplines within the social sciences and humanities, as well as different sub-disciplines within linguistics. Chapters within this volume offer a range of perspectives on interdisciplinary studies, represent a connection between different disciplines, or demonstrate an application of interdisciplinarity within linguistics. The volume is divided into three sections: perspectives, connections, and applications. Perspectives The goal of this section is to address more generally the definition(s) of and value of multi-, trans-, and inter-disciplinary work. In what areas and for what purposes is there a need for work that crosses discipline boundaries? What are the challenges of undertaking such work? What opportunities are available? Connections This section features paired chapters written by scholars in different disciplines that discuss the same concept/idea/issue. For example, a discussion of how "assemblage" works in archaeology is paired with a discussion of how "assemblage" can be used to talk about ‘style’ in linguistics. Applications This section can be framed as sample answers to the question: What does interdisciplinarity look like?

This book provides a thorough yet approachable history of the Scots language, a close relative of Standard English with around 1.5 million speakers in Scotland and several thousand in Ireland, according to the 2011 census. Despite the long history of Scots as a language of high literature, it has been somewhat neglected and has often been treated as a dialect of Standard English. In this book, Robert McColl Millar explores both sociolinguistic and structural developments in the history of Scots, bringing together these two threads of analysis to offer a better understanding of linguistic change. The first half of the book tracks the development of Scots from its beginnings to the modern period, while chapters in the second half offer detailed descriptions of Scots historical phonology and morphosyntax, and of the historical development of Scots lexis. A History of the Scots Language will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students of the modern and historical Scots language, but will also be of interest to those studying the history of English and other Germanic languages.

Shortlisted for the 2020 ESSE Book Award in English Language and Linguistics Orality in Written Texts provides a methodologically and theoretically innovative study of change in Irish English in the period 1700-1900. Focusing in on a time during which Ireland became overwhelmingly English-speaking, the book traces the use of various linguistic features of Irish English in different historical contexts and over time. This book: draws on data from the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence (CORIECOR), which is composed of personal letters to and from Irish emigrants from the start of the eighteenth century up until the end of the twentieth century; analyses linguistic features that have hitherto remained neglected in the literature on Irish English, including discourse-pragmatic markers, and deictic and pronominal forms; discusses how the survival of the pragmatic mode has resulted in the preservation of certain facets of the Irish English variety as known today; explores sociolinguistic issues from a historical perspective. With direct relevance to corpus-based literary studies as well as the exploration of hybrid, modern-day text forms, Orality in Written Texts is key reading for advanced students and researchers of corpus linguistics, varieties of English, language change and historical linguistics, as well as anyone interested in learning more about Irish history and migration.

This collection brings together perspectives on regional and social varieties of British English in fictional dialogue across works spanning various literary genres, showcasing authorial and translation innovation while also reflecting on their impact on the representation of sociolinguistic polarities. The volume explores the ways in which different varieties of British English, including Welsh, Scots, and Received Pronunciation, are portrayed across a range of texts, including novels, films, newspapers, television series, and plays. Building on metadiscourse which highlighted the growing importance of accent as an emblem of social stance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the chapters in this book examine how popular textual forms create and reinforce links between accent and social persona, and accent and individual idiolect. A look at these themes, as explored through the lens of audiovisual translation and the challenges of dubbing, sheds further light on the creative resources authors and translators draw on in representing sociolinguistic realities through accent. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in dialectology, audiovisual translation, literary translation, and media studies.

The present volume brings together leading scholars studying language change from a variety of sociolinguistic perspectives, complementing and enriching the existing literature by providing readers with a kaleidoscopic perspective of aspects of change in English from around 1700 until the present day. The volume presents a collection of in-depth studies on a broad spectrum of phonetic, lexical, grammatical and discourse variation, drawing on historical corpora, dictionaries, metalinguistic commentary, ego-documents, spoken language and survey data. Apart from advancing our knowledge of processes of language change in varieties of English, including British English, Irish English, Australian English, South African English, American English and Canadian English, the individual chapters contribute to the theoretical debates on variation and change in Late Modern as well as Present-day English.