This article introduces the nonmedievalist reader to the multilingual landscape of England 700-1400. Building on recent work exploring in particular the relationships among English, French, and Latin in medieval England, it discusses a series of "multilingual moments" from a range of sources, including letters, poems, travel writings,…

A mixed-language phenomenon such as language shift has been acknowledged to constitute one of the hallmarks of the manuscripts in which the members of the City of London livery companies recorded their financial transactions during the late medieval period. Despite these texts having been studied by scholars in very diverse disciplines,…

This article synthesises progress made in the description of spoken (especially conversational) grammar over the 20 years since the authors published a paper in this journal arguing for a re-thinking of grammatical description and pedagogy based on spoken corpus evidence. We begin with a glance back at the 16th century and the teaching of Latin…

In the multilingual history of England, the period following the Norman Conquest in 1066 is a particularly intriguing phase, but its code-switching patterns have so far received little attention. The present article describes and analyses the multilingual practices evinced in London, British Library, MS Stowe 34, containing one instructional prose…

The -"s" genitives of English and Swedish play an important role in grammaticalization theory, as they are often used as counterexamples to the main tenet of that theory, viz. that grammatical change is unidirectional. In this paper I look at the emergence of the -"s" genitive in Danish, hoping that it may shed some new light on the evolution of…

While the defining cases of diglossia offered in Charles Ferguson's 1959 article have long been useful as vehicles for introducing this important form of societal multilingualism, they are also problematic in that they differ from each other in a number of significant ways. This article proposes a modified and more precise framework in which…

Presents results of a connectionist simulation that modeled the reanalysis of the Latin gender system in its transition to Old French. The network reanalysis was based solely on formal cues and on frequency. Results are in accordance with the historical data, and certain errors in simulations are also amenable to principled explanations.…

Of the many Latin texts that provide views on language, and in particular on linguistic change and variation, Varro's "De Lingua Latina" and Gellius'"Noctes Atticae," provide good examples of the perspectives of the stoic philosopher and of the antiquarian philologist. Stoics suggest that language was created as perfect as…

Reexamines the issue of Spanish nonverbal word stress, illustrates two basic generalizations about primary word stress, develops the conclusion that penultimate stress is unmarked, examines the relationship between Latin stress and its Spanish descendant, and contrasts the stress systems of Latin and Spanish. (32 references) (GLR)

The size of linguistic elements (morphemes, words or word groups) varies proportionately with their frequency. Because word frequency is unstable, this balance can be disturbed. When elements become too long in relation to their frequency, they are reduced. Examples from Latin illustrate the theory. (PMJ)

Discusses the relationship among Latin, English, and modern French vocabulary. (AM)

The study discusses the position of the protolanguage in the hierarchy formed by idiolect, dialect, and diasystem. The article emphasizes that linguistic study contains a great many diachronic events and hypothesized synchronic features that are implausible, yet possible. (30 references) (CK)

Factors in the formation of standard Spanish in the American continent are reviewed, including historical and sociological variables, and the evolution of various phonological, sociolinguistic, and written features from Castilian Spanish are discussed. In light of rapid change in Latin American society, future directions for dialect study are…

Critiques Carstair's Paradigm Economy Principle (PEP) with regard to historical linguistics. The principle "one form, one meaning" (OFOM) is contrasted with PEP as providing a more satisfactory explanation for occurrences of morphological change. Latin and Maori paradigms are used as examples. (Author/LMO)

This paper presents an overview of current trends in a new discipline called diachronic sociolinguistics. This perspective leads to an original retrospective look on a thousand years of linguistic evolution, from classical spoken Latin to protoromance. The article exhorts romanists to consider the research carried out by sociolinguists who study…