Sociolinguistique historique: la naissance d’une nouvelle discipline

La publication en 1982 de Socio-Historical Linguistics, la monographie consacrée par Suzanne Romaine aux pronoms relatifs de l’Écossais moyen entre 1530 et 1550, est aujourd’hui généralement retenue comme marquant la naissance d’une discipline appliquant, comme son nom l’indique, les théories et les concepts de la sociolinguistique aux données historiques. Mais, bien que le nom de la discipline ait certainement été inventé au début des années 1980, certains de ses principes remontent plus hau..

Urbanisation, Supralocalisation and the Development of Periphrastic DO in Early Modern England

An increasing body of studies point to supralocalisation processes being an important factor in the emergence and development of written Standard English, which largely took place from the Late Middle English to the Late Modern English period (c. 1400–1700). Given that the south-east area, with its metropolis London, played an important role in this development, it is not surprising that this region has received much attention by English historical linguists and philologists. The current paper shifts the focus to written English in the important regional centres of York (North), Bristol (Southwest), and Coventry (West Midlands) in the same period to explore potential supralocalisation processes, which in turn help to further our understanding of the underlying standardisation processes of written English. Couched within the field of historical (socio)linguistics and based on new manuscript material from these urban centres, this paper combines qualitative and quantitative approaches with the philological method to present new findings on the development of periphrastic DO, paying particular attention to the language-external factors place and text type. The results, in line with previous studies, reveal that periphrastic DO primarily occurs in affrimative declaratives and to a lesser extent in negative sentences in all investigated text types in the different urban centres over the period 1400–1700. However, in contrast to earlier findings, no clear rise-fall pattern emerges, and it is diffcult to determine a path of supralocalisation

The future of historical sociolinguistics?

Peer reviewe

THE NEW CENTENNIAL SNOW INITIATIVE FOR THE GREATER ALPINE REGION (GAR). STATUS REPORT AND FIRST RESULTS

Snow is a significant element in the climate system and has great impact on ecosystem and economy in the Alps, too. Astonishingly there is still a strong gap between the data potential and the data availability. Caused by the existing deficits we started a digitising, quality evaluation, homogenising and analysing initiative for the Alpine region. For the first time we can present a 21-year (1895-1915) daily, high density dataset that was electronically scanned from historic hydro-yearbooks for recent Austria and additional some surrounding regions in Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Czech Republic. We hope that our snow initiative will grow to a pan-alpine effort to fill the existing lack of information

On the context-free ambiguity of emoji

Due to their pictographic nature, emojis come with baked-in, grounded semantics. Although this makes emojis promising candidates for new forms of more accessible communication, it is still unknown to what degree humans agree on the inherent meaning of emojis when encountering them outside of concrete textual contexts. To bridge this gap, we collected a crowdsourced dataset (made publicly available) of one-word descriptions for 1,289 emojis presented to participants with no surrounding text. The emojis and their interpretations were then examined for ambiguity. We find that, with 30 annotations per emoji, 16 emojis (1.2%) are completely unambiguous, whereas 55 emojis (4.3%) are so ambiguous that the variation in their descriptions is as high as that in randomly chosen descriptions. Most emojis lie between these two extremes. Furthermore, investigating the ambiguity of different types of emojis, we find that emojis representing symbols from established, yet not cross-culturally familiar code books (e.g., zodiac signs, Chinese characters) are most ambiguous. We conclude by discussing design implications

Historical sociolinguistics: the field and its future

AbstractThis article introduces the newJournal of Historical Sociolinguisticsby situating it in the developing field of historical sociolinguistics. The landmark paper of Weinreich et al. (1968), which paid increased attention to extralinguistic factors in the explanation of language variation and change, served as an important basis for the gradual development and expansion of historical sociolinguistics as a separate (sub)field of inquiry, notably since the influential work of Romaine (1982). This article traces the development of the field of historical sociolinguistics and considers some of its basic principles and assumptions, including the uniformitarian principle and the so-called bad data problem. Also, an overview is provided of some of the directions recent research has taken, both in terms of the different types of data used, and in terms of important approaches, themes and topics that are relevant to many studies within the field. The article concludes with considerations of the necessarily multidisciplinary nature of historical sociolinguistics, and invites authors from various research traditions to submit original research articles to the journal, and thus help to further the development of the fascinating field of historical sociolinguistics.</jats:p

Feeding habits of two introduced fish species (Lepomis gibbosus, Pseudorasbora parva) in Neusiedler See (Austria), with special reference to chironomid larvae (Diptera: Chironomidae

Abstract In Neusiedler See, a turbid shallow lake, Lepomis gibbosus (L.) and Pseudorasbora parva (Temminck &amp; Schlegel) occur in large numbers within the reed belt. In April, June/July, August and September 1995, fishes were collected for gut analyses. The diet of both species consisted mainly of chironomid larvae. 0+ L. gibbosus whose total length exceeded 26 mm and 0+ P. parva larger than 32 mm preyed on chironomids almost exclusively. The food of &gt;0+ L. gibbosus, in addition to chironomids, was made up of other aquatic insects (e.g. Zygoptera nymphs, Corixidae and Trichoptera larvae), gastropods and Asellus aquaticus L. The diet of &gt;0+ L. gibbosus showed distinct seasonal variations. Detailed analyses of the chironomid larvae in the stomachs of the two fish species provided valuable information on their feeding grounds. Whereas L. gibbosus preyed mainly on sediment-dwelling chironomids, P. parva preferred epiphytic species. Diet overlaps between L. gibbosus and P. parva and other abundant fish species in the reed belt (Anguilla anguilla (L.), Blicca bjoerkna (L.), Gymnocephalus cernuus (L.)) are discussed

Reproductive non-seasonality in rhinoceroses: A review of the in-situ literature and birth records of ex-situ institutions

Mammals whose breeding activity is triggered by seasonal photoperiodic cues typically maintain seasonal reproduction in zoos, with births accumulating to various degrees in spring. For zoo-kept rhinoceroses, accumulation of births in autumn has been suggested, which would make this group unusual. We compare birthing (and hence conception) patterns of free-ranging rhinoceros populations from the scientific literature with those of the global zoo populations based on birth data available from Species360, to facilitate deductions on the cues that trigger rhinoceros reproduction. The patterns do not indicate a photoperiodic element in rhinoceros reproduction but suggest suppression of conception in free-ranging populations at times of resource scarcity. This is not evident in zoos. However, a slight accumulation of autumn births, due to a slight reduction in births in spring, is visible in the zoo populations. Given rhinoceros gestation periods, this is linked to reduced conceptions in November–December. The most parsimonious interpretation is management-related, as has been suggested (Roth 2006, Int. Zoo Yb. 40(1): 130–143): not all facilities are prepared to allow mating at times when outdoor husbandry is reduced due to weather restrictions. Given the long interbirth intervals of rhinoceroses, missed conception opportunities of 1–2 months are unlikely to affect population demographics. Nevertheless, detailed recording of approaches to facilitate mating during winter months by those zoos that achieve this may increase the general skill of rhinoceros management