The role of individuals in language change: idiolectal distributions in the private correspondence of six contemporary nineteenth-century personalities
Abstract
This article analyses the idiolectal distributions of two syntactic variables subjected to different processes of linguistic change in a sample of six contemporary personalities from the second half of the 19th century. Using a discourse tradition close to the pole of communicative immediacy, such as private correspondence, and comparing it with the community distributions obtained in previous variationist research on the same materials, the results of the study show the existence of different individual profiles and their link with the phases of change in which each variable is situated, as well as the normative pressures associated with this fact. As expected, refractory individuals dominate in the still-emerging changes, such as the diffusion of the variant en + art + que in oblique relative clauses to the detriment of the traditional one without the article (en que). However, a much more progressive change, such as the replacement of the traditional periphrasis haber de + infinitive in deontic contexts by tener que + infinitive, favours in-between profiles - those who closely follow the communal distributions - or followers, whose uses significantly exceed these general averages. Nevertheless, the study reveals the existence of individuals who contradict these profiles. It also shows that writers do not always follow the majority distributions expected when they enter early adulthood; on the contrary, they may adapt to those that circulate in society later, during their maturity. Finally, the study shows that the type of change also affects the degree of stability or dynamism of idiolect distributions. Thus, stability predominates in the relative clauses, whereas, in verbal periphrases, there is more variability between different periods of the correspondence.
Keywords
Idiolectal variation, Historical sociolinguistics, Syntactic change, Egodocuments, 19th centuryReferences
BARLOW, Michael (2013): «Individual differences and usage-based grammar», International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 18, pp. 443–478.
BAXTER, Gareth y William CROFT (2016): «Modeling language change across the lifespan: Individual trajectories in community change», Language Variation and Change, 28, pp. 129–73.
BERGS, Alexander (2005): Social network analysis and historical sociolinguistics. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
BLAS ARROYO, José Luis (2021): «Traces of the past in a lengthy change (still) in progress: persistence and generalization in prepositional relative clauses in Peninsular Spanish», en Manuel Díaz-Campos (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 492-505.
BLAS ARROYO, José Luis (2022): «Patterns of individual variation and change in Golden Age Spanish. Analysis of three linguistic variables in a private correspondence corpus», Folia Linguistica Historica, 43(4), pp. 1-40.
BLAS ARROYO, José Luis y Javier VELLÓN LAHOZ (2018): «On the trail of grammaticalisation in progress: has el que become a compound relative pronoun in the history of Spanish prepositional relative clauses?», Probus. International Journal of Romance Linguistics, 30(1), pp. 1-45.
BLAS ARROYO, José Luis, Margarita PORCAR y Javier VELLÓN LAHOZ (2013): «Un hito clave en la evolución de las perífrasis modales de infinitivo: análisis sociolingüístico de la alternancia haber de/tener que + infinitivo en textos de inmediatez comunicativa del siglo XIX», Revista de Historia de la Lengua Española, 8, pp. 29-62.
BOBERG, Charles (2004): «Real and apparent time in language change: Late adoption of changes in Montreal English», American Speech, 79(3), pp. 250–269.
BRUCART, José M.ª (1999): «La estructura del sintagma nominal: las oraciones de relativo», en Ignacio Bosque y Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, vol. 2. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, pp. 395–522..
EBERENZ, Rolf (2000): El español en el otoño de la Edad Media. Sobre el artículo y los pronombres. Madrid: Gredos.
ECKERT, Penelope (2000): Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell.
ECKERT, Penelope (2020): «The individual in the semiotic landscape», Glossa, 4(1), pp. 1–15.
ELSPASß, Stephan (2012): «The use of private letters and diaries in sociolinguistic investigation», en Juan M. Hernández-Campoy y Juan C. Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, Malden, MA y Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 156–169.
FONTEYN, Lauren y Peter PETRÉ (2022): «On the probability and direction of morphosyntactic lifespan change», Language Variation and Change (2022), 1–27 (open access).
GIRÓN ALCONCHEL, José Luis (2006): «La historia del artículo como antecedente de relativas oblicuas desde el punto de vista de la gramaticalización», en José Luis Girón Alconchel y José Jesús Bustos Tovar (eds.). Actas del VI Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española (Madrid, 2013). Vol. 1. Madrid: Arco Libros, pp. 765-776.
GÓMEZ TORREGO, Leonardo (1999): «La variación en las subordinadas sustantivas: dequeísmo y queísmo», en Ignacio Bosque y Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, vol. 2. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, pp. 2105–2148.
GUY, Gregory R (2013): «The cognitive coherence of sociolects: How do speakers handle multiple sociolinguistic variables? », Journal of Pragmatics, 52, pp. 63–71.
HENDRICKS, Jennifer (2013): «The effects of complex migration trajectories on individual linguistic repertoires in the early modern Dutch urban context», Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 119, pp. 121–144.
HERNÁNDEZ CAMPOY, Juan Manuel (2021): «Corpus-based lifespan change in Late Middle English», en Karen V. Beaman y Isabelle Buchstaller (eds.), Language variation and language change across the lifespan: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives from Panel Studies. New York: Routledge [Electronic book].
HERNÁNDEZ-CAMPOY, Juan Manuel y Tamara GARCÍA-VIDAL (2018): «Style-shifting and accommodative competence in Late Middle English written correspondence: Putting Audience Design to the test of time», Folia Linguistica Historica, 52, pp. 383–420.
KERSWILL, Paul. (1996): «Children, adolescents, and language change», Language Variation and Change, 8, pp. 177–202.
LABOV, William (1994): Principles of linguistic change, vol. 1: Internal factors. Philadelphia: Blackwell Publishing Co.
LABOV, William (2001): Principles of linguistic change, vol. 2: Social factors. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Co.
LAPESA, Rafael (2000): «El, la, lo como antecedente de relativo en español», en Rafael Cano Aguilar y M.ª Teresa Echenique (eds.). Estudios de morfosintaxis histórica del español. Madrid: Gredos, pp. 388-401.
LENNEBERG, Eric H (1967): Biological Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley.
MEISEL, Jurgen, Martin ELSIG y Esther RINKE (2013): Language acquisition and change: A morphosyntactic perspective. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
MOLLIN, Sandra (2009): «‘I entirely understand’ is a Blairism: The methodology of identifying idiolectal collocations», International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 14(3), pp. 367–392.
NEVALAINEN, Tertu y Helena RAUMOLIN-BRUNBERG (2017): Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. New York: Routledge (3.ª edición).
NEVALAINEN, Tertu, Helena RAUMOLIN-BRUNBERG y Heikki MANNILA (2011): «The diffusion of language change in real time: Progressive and conservative individuals and the time depth of change», Language Variation and Change, 23(1), pp. 1–43.
OESTERREICHER, Wulf (2004): «Textos entre inmediatez y distancia comunicativas. El problema de lo hablado escrito en el Siglo de Oro», en Rafael Cano Aguilar (ed.), Historia de la lengua española. Barcelona: Ariel, pp. 729–769.
PAIVA, Maria da Conceição, Eugênia DUARTE y Gregory GUY (2021): «Alignment of individuals with community trends: Subjects from the Portuguese», en Karen V. Beaman y Isabelle Buchstaller (eds.), Language variation and language change across the lifespan: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives from Panel Studies. New York: Routledge [Electronic book].
PETRÉ, Peter y Freek VAN DE VELDE (2018): «The real-time dynamics of the individual and the community in grammaticalization», Language, 94(4), pp. 867–901.
PETRÉ, Peter y Lynn ANTHONISSEN (2020): «Individuality in complex systems: A constructionist approach», Cognitive Linguistics, 31(2), pp. 185–212.
RAUMOLIN-BRUNBERG, Helena (2005): «Language change in adulthood: Historical letters as evidence», European Journal of English Studies, 9(1), pp. 37–51.
RAUMOLIN-BRUNBERG, Helena (2009): «Lifespan changes in the language of three early modern gentlemen», en Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi y Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), The Language of Daily Life in England (1450–1800). Amsterdam y Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 165–196.
SANKOFF, Gillian (2013): «Longitudinal studies», en Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron y Ceil Lucas (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 261–279.
SANKOFF, Gillian (2018): «Language Change Across the Lifespan», Annual Review of Linguistics, 4, pp. 297–316.
SANKOFF, Gillian y Hélène BLONDEAU (2007): «Language change across the lifespan: /r/ in Montreal French», Language, 83(3), pp. 560–588.
SCHNEIDER, Edgar (2013): «Investigating variation and change in written documents», en Jack Chambers y Natalie Schilling (eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell, , 57-81.
STEIN, Dieter (1987): «At the crossroads of philology, linguistics and semiotics: Notes on the replacement of th by s in third person singular in English», English Studies, 5, pp. 406-431.
WAGNER, Suzanne E (2008): Linguistic change and stabilization in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Thesis. University of Pennsylvania.
Published
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2022 José Luis Blas Arroyo
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.