The book presents an analysis of selected domains of morphosyntactic variation in a 250,000 word collection of the Middle English Paston Letters (1421-1503) from a historical sociolinguistic point of view. In the three case studies, two nominal and one verbal variable are described and discussed in detail: the replacement of Old English <h-> pronouns by borrowed <th-> pronouns, the introduction and spread of the <wh-> relativizers, and the spread and routinization of light verb constructions (take, make, give, have, do plus deverbal noun).

While the study aims at a balanced integration of theories and methods from a number of different approaches in sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, typology, and language change, its main focus is social network theory and the role of the linguistic individual in the formation and change of language structures. Questions of individual language use and of deliberate versus unmonitored changes in the (individual) system take center stage and are discussed in the light of social network analysis. Traditional empirical social network analysis is carefully revised. Despite its many merits in present-day sociolinguistics, it often needs to be supplemented by hermeneutic-biographical analyses of the individual speakers' lives when applied to historical data. With this background, common theories and models of language change, such as grammaticalization, paradigmatic pressure, typological alignment, and generational shifts, are illustrated and evaluated from the point of view of single speakers and social groups, and their particular embedding in the speech community through various network structures.

The book is of interest to advanced students and researchers in English and general linguistics, Middle English, historical linguistics and language change, corpus linguistics, as well as sociolinguistics.

Alexander T. Bergs is Assistant Professor at the Department of English Language and Linguistics at Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Chapter One
Introduction
1. Aims and contents
1.1. Empirical objectives, historical embedding
1.2. Structure of the book

Chapter Two
Historical sociolinguistics
1. What is historical sociolinguistics?
1.1. Social sciences - history - linguistics
1.2. Historical sociolinguistics
1.2.1. The object of investigation
1.2.2. Research material
2. Summary

Chapter Three
Social network analysis - present and past
1. Introduction
2. Present-day social network analysis
2.1. The development of network theory
2.1.1. Elements and constructs of network theory
2.1.2. Attitudes and behavior in networks - network roles
3. Social network analysis, language variation, and language change
3.1. Principles of language change
3.2. Historical network analysis
3.2.1. Background
3.2.2. The principle of uniformity
3.2.3. Data problems
3.3. Micro- versus macro-studies
3.4. Developing a network for (late) medieval England
3.5. The network(s) of the Paston family
3.5.1. Biographical sketches
3.5.2. The network(s)
4. The corpus

Chapter Four
Personal pronouns
1. The development of personal pronouns in Middle and Early Modern English
1.1. Sources: Dialect geography
1.2. Sources: Internal factors
1.2.1. Therapeutic change in the pronoun system
1.2.2. Analogy
1.2.3. Formatives and analogical leveling
1.2.4. Frequency and analogy
2. Pronouns in the Paston Letters
2.1. Overall developments
2.2. Distribution across time
2.3. Individual patterns
2.4. External factors
2.4.1. Gender of the speaker
2.4.2. Addressee and relationship to addressee
2.5. Internal factors
2.5.1. Syntactic function
2.5.2. Gender of the referent
2.5.3. Animacy of the referent
2.5.4. Stress and phonetic environment
2.6. Summary
3. Ye and You

Chapter 5
Relative clauses
1. Introduction
2. Relativization - some technical remarks
2.1. Adnominal - free - sentential
2.2. Restrictive - non-restrictive
3. Relativization and the history of English
3.1. Relativization in the Old English Period
3.2. Changes in the Late Old English and Early Middle English Period
3.3. Relative clauses after 1300
4. Relative Clauses in the Paston Letters
4.1. Methodology
4.1.1. Relative marker type
4.1.2. Restrictiveness
4.1.3. Syntactic function of the relativizer and antecedent
4.1.4. Animacy
4.1.5. Number
4.1.6. Definiteness
4.1.7. Distant versus adjacent relative clauses
5. Results
5.1. A community grammar
5.1.1. Restrictiveness
5.1.2. Animacy
5.1.3. Definiteness of the antecedent
5.1.4. Number
5.1.5. Syntactic function
5.1.6. Distance antecedent - relative clause
5.2. A social grammar
5.2.1. Gender of the author
5.2.2. Gender of the addressee
5.2.3. Relationship between author and addressee
5.2.4. Variation across time
5.3. Individual grammars
5.3.1. Individual use of relative pronouns
6. Summary

Chapter 6
The light verb construction
1. Introduction
1.1. Historical development
1.1.1. Structural changes and developments
1.2. The light verb construction in the Paston Letters
1.2.1. Methodological issues
2. Results
2.1. General frequencies
2.1.1. Number, determination, modification
2.1.2. Syntax
2.2. Social factors and developments
2.2.1. Temporal factors
2.2.2. Gender
2.3. Individual grammars

Chapter 7
Conclusion: A network perspective
1. A historical whodunnit
1.1. Personal pronouns, relativizers, and light verb constructions
1.2. Corroborative data
2. Networks and language use in the Paston Family: Take One
2.1. Why network strength scales should not simply correlate with historical linguistic data - at least in this case
2.1.1. Now you see it, now you don't
2.1.2. The times they are achanging - and so are the networks
2.2. Networks and language use in the Paston family: Take Two
3. Social networks and language use: a modest proposal