Scribes as Agents of Language Change

Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2013

Scribes as Agents of Language Change

Edited by: Esther-Miriam Wagner , Ben Outhwaite and Bettina Beinhoff

Volume 10 in the series Studies in Language Change [SLC]

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614510543

Overview
Contents

About this book

The majority of our evidence for language change in pre-modern times comes from the written output of scribes. The present volume deals with a variety of aspects of language change and focuses on the role of scribes. The individual articles, which treat different theoretical and empirical issues, reflect a broad cross-linguistic and cross-cultural diversity. The languages that are represented cover a broad spectrum, and the empirical data come from a wide range of sources. This book provides a wealth of new data and new perspectives on old problems, and it raises new questions about the actual mechanisms of language change.

Author / Editor information

Esther-Miriam Wagner, Cambridge University, UK; Ben Outhwaite, Cambridge University, UK; Bettina Beinhoff, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

Supplementary Materials

Contents

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Acknowledgements Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	v
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Part I: Introduction
1 Scribes and Language Change Esther-Miriam Wagner, Ben Outhwaite and Bettina Beinhoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
Part II: From spoken vernacular to written form
2 Biblical Register and a Counsel of Despair: two Late Cornish versions of Genesis 1 Mark A. Williams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
3 Medieval Glossators as Agents of Language Change Markus Schiegg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
4 How scribes wrote Ibero-Romance before written Romance was invented Roger Wright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
5 Hittite scribal habits: Sumerograms and phonetic complements in Hittite cuneiform Anja Busse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Part III: Standardisation versus regionalisation and de-standardisation
6 Words of kings and counsellors: register variation and language change in early English courtly correspondence Terttu Nevalainen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
7 Quantifying gender change in Medieval English Florian Dolberg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
8 Identity and intelligibility in Late Middle English scribal transmission: local dialect as an active choice in fifteenth-century texts Merja Stenroos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
9 Lines of communication: Medieval Hebrew letters of the eleventh century Ben Outhwaite Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
10 The historical development of early Arabic documentary formulae Geoffrey Khan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
11 Individualism in “Osco-Greek” orthography Nicholas Zair Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
12 How a Jewish scribe in early modern Poland attempted to alter a Hebrew linguistic register Stefan Reif Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Part IV: Idiosyncracy, scribal standards and registers
13 Writing, reading, language change – a sociohistorical perspective on scribes, readers, and networks in medieval Britain Alexander Bergs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
14 Challenges of multiglossia: scribes and the emergence of substandard Judaeo- Arabic registers Esther-Miriam Wagner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
15 Variation in a Norwegian sixteenthcentury scribal community Ivar Berg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
16 Language change induced by written codes: a case of Old Kanembu and Kanuri dialects Dmitry Bondarev Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Audience: Linguists interested in Empirical and Theoretical Approaches to Language Change.
Pages
- Front matter: 8
- Main content: 328
Illustrations
- Tables: 33
- Other: Num. figs. and tabs.
Keywords: Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Scribes; Language Variation and Change; Registers

eBook

Published: March 22, 2013
ISBN: 9781614510543

Hardcover

Published: March 15, 2013
ISBN: 9781614510505