Language Diversification Research Articles

Global language geography and language history: challenges and opportunities

As the several thousand languages spoken by people all around the world became more and more systematically assessed and catalogued in the 20th century, it became clear that linguistic diversity is unevently distributed across the globe. Up to the present day, the reasons for that are poorly understood. Linguists are thus in the embarassing situation that they do not understand significant regularities in the way the objects of their study –languages– pattern; human sciences at large are faced with the fact that the way humans produce that key cultural product which is often seen as defining the essence of what makes them humans –language–remains in the dark. In this essay, I explore three interrelated strands of thought associated with the problem of explaining patterns in global language diversity to create a perspective that is different from those explored so far. First, I suggest that instead of looking at present-day levels of diversity and find parameters of variation between the regions in which they are spoken, we should take a process-based approach that looks into how these distributions were generated. Related to this point and in contradistinction to extant work, second, I advocate an inductive approach that departs from qualitative case studies which inform theory-building. Third, I ponder that, in contrast to the traditional focus of historical linguistics on language diversification and expansion, understanding how the ranges of languages are reduced might be the key missing piece of evidence in a global theory of language diversity and its genesis.

Peculiarities of image formation in ceramics and artistic printing of Tatiana Vatavu

The creative options of Tatiana Vatavu were directed from the beginning – the last decade of the 20th century - and in the first decades of the new millennium, towards the determination and development of her own style, the elaboration of a thematic repertoire that encouraged her initiation and development of an innovative artistic discourse that enriched the art of ceramics and artistic printing in the Republic of Moldova with new aesthetic values. The thematic area reveals, on the one hand, tendencies to capitalize on important conceptual landmarks rooted in the artifacts of popular plastic creation, and on the other hand, it reflects the artist's aspirations directed towards the capitalization of ideas that would facilitate an ascending path in the diversification of the plastic language and its symbolism, and the promotion of its own creative identity. The ceramic works highlight relevant morphological and syntactic experiments, through which the combined form of the pieces promotes original aesthetic values and complex messages, while those in the field of artistic printing and drawing reflect the exceptional ability to operate with the plastic means in order to achieve the compositional integrity of the image and to highlight certain topical messages.

Linguistic cognition and worldview

ABSTRACT Herslund’s cognitive-perceptual and communication models, comprising a typological theory of linguistic worldview, are replaced by an integrated cybernetic-semiotic model, where language/text is understood as cognition, as individual linguistic discourse acts and collective discourse interaction. Thus, actual cognitive-linguistic communication is not situational context, but the pragmatic basis. As such, it constructs its further socio-cultural cognitive domain and its universe of discourse, characterizing it with a language-specific worldview inherent in its dynamic competence. Perceptual-actional cognition constructs the human natural Umwelt. Integrated cognition maps triune reality, with its natural, mental, and cultural dimensions. Just as the mental is an aspect of the biological world, society-culture is a construction by individual minds. Linguistic cognition is subjective discourse acts, performed by particular minds, or intersubjective discourse interaction – communication within the historical-general commind of a society-culture. Owing to the diversification of human language into divergent types of linguistic practices and traditions, interlocutors entertain specific linguistic worldviews and construct and live in divergent society-cultures. Furthermore, they have (inter)personal cognitive mappings of themselves, their interlocutors, their in-groups and out-groups, and express these identities in discourse. Since linguistic and non-linguistic cognition is integrated and displayed in consciousness, individuals inhabit diverse bio-cultural worlds-of-living – in-group homeworlds and out-group alienworlds.

Models of Instruction for Multilingual Learners: Facets of the ESOL Co-Teacher Role

With nearly five million multilingual learners in U.S. schools, research is warranted for effective instruction that permits equal access to content standards through language diversification. Multilingual learners (MLs), students learning English who benefit from linguistic support to attain academic achievement, are served through models in U.S. schools that vary according to student needs and staffing capability, with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) as the dominantly implemented format. ESOL is a federally and locally funded program that provides structured academic and linguistic support and accountability for MLs across all grade levels. The purpose of this literature review is to compare the utility and effectiveness of the four program models approved by the U.S. Department of Education to effectively teach content and language to MLs in public schools: (a) structured English immersion, (b) bilingual education, (c) dual language or two-way immersion programs, and (d) English for Speakers of Other Languages (U.S. Department of Education & U.S. Department of Justice, 2015). Furthermore, this article is intended to examine the overarching model of ESOL—the most employed model in the U.S.—and the prominent delivery format of co-teaching. Each of the models mentioned above is discussed in this paper, followed by a delineation of state and federally-approved formats of ESOL: pull-out, push-in, resource labs, sheltered classes, innovative delivery models, and co-teaching. This article concludes with an examination of co-teaching, a subset of ESOL in which a general education educator and an ESOL teacher co-plan, co-instruct, and co-assess an integrated classroom of MLs and non-MLs.

Phylogenetic evidence reveals early Kra-Dai divergence and dispersal in the late Holocene

Studying language evolution brings a crucial perspective to bear on questions of human prehistory. As the most linguistically diverse region on earth, East and Southeast Asia have witnessed extensive sociocultural and ethnic contacts among different language communities. Especially, the Kra-Dai language family exhibits tremendous socio-cultural importance in these regions. Due to limited historical accounts, however, there are several controversies on their linguistic relatedness, ambiguities regarding the divergence time, and uncertainties on the dispersal patterns. To address these issues, here we apply Bayesian phylogenetic methods to analyze the largest lexical dataset containing 646 cognate sets compiled for 100 Kra-Dai languages. Our dated phylogenetic tree showed their initial divergence occurring approximately 4000 years BP. Phylogeographic results supported the early Kra-Dai language dispersal from the Guangxi-Guangdong area of South China towards Mainland Southeast Asia. Coupled with genetic, archaeological, paleoecologic, and paleoclimatic data, we demonstrated that the Kra-Dai language diversification could have coincided with their demic diffusion and agricultural spread shaped by the global climate change in the late Holocene. The interdisciplinary alignments shed light on reconstructing the prehistory of Kra-Dai languages and provide an indispensable piece of the puzzle for further studying prehistoric human activities in East and Southeast Asia.

Realis morphology and Chatino’s role in the diversification of Zapotec languages

Abstract This paper concerns a semantic change whereby a continuous aspect prefix was reinterpreted as marking realis mood. This change took place in Chatino and then diffused to the Southern Zapotec subgroup, contributing to the genetic diversification of the Zapotec languages. Proto-Zapotecan marked irrealis mood with *k- and did not mark realis. *n- indicated continuous aspect and could concatenate with perfective *ku- to render a resultative reading. A continuous-marked positional verb *n-te later grammaticalized as a progressive prefix in Chatino. As both perfective and progressive refer to (at least partially) realized situations, *n- was reanalyzed as a marker of realis mood that could concatenate with aspectual viewpoint prefixes. The realis prefix is shown to be one of several traits diffused from Chatino which contribute to the creation of the Southern Zapotec clade and its divergence from Monte Albán Zapotec.

Kant on Language and the (Self‐)Development of Reason

Abstract The origin of languages was a hotly debated topic in the eighteenth century. This paper reconstructs a distinctively Kantian account according to which the origination, progression, and diversification of languages is at bottom reason’s self-development under certain a priori constraints and external environments. The reconstruction builds on three sets of materials. The first is Herder’s famous prize essay on the origin of languages. The second includes Kant’s explicit remarks about language – especially his notion of “transcendental grammar,” his argument that language cannot be innate, his contrast of “Oriental” symbolic (intuitive) and “Occidental” discursive languages, and his treatment of the latter as a sine qua non of humanity’s cultural and moral progress. The third includes the concepts that we need to make sense of those remarks, such as Kant’s epigenetic theory of biological formation and his account of categories as originally acquired.

The Tower of Babel and Language Corruption

This paper analyzes a set of ideas about language attested by late antique Christian writers—namely, their speculations on what kind of transformation languages undergo over time and their ethical, theological, and historical assessments of linguistic change and linguistic diversity. The incident that triggered the diversification of languages was normally associated with the biblical story about the Tower of Babel (Gen 11.1–9), the single dramatic event that once and for all changed the linguistic makeup of humanity and could be considered a disaster par excellence. And yet, the attitudes of late antique writers to the event and the subsequent linguistic diversification ranged from overtly negative (divine punishment and revenge) to reservedly positive (a minor inconvenience that prevented further wrongdoing) to a wholeheartedly optimistic reaction. Similarly, the gradual process of language change that always happens over time was often described in terms of “corruption” and “decline.” Observations of ancient writers that languages “get corrupted” due to multiple factors presuppose the slippery slope of a slow, empirically unimpressive, but steady and sure catastrophe. Its consequences are more threatening the less attention people pay to it. Comparing the two conceptual frames late antique writers employed to approach linguistic transformations—the sudden dramatic confusion of tongues at Babel and the everyday “slow catastrophe” of language corruption—this study challenges our own scholarly views on what constituted a disaster for intellectuals in Late Antiquity.

How the hand has shaped sign languages

In natural languages, biological constraints push toward cross-linguistic homogeneity while linguistic, cultural, and historical processes promote language diversification. Here, we investigated the effects of these opposing forces on the fingers and thumb configurations (handshapes) used in natural sign languages. We analyzed over 38,000 handshapes from 33 languages. In all languages, the handshape exhibited the same form of adaptation to biological constraints found in tasks for which the hand has naturally evolved (e.g., grasping). These results were not replicated in fingerspelling—another task where the handshape is used—thus revealing a signing-specific adaptation. We also showed that the handshape varies cross-linguistically under the effects of linguistic, cultural, and historical processes. Their effects could thus emerge even without departing from the demands of biological constraints. Handshape’s cross-linguistic variability consists in changes in the frequencies with which the most faithful handshapes to biological constraints appear in individual sign languages.

İletişimin Doğuşu: Köken Dil ve Dillerin Çeşitlenmesi

Çalışmanın konusu, iletişimin doğuşu: Köken dil ve dillerin çeşitlenmesidir. Makalede ilk dilin ortaya çıkışı ve dillerin çeşitlenmesi konusunda ileri sürülen tevkīfîlik, doğalcılık, uzlaşı ve meleke teorisi gibi farklı görüşler, değişik paradigmalar etrafında değerlendirilmiştir. Mevcut iletişim çalışmalarında dil, daha çok önemi ve işlevi yönünden değerlendirilmekte; köken dil ve dillerin tarihsel süreç içerisindeki değişiminden yeterince bahsedilmemektedir. Günümüz bilim anlayışı daha çok pozitif bilime göre hareket ettiği için meseleyi sadece açıklama merkezli ele almakta, dil ve iletişimin kökenlerine inmemektedir. Bir diğer problem de çağdaş bilim paradigmalarının dili ve iletişimi uzlaşı teorisine göre açıklamalarıdır. Oysaki İslâmî ilim yaklaşımında dilin çok yönlü değerlendirildiği görülmekte; dilin doğuşu, dilin tevkīfî olup olmaması, kökeni ve dillerin çeşitlenmesi gibi konular etraflıca ele alınmaktadır. Tevkīfîliği kabul etmek aynı zamanda doğalcılık, uzlaşı ve meleke teorisini de kabul etmek anlamına gelmektedir. Modern bilimlerde de elbette bazı dil çeşitlerine değinilmiştir, fakat bu sadece günümüz dillerini gruplara ayırıp tasnif etmekten ibaret kalmıştır. İslâmî ilim anlayışına göre dil ile iletişimi insan icat etmemiştir. Bir köken dil vardır ve bu köken dil, Hz. Âdem’e ilâhî bir bildirimle öğretilmiştir. Zira Kur’ân’da “Allah Adem’e isimleri öğretti” beyânı ve Yüce Allah’ın Hz. Âdem’e “isimlerden haber ver” diye hitap etmesi, Hz. Âdem’in de bu isteği anlayıp cevap vermesi (el-Bakara 2/33) Hz. Âdem’in bir dil bildiğine işaret etmektedir. Kur’ân’da Hz. Âdem’in ve Hz. Havva’nın yasak ağaca yaklaşmaları ve sonrasında yaptıkları tövbeyi anlatan âyetlere bakıldığında onların bir dil bildiği açıkça görülmektedir. Bu âyetler düşünce ve algıları, kelime ve kelime grupları ile ifade etme anlamında iletişimin ilk insanla beraber başladığının delilleridir. Ampirik delillere bakıldığında da duygu ve düşüncelerini en açık ve en mükemmel şekilde anlatan varlığın sadece insan olduğu görülmektedir. İnsanın bu özelliği “Allah insanı yarattı, ona beyânı öğretti.” (er-Rahmân 55/3-4) âyetiyle de belirtilmiştir. Hatta dilin ve iletişimin gelişmiş açıklamaları olan edebî sanatların ilk insanlar tarafından da kullanıldığına dair Kur’ân’da sarih ifadeler vardır. Örneğin Hz. Âdem’in talihsiz oğlu Kābil, kıskançlık neticesinde kardeşi Hâbil’i öldürdüğünde ne yapacağını bilememiş, çaresizlik içerisinde bocalarken yeri eşeleyen kargadan cesedi gömeceğini anlamış ve “Eyvahlar olsun bana, şu karga kadar olup da kardeşimin cesedini örtmeyi beceremedim.” (el-Mâide 5/31) demiştir. Onun bu açıklamaları bir durumu ifade etmenin yanı sıra temsilî teşbih ve istiare gibi beyân sanatlarını da içermektedir. Yukarıda anılan ve daha başka ayetler ilk dil ve köken dilin başlangıcı konusunda bize açık deliller sunmaktadır. Zira realite de bunu göstermektedir ki diğer canlılar beden dili ve birtakım seslerle iletişim sağlarken insanoğlu özellikle dil olarak tanımlanan belli harf, sözcük ve kelime kalıplarını kullanmaktadır. Dil sayesinde insanoğlu, bilgi aktarımı, kültürel süreklilik ve uygarlıktaki ilerlemeyi meydana getirmiştir. Bu özellik sadece insan türüne aittir. İnsanın sosyal bir varlık olması sebebiyle etkinliklerinin tümü iletişimle özellikle de dille gerçekleşmektedir. İslâmî ilimlere göre insanlık tarihi Hz. Âdem ve Hz. Havva’nın Arafat’ta buluşup Mekke’ye yerleşmesi ile başlamış; sonra Hûd kavminde olduğu gibi insanlık güneye; Semûd kavminde görüldüğü batı Arap yarımadasına, oradan Lübnân, Sûriye ve Mısır’a geçmiş olmalı; Mısır’dan da tüm Afrika’ya yayılmış olmalıdır. Kuzeyde ise Mezopotamya ve Anadolu üzerinden insanlık Asya ve Avrupa’nın ücrâ bölgelerine dağılmıştır. Dillerin çeşitlenmesi de yine bu bölgeler üzerinden önce köken dilden Sâmî-Hâmî, Hint-Avrupa ve Ural-Altay dillerine sonra da alt dillere ayrılmış olmalıdır. Çalışmanın amacı köken dil, köken dilin öğrenilme şekli ve dillerin çeşitlenmesinin ele alınmasıdır; önemi ise günümüz iletişim çalışmalarında yer almayan köken dil ve mahiyeti üzerine açıklama yapmasıdır. Çalışmada nitel yöntem tekniklerinden kabul edilen doküman incelemesine başvurulmuş; köken dil, köken dilin öğrenilme şekli ve dillerin çeşitlenmesiyle ilgili eserler değerlendirilmiş; dil ve iletişimle alakalı çalışmalara başvurulmuştur.

The English lexicogrammar of violence: lexical resources

This paper is an exploratory description of the lexicogrammar of violence — of the resources provided by the lexicogrammar of English for construing our experience of violence as wordings alongside other domains of experience that are difficult to come to terms with such as pain and emotion. We give particular attention to the lexical resources within the continuum of lexicogrammar, but locate them within the grammatical “schemata” they operate in. Our exploratory account is informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). It draws centrally on certain aspects of SFL, including the primary given to paradigmatic organization, the stratification of the content plane of language into semantics (meaning) and lexicogrammar (wording), the organization of the content plane into simultaneous metafunctions, the cline or continuum between the system of language, the overall meaning potential of language, and instances in the form of texts (operating in context), and the diversification of language into different registers (functional varieties) adapted to different types of context. We present an overview of the lexical resources of verbs and nouns, and show how verbs can be classified in their different senses by reference to the grammatical system of transitivity (in particular, process type).

Sexually Distinct Song Cultures Across a Songbird Metapopulation

Songbirds learn their songs culturally, through imitating tutors. The vocal culture of a songbird population changes as new song units (syllables) are introduced through immigration, copying errors, and innovation, while other syllables fall out of use. This leads to a diversification of the syllable pool across the species, much like the diversification and spatial patterns of human language. Vocal cultures have been well-studied in male songbirds but have been largely overlooked in females. Here we undertake one of the first comparisons of male and female song cultures across a songbird metapopulation—studying New Zealand bellbirds Anthornis melanura spanning a network of six islands. Having classified 20,700 syllables (702 types), we compare population syllable repertoire sizes and overlap between sites and sexes. We show that males and females—both with complex songs—have distinct song cultures, sharing only 6–26% of syllable types within each site. Furthermore, male and female syllable types can be statistically discriminated based on acoustic properties. Despite diverse syllable repertoires within sites, few syllable types were shared between sites (both sexes had highly distinct site-specific dialects). For the few types shared between sites, sharing decreased with distance only for males. Overall, there was no significant difference between sexes in degree of site–site repertoire overlap. These results suggest different cultural processes at play for the two sexes, underlining the inadequacy of male-centric song research and calling for comparisons of male and female song cultures in many more species.

Using Historical Glottometry to Subgroup the Early Germanic Languages

Historical Glottometry, introduced by Kalyan & François (2018), is a wave-based quantitative approach to language subgrouping used to calculate the overall strength of a linguistic subgroup using metrics that capture the contributions of linguistic innovations of various scopes to language diversification, in consideration of the reality of their distributions. This approach primarily achieves this by acknowledging the contribution of postsplit areal diffusion to language diversification, which has traditionally been overlooked in cladistic (tree-based) models. In this paper, the development of the Germanic language family, from the breakup of Proto-Germanic to the latest period of the early attested daughter languages (namely, Old English, Old Frisian, Gothic, Old High German, Old Low Franconian, Old Norse, and Old Saxon) is accounted for using Historical Glottometry. It is shown that this approach succeeds in accounting for several smaller, nontraditional subgroups of Germanic by accommodating the linguistic evidence unproblematically where a cladistic approach would fail.

Year 2020 (with COVID): Observation of Scientific Literature on Clinical Natural Language Processing.

SummaryObjectives: To analyze the content of publications within the medical NLP domain in 2020. Methods: Automatic and manual preselection of publications to be reviewed, and selection of the best NLP papers of the year. Analysis of the important issues. Results: Three best papers have been selected in 2020. We also propose an analysis of the content of the NLP publications in 2020, all topics included. Conclusion: The two main issues addressed in 2020 are related to the investigation of COVID-related questions and to the further adaptation and use of transformer models. Besides, the trends from the past years continue, such as diversification of languages processed and use of information from social networks

Languages and ideologies at the Lower Yenisei (Siberia): Reconstructing past multilingualism

Aims and objectives: This paper reconstructs past multilingualism (1900–1930s) among the nomadic people of the Lower Yenisei in northern Siberia, with particular attention to the language ideologies behind it; it is validated by parallels from small-scale communities worldwide. Approach: An ethnographic approach is taken, which interprets sociolinguistic data in view of emic categorizations. Data and analysis: The reconstruction is based on: (a) 1926 census data; (b) ethnographic reports from the 1920s to 1960s; (c) narratives from the 1940s; (d) retrospective sociolinguistic interviews; and (e) ethnonyms of local languages. (a), (b) provide a background for the interpretation of the linguistic data from (c)–(e). Findings: The connection of local social categories/groups to languages was unstable both synchronically and diachronically. Linguistic repertoires described the authenticity of the speech communities better than the command of individual languages. The linguistic indexing of identity was relational and depended on social networks more than on ancestry/kinship. These ideologies together with constant migrations shaped the sociolinguistic profile of the area and facilitated language shifts. Originality: Besides providing a detailed sociolinguistic description for an underresearched part of the world, this paper uses a novel methodology for reconstructing multilingualism of the past. Implications: The described mechanisms of language shift within communities that are multilingual in related languages contribute to theories of language diversification and spread at least in the north, but possibly also in a broader perspective. The methodology can be applied to other cases of past multilingualism.

Foundations of cultural evolution.

'Cultural evolution' as a field applies the insight that cultural change may be like biological evolution. Concepts, methods and ideas from the well-established theory of biological evolution are applied to cultural processes, such as the spread and diversification of languages or technology. Some researchers even suggest that evolutionary theory may serve as a synthetic framework for unifying the humanities and the social sciences, just as biological evolution is viewed as a unifying principle underlying all life sciences. This theme issue examines the theoretical and methodological core of this rapidly expanding field. What premises form the foundation? What are the disparities? The issue unites perspectives and fosters dialogue between scholars across disciplines - breaking ground in the study of the dynamics and diversity of culture.

French as the Teaching Language of Life and Earth Sciences in Moroccan School: what’s the Teachers’ Opinion?

The strategic vision for the recent reform in Morocco included the diversification of teaching languages by teaching scientific subjects in French. This starts in pilot’s class teaching scientific subjects in the French language. In this context, the language for teaching Life and Earth Sciences (LES) was changed from Arabic to French. This linguistic change in teaching LES aims to make the learner able to communicate in French in addition to Arabic, and to put an end to the linguistic problem that currently exists when entering universities, that teach these subjects in the French language. In this survey we interested to teachers’ opinions in order to get acquainted with their opinions in teaching Life and Earth Sciences in French for the middle school, and collecting suggestions and solutions to overcome the problem observed in classrooms. We used a questionnaire as an investigative tool for data collection distributed to life and earth sciences’ teachers of middle school. The findings of this research shows that teaching this subject in French forms an obstacle to academic achievement, and classroom interaction, whether in the rural or urban areas. This is due to reasons related to the poor language level of students, the absence of teacher continuous training in teaching the subject in French, and the weakness of the means adopted to make this change in the language of instruction. Among the solutions that have been proposed and used to overcome this educational phenomenon is the preparation of a support plan that includes a program consisting of activities targeting the communicative aspect for learners in French, as well as other activities aimed at providing the learner with skills such as analysis, description, observation and conclusion, while translating scientific words from French into Arabic.

Did pre-Columbian populations of the Amazonian biome reach carrying capacity during the Late Holocene?

The increasingly better-known archaeological record of the Amazon basin, the Orinoco basin and the Guianas both questions the long-standing premise of a pristine tropical rainforest environment and also provides evidence for major biome-scale cultural and technological transitions prior to European colonization. Associated changes in pre-Columbian human population size and density, however, are poorly known and often estimated on the basis of unreliable assumptions and guesswork. Drawing on recent developments in the aggregate analysis of large radiocarbon databases, here we present and examine different proxies for relative population change between 1050 BC and AD 1500 within this broad region. By using a robust model testing approach, our analyses document that the growth of pre-Columbian human population over the 1700 years prior to European colonization adheres to a logistic model of demographic growth. This suggests that, at an aggregate level, these pre-Columbian populations had potentially reached carrying capacity (however high) before the onset of European colonization. Our analyses also demonstrate that this aggregate scenario shows considerable variability when projected geographically, highlighting significant gaps in archaeological knowledge yet also providing important insights into the resilience of past human food procurement strategies. By offering a new understanding of biome-wide pre-Columbian demographic trends based on empirical evidence, our analysis hopes to unfetter novel perspectives on demic expansions, language diversification trajectories and subsistence intensification processes in the Amazonian biome during the late Holocene.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cross-disciplinary approaches to prehistoric demography’.

The spread zones and contacts of medieval Finnic in the Northeastern Baltic Sea area: Implications for the rate of language change

AbstractIn the contemporary northern Baltic Sea area, there are two states, Finland and Estonia, in which a western Uralic language has an official status. Several Finnic minority languages are or used to be spoken in the adjacent areas in the contact zone of Baltic, Germanic and Slavic languages. Historically, the north-eastern surroundings of the Gulf of Finland reflect a gradual spread of the language area during the past millennium and especially the late Middle Ages, while more southern areas in contemporary Estonia, and its eastern neighbourhood in Russia show longer continuity of language borders. The Finnic languages were used predominantly orally until very recently, whereas written language began to affect non-standard varieties more strongly only in the 19th and 20th centuries. The diversification of the Finnic languages in the Northeastern Baltic Sea area involves both integration and disintegration of mutually closely related varieties. This article focuses on i) the variability of changes and their correlation with emerging divergence between Finnic languages, ii) local language contacts during the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern age, and iii) the rate of linguistic change. The external powers affecting the diversity between the Finnic languages include the settling of early Swedish, German and Slavic centres among or in the vicinity of Finnic communities, the policies of medieval Catholic and Orthodox church, the extension of the trading networks of the Hanseatic League, wars and conflicts between dominant political powers in the east and west, as well as the gradual establishment of political borders. I will suggest that all these factors have played a role in the rate of both lexical and grammatical change.

Comparative sociolinguistic perspectives on the rate of linguistic change

Abstract This issue of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics aims to contribute to our understanding of language change in real time by presenting a group of articles particularly focused on social and sociocultural factors underlying language diversification and change. By analysing data from a varied set of languages, including Greek, English, and the Finnic and Mongolic language families, and mainly focussing their investigation on the Middle Ages, the authors connect various social and cultural factors with the specific topic of the issue, the rate of linguistic change. The sociolinguistic themes addressed include community and population size, conflict and conquest, migration and mobility, bi- and multilingualism, diglossia and standardization. In this introduction, the field of comparative historical sociolinguistics is considered a cross-disciplinary enterprise with a sociolinguistic agenda at the crossroads of contact linguistics, historical comparative linguistics and linguistic typology.