Chapter 13
Towards an acquisitionally informed historical
sociolinguistics
This conclusion chapter offers an overview of
some of the main themes developed throughout the volume and
highlights several important theoretical and methodological
implications for the development of new acquisitionally informed
research agendas in historical sociolinguistics. The use of
acquisition theory and corpora as sources of information to
interpret the sociohistorical and sociolinguistic archive is
complicated by several methodological and analytical hurdles –
nevertheless, it is argued here that acquisitional analogues between
past and present and a knowledge of how various groups of learners
process different forms of variation can do much to propel the study
of language variation and change in historical situations. In
addition, new technological developments and sources of data can
furnish researchers additional information about how individual
acquisitional trajectories may have contributed to the linguistic
patterns attested in the archival record. Lastly, an acquisitionally
informed perspective can also be a step to address structural
inequalities in linguistic description and in the construction of
knowledge in our field.
Article outline
- 1.What lies ahead? Language acquisition across the lifespan and future research
agendas in historical sociolinguistics
- 2.What’s needed? Challenges and opportunities
-
References