TRACING THE GENERATIONAL PROGRESS OF LANGUAGE CHANGE IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH: THE DIGRAPH <TH> IN THE PASTON LETTERS

Research based on corpora of historical correspondence has not only confirmed the relevance of letters to reconstruct the sociolinguistic contexts of language changes in the past, it has also sanctioned the historical validity of some 'sociolinguistic universals' like, among others, the curvilinear hypothesis, the distinctions between 'overt' and 'covert' prestige, 'changes from above' and 'changes from below' and has often permitted to trace the diffusion of historically attested changes over the social, geographical and temporal spaces, as well as their connection to age, social status, occupation, gender and mobility. The sociolinguistic possibilities of late fifteenth century English private correspondence are, in this sense, outstanding, in so far as it belongs to a crucial period in the development of the English language. Moreover, the preservation of letters written by members of the same family over several generations (such as those included in the fifteenth-century Paston correspondence) ensures that the sociolinguistic diffusion of changes in the course of time can also be traced, and attempts can be made to track individual and community behaviours in this respect. In this paper the patterns of chronological diffusion of a change in progress in fifteenth century English the diffusion of <th> replacing and <d> is reconstructed in connection to the individual repertoires of letter-writers from the above-mentioned collection.