Some prospects for historical dialectology: the choice of data vs the result of a dialectal study

 

Joanna Bugaj

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

 

The paper will largely draw on the thoughts and ideas presented and developed at the first international conference devoted to English historical dialectology, 1st ICEHD, held at Bergamo, Italy, in September 2003.

 

The interplay between three dimensions: time, space and genre, makes dialectal historical studies especially demanding. A trustworthy text description and much precision in finding the provenance and judging the age of a given text sample is crucial in dialectal studies, because these factors determine the worth of any research, be it in comparative, explanatory or descriptive terms. Historical dialectologists have at their disposal vast non-literary material compiled in English in various places, at various points in time. To achieve best results in a dialectal analysis, it would be advisable to select such texts which by nature are 'marked' for place and time of compilation.

One group of such texts would be administrative records. In their case, the textual material can be easily traced to a particular location and a specific time of compilation (very often referred to verbatim in the text). The point is, however, whether such texts, conforming to certain stylistic and formal requirements, can still serve as a source of dialectal information.

 

This paper is going to test the hypothesis that administrative records do constitute valuable material for a historical linguist, especially in the area of morphology. As Older Scots lies among the interests of the author, several text types falling in the category of Scottish administrative records (especially burgh court records), taken from different locations of medieval Scotland, are going to be examined in search for dialectal features.

 

 

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