{"title":"The virtue of imperfection. Gjorgji Pulevski’s Macedonian–Albanian–Turkish dictionary (1875) as a window into historical multilingualism in the Ottoman Balkans","authors":"Barbara Sonnenhauser","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Even though the Balkans constitute one of the most prominent examples of linguistic areas, little is known about the actual processes and mechanisms contributing to the shaping of this area. Most of the assumptions are based on macro-level analyses and describe the linguistic changes observed in terms of generalising tendencies such as increase in analytism or simplification of structures. In order to approach the processes underlying contact-driven change and area formation, however, the focus needs to be shifted to the micro-level, i. e. the individuals and their communicative practices. Among the rare sources allowing to assume this actor-centred perspective is Gjorgji Pulevski’s trilingual dictionary of Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish from 1875, which on the orthographic and morphological level allows for insight into a multilingual speaker’s perceptions the languages s/he is exposed to and makes use of in her/his every day communicative practice. The present paper discusses the structural parallels between Macedonian and Turkish observed in the dictionary. It illustrates in how far these parallels may contribute to our understanding of the specific kind of individual multilingualism that provided the basis for the morphosyntactic developments observed for the Balkan linguistic area, and may also help to shed light on the more general nature of these developments. It is suggested that these processes evince an increase in morphological transparency, i. e. morphem-to-function mapping, as the most salient and probably most effective outcome of largely imperfect multilingualism.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"87 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75007754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Language history from below: Standardization and Koineization in Renaissance Italy","authors":"Josh Brown","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper returns to the complex question of the sociolinguistic history of Italy during the Renaissance. The traditional historiography of the Italian language adopts a teleological perspective, often defining the codification of Italian in 1525 with the publication of Pietro Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua. This approach means that less attention has been devoted to other processes of language change, as well as less focus on areas outside Tuscany. Using the major historical grammars of Italian, I highlight cases of variation which emphasize the non-uniformitarian nature of the standard. One major process while the standard was evolving was the formation of a koine or ‘common language’. This was the main feature of language change throughout much of north Italy. Recent research into the histories of non-Italo Romance varieties have suggested that standardization and koineization are not mutually exclusive processes. Rather, they are best characterised by a ‘top-down’ vs. ‘bottom-up’ approach respectively, with many points of intersection. The paper transposes these notions onto the sociolinguistic landscape of Renaissance Italy, allowing for further insight into how Italian was codified in particular, and the relationship between standards and koines more generally.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90104527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the enregisterment of the Lancashire dialect in Late Modern English: Spelling in focus","authors":"Javier Ruano-García","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper places literary recreations of Lancashire English into the context of enregisterment and the sociolinguistics of spelling. Using the Salamanca Corpus, I examine Lancashire dialect writings published between 1700 and 1900 representative of both dialect literature and literary dialect to determine the repertoire of forms that were circulated in representations of the dialect. More specifically, my aim is to identify the respellings employed to highlight the pronunciation features that may have been noticeable at the time and associated with a Lancashire identity. I argue that the socially meaningful choices made by Lancashire writers can be seen as authenticating practices whereby the dialect was constructed and circulated, having authenticity effects concerning how it was experienced by the audience. The analysis treats respellings as sociolinguistic variables that are quantified to measure the relative salience of the phonological features they represent. It focuses on three of the commonly occurring traits found in the corpus, namely the MOUTH, GOAT, and PRICE diphthongs, showing that such an approach may give insight into their degree of salience, whilst providing a window into how the Lancashire dialect was perceived during this time.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"65 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73254169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lledó-Guillem, Vicente: The Making of Catalan Linguistic Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Times","authors":"Afra Pujol i Campeny","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0034","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72679028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"L2 Greek in Roman Egypt: Intense language contact in Roman military forts","authors":"M. Leiwo","doi":"10.1515/JHSL-2019-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/JHSL-2019-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper will focus on analysing user-related variation in Greek in Egypt as seen through potsherd letters (ostraka) of the residents of Roman forts, praesidia, in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. The letters can be dated to the first and second centuries CE. I suggest that the linguistic situation in the forts can be seen as evidence of extensive language contact that was connected with the considerable economic activity of the Roman Empire. All military forts had several L2 Greek speakers of various ethnicity. In what follows I will suggest that Roman soldiers and their civil partners had created a system that can be described as a feature pool of Greek variables. I suggest that the data from Egypt show that L2 speakers of Greek had an effect on Greek at all grammatical levels, strengthening existing and ongoing endogenous changes by creating substantial contact-induced variation in phonology as well as in morphosyntax and even phraseology. The intense language contact suggests, in my opinion, that language dynamics of this period follow the resilience theory, where various different phases of the adaptive cycle can be simultaneous, as almost all possible varieties of Greek, from historical High Attic to Multiethnic Greek are in use.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80177502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Denkler Markus, Stephan Elspaß, Dagmar Hüpper and Elvira Topalović: Deutsch im 17. Jahrhundert: Studien zu Sprachkontakt, Sprachvariation und Sprachwandel. Gedenkschrift für Jürgen Macha (Sprache – Literatur und Studien zur Linguistik/Germanistik 46)","authors":"Stefaniya Ptashnyk","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2017-0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2017-0034","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79437520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Historical heritage language ego-documents: From home, from away, and from below","authors":"Joshua R. Brown","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2019-0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2019-0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Recent research into heritage languages has shown the results of language contact structurally and socially. This work is almost exclusively synchronic. This special issue presents five papers that look at the historical record of language contact in migration contexts. In using ego-documents written by everyday users of the languages in contact, we uncover the usefulness of incorporating historical sociolinguistic analysis into heritage language research.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"125 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76742587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Simeon Dekker: Old Russian Birchbark Letters. A Pragmatic Approach (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 42)","authors":"Imke Mendoza","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83846387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Civil War writings of the Pennsylvania Dutch","authors":"Joshua R. Brown","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0032","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract For eighteenth and nineteenth century Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, a variety of German was the language of their books, their newspapers, and their schools. Being far from the European homeland created a hegemonic shift in the linguistic lives of these early German Americans; they were adopting an American regional identity. Along with their shift in identities and in linguistic hegemony, structural aspects of the languages they used also changed: their written German was in contact with English and with their spoken Pennsylvania Dutch. In addition, the limitations of formal education in German at rural schools meant that the emphasis among most Pennsylvania Dutch was on the receptive knowledge of German and not on productive control of the language. In time, a variety of German called Pennsylvania High German emerged in the publications, writings, and schools of Pennsylvania. This article shares recent findings of a large corpus of written attempts at Pennsylvania High German by Civil War soldiers. It discusses both the structural aspects of their written language as well as the negotiation of their American regional identities through a multilingual lens at the first major moment of increased contact with outsiders.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"196 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86238804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Schaeken Jos: Voices on Birchbark. Everyday Communication in Medieval Russia (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 43)","authors":"S. Franklin","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2019-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2019-0002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83254765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}