Helena Raumolin-Brunberg

PhD, Docent, Researcher
Tel. +358-(0)19-543106
E-mail: helena.raumolin-brunberg(at)helsinki.fi

Research Interests

Historical sociolinguistics, language change, Early Modern English

Work in progress

After the completion of two long-term projects, the monograph Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England, a ten-chapter volume written jointly with Terttu Nevalainen, and the VARIENG Feschrift for Terttu Nevalainen, edited in cooperation with Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Matti Rissanen, I have continued research on historical sociolinguistics by studying the behaviour of individuals in ongoing linguistic changes. As previously, the material has been retrieved from the 2.7- million-word Corpus of Early English Correspondence (c.1410-1681) and its Supplement. My research includes longitudinal analyses of the linguistic behaviour of individuals, study of the role of migration in the linguistic changes of individuals, and tracing the leaders of linguistic change, in other words people who adopt new forms before most other people do (see Publications and Forthcoming publications).

In this area, real-time historical research has an advantage over the apparent-time approach commonly used in present-day sociolinguistics. Moreover, the behaviour of individuals can be examined against the general picture of the diffusion of several early modern linguistic changes provided by Historical Sociolinguistics.

Furthermore, my current interests include the development of quantitative research methodology in a joint project of VARIENG and the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology (HIIT).

Publications

Helena Raumolin-Brunberg

Forthcoming. “Early Modern English: Sociolinguistics”. In Alexander Bergs & Laurel Brinton (eds.) Historical Linguistics of English. Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science. Berlin – New York: Walter de Gruyter.

2009. “Lifespan changes in the language of three early modern gentlemen”. In Arja Nurmi, Minna Nevala& Minna Palander-Collin (eds.) The Language of Daily Life in England (1450-1800). Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 183. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 165-196.

2008a. Review of Paul Baker, Andrew Hardie and Tony McEnery 2006. A Glossary of Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ICAME Journal 32: 233-235.

2008b. Review of Anna Wierzbicka 2006. English: Meaning and Culture. Oxford University Press. Language in Society 37/3: 462-465.

2006. “Leaders of linguistic change in Early Modern England.” In Facchinetti, Roberta & Matti Rissanen (eds.) Corpus-based Studies of Diachronic English. Linguistic Insights. Frankfurt a/M: Peter Lang. 115-134.

2005a. “Early Modern English”. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 2nd edition. Oxford: Elsevier.

2005b. “Language change in adulthood: historical letters as evidence”. European Journal of English Studies 9/1:37-51. Thematic issue on Letters and Letter Writing, ed. by Minna Nevala & Minna Palander-Collin.

2005c. Review of William Croft 2000. Explaining Language Change: an Evolutionary Approach. Longman Linguistics Library. London: Pearson. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 6/1: 172-176.

2005d. The diffusion of you: a case study in historical sociolinguistics. Language Variation and Change 17/: 55-73.

2004a. Review of Raymond Hickey (ed.) 2003. Motives for Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 8/1: 127-131.

2004b. Information page on Dorothy Osborne. In: Individual authors and their language. Historical Sociolinguistics - Sociohistorical Linguistics. Internet Journal.

2004c. “Ketkä muuttivat kieltä? Englannin historiallista sosiolingvistiikkaa.” Tieteessä tapahtuu 5: 24-28 .

2004d. Review of Teresa Fanego, María José López-Couso & Javier Pérez-Guerra (eds.) 2002. English Historical Syntax and Morphology: Selected Papers from the 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000 and Teresa Fanego, Belén Méndez-Naya and Elena Seoane (eds.) 2002. Sounds, Words, Texts and Change: Selected Papers from the 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. English Language and Linguistics 8/2: 355-360.

2003a. Review of Thomas Sokoll 2001. Essex Pauper Letters 1731-1837. Records of Social and Economic History, New Series 30. Published for The British Academy by Oxford University Press. Historical Sociolinguistics - Sociohistorical Linguistics. Internet Journal.

2003b. “Temporal aspects of language change: what can we learn from the CEEC?” In: Andrew Wilson, Paul Rayson and Anthony McEnery (eds.) Corpus Linguistics by the Lune: A Festschrift Studies for Geoffrey Leech. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 139-156.

2002. “Stable variation and historical linguistics”. In: Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi & Matti Rissanen (eds.) Variation Past and Present: VARIENG Studies on English for Terttu Nevalainen. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 61. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. 101-116.

2000a. “Which and the which in Late Middle English: free variants?” In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta & Matti Rissanen (eds.) Placing Middle English in Context. Topics in English Linguistics 35. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 209-225.

2000b. Review of Magnus Ljung (ed.) Corpus-based studies in English. Papers from the seventeenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 17), Stockholm, May 15-19, 1996. Amsterdam-Atlanta GA: Rodopi. 1997. Anglia 118/2:266-267.

1998. “Social factors and pronominal change in the seventeenth century: The Civil War effect?” Jacek Fisiak & Marcin Krygier (eds.) Advances in English Historical Linguistics. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 361-388.

1997a. “Incorporating sociolinguistic information into a diachronic corpus of English”. Raymond Hickey, Merja Kytö, Ian Lancashire & Matti Rissanen (eds.) Tracing the trail of the time: Proceedings of the Diachronic Corpora Workshop, Toronto (Canada) May 1995. Amsterdam & Georgia GA: Rodopi. 105-117.

1997b. “Reciprocal pronouns: from discontinuity to unity”. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia XXXI: 227-236 .

1997c. Review of Gregory R. Guy, Crawford Feagin, Deborah Schiffrin and John Baugh (eds.) Towards a Social Science of Language. Volume 1: Variation and Change in Language and Society. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 1996. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 98/3: 315-318.

1996a. “Apparent time”. In Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (eds). Sociolinguistics and Language History. Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam & Atlanta GA: Rodopi. 93-109.

1996b. “Forms of address in early English correspondence”. In Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (eds). Sociolinguistics and Language History. Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam & Atlanta GA: Rodopi. 167-181.

1996c. “Historical sociolinguistics”. In Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (eds). Sociolinguistics and Language History. Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam & Atlanta GA: Rodopi. 11-37.

1994a. “Prototype categories and variation studies”. In Francisco Fernández, Miguel Fuster & Juan José Calvo (eds.) English Historical Linguistics 1992. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 287-303.

1994b. “The development of the compound pronouns in - body and -one in Early Modern English”. In Dieter Kastovsky (ed.) Studies in Early Modern English. Topics in English Linguistics, 13. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 301-324.

1994c. “The position of adjectival modifiers in Late Middle English noun phrases”. In Udo Fries, Gunnel Tottie & Peter Schneider (eds.) Creating and Using English Language Corpora. Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics, 13. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi. 159-168.

1994d. Review of Andreas H. Jucker (1992), Social Stylistics. Syntactic Variation in British Newspapers. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 95/2: 255-256 .

1993a. “From Thomas More to present-day English: noun phrase stability and variability”. In Andreas H. Jucker (ed.) The Noun Phrase in English. Its Structure and Variability. anglistik + englischunterricht 49: 107-120.

1993b. “Postmodification in Early Modern English noun phrases”. In Julian D’Arcy (ed.) Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference for English Studies. Reykjavik: University of Iceland. 222-236.

1993c. “Sociolinguistics, variation and Thomas More”. The New Courant 1: 45-49.

1991. The Noun Phrase in Early Sixteenth-Century English: A Study Based on Sir Thomas More’s Writings. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, 50. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.

Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg

2005. Sociolinguistics and the history of English: A survey. International Journal of English Studies 5/1: 39-71.

2003. Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. Longman Linguistics Library. London: Pearson Education.

2002. “The rise of the relative who in Early Modern English”. Patricia Poussa (ed.) Relativisation on the North Sea Littoral. LINCOM Studies in Language Typology 7. München: LINCOM EUROPA. 109-121.

2000a. “Sosiolingvistiikan haaste kielihistoriassa”. Kari Sajavaara & Anja Piirainen-Marsh (eds.) Kieli, diskurssi ja yhteisö. Soveltavan kielentutkimuksen teoriaa ja käytäntöä 2. Jyväskylä: Soveltavan kielentutkimuksen keskus. 39-66.

2000b. “The changing role of London on the linguistic map of Tudor and Stuart England.” In: Dieter Kastovsky & Arthur Mettinger (eds.) The History of English in a Social Context. A Contribution to Historical Sociolinguistics. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 129. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 279-337.

2000c. “The third-person singular -(E)S and -(E)TH revisited: the morphophonemic hypothesis”. In: Christiane Dalton-Puffer & Nikolaus Ritt (eds.) Words: Structure, Meaning, Function. A Festschrift for Dieter Kastovsky. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 130. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 235-248.

1998. “Reconstructing the social dimension of diachronic language change”. In: Historical Linguistics 1995, ed. by Richard Hogg & Linda van Bergen. Amsterdam/Philadelpia: Benjamins. 189-209.

1996a. “Social stratification in Tudor English?” In Derek Brittan (ed.) English Historical Linguistics 1994: Papers from the 8th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 303-326.

1996b. “The Corpus of Early English Correspondence”. In Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (eds). Sociolinguistics and Language History. Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam & Atlanta GA: Rodopi. 39-54.

(Eds.) 1996 Sociolinguistics and Language History. Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam & Atlanta GA: Rodopi.

1995. “Constraints on politeness: the pragmatics of address formulae in early English correspondence”. In Andreas H. Jucker (ed.) Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatics and Beyond. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 541-601.

1994a. “ Its strength and the beauty of it: the standardization of the third person neuter possessive in Early Modern English”. In Dieter Stein & Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.) Towards a Standard English, 1600-1800. Topics in English Linguistics, 12. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 171-216. Also published in Mats Rydén, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade & Merja Kytö (eds.) A Reader in Early Modern English. Bamberger Beiträge zur Englischen Sprachwissenschaft 43. Frankfurt a/M: Peter Lang. 73-117.

1994b. “Sociolinguistics and language history: the Helsinki Corpus of Early English Correspondence”. Hermes Journal of Linguistics 13: 135-143.

1993. “Early Modern British English”. In Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö & Minna Palander-Collin (eds.) Early English in Computer Age: Explorations through the Helsinki Corpus. Topics in English Linguistics, 11. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 53-73.

Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg & Peter Trudgill

2001. “Chapters in the social history of East Anglian English: the case of third person singular”. In Jacek Fisiak & Peter Trudgill (eds.) East Anglian English. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. 187-204.

Helena Raumolin-Brunberg & Terttu Nevalainen

2007. “Historical Sociolinguistics: The Corpus of Early English Correspondence.” In J.C. Beal, K. Corrigan & H. Moisl (eds.) Creating and Digitizing Language Corpora: Diachronic Databases. Volume 2. Palgrave. 148-171.

2007. “From mine to my and thine to thy: Loss of the nasal in the first and second person possesssives”. In Ute Smit, Stefan Dollinger, Julia Hüttner, Gunther Kaltenböck & Ursula Lutzky (eds.) Tracing English through Time: Explorations in Language Variation. Austrian Studies in English, 95. Vienna: Braumüller. 303-314.

1997a. “Like father (un)like son: a sociolinguistic approach to the language of the Cely family”. In Jazek Fisiak (ed.) Studies in Middle English Linguistics. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 103. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 489-511

1997b. “Social embedding of linguistic changes in Tudor English”. Raymond Hickey & Stanislaw Puppel (eds.) Language history and linguistic modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th birthday. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 701-717.

1994. “Social conditioning and diachronic language change”. In Dieter Kastovsky (ed.) Studies in Early Modern English. Topics in English Historical Linguistics, 13. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 325-338.

Helena Raumolin-Brunberg & Leena Kahlas-Tarkka

1997. “Indefinite pronouns with singular human reference”. In Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö & Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.) Grammaticalization at work: Studies of long-term developments in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 17-85.

1995. “Whoever and anyone who: what was there before? Observations on Biblical English”. The New Courant 3: 181-193.

Helena Raumolin-Brunberg & Arja Nurmi

Also published in Nurmi, Arja 1999. A Social History of Periphrastic do . Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, 56. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. 111-139.

1997. “Dummies on the move: prop- one and affirmative do in the 17th century”. In Terttu Nevalainen & Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.) To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, 52. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. 395-417.

Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi & Matti Rissanen (eds.)

2002. Variation Past and Present: VARIENG Studies on English for Terttu Nevalainen. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 61. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.

Hinneburg Alexander, Heikki Mannila, Samuli Kaislaniemi, Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg.

2007. “How to handle small samples: bootstrap and Bayesian methods in the analysis of linguistic change”. Literary and Linguistic Computing 22: 137-150.