Speaker-based approaches to past language states

Romance has always been an integral part of historical sociolinguistics (the hybrid of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics), as the relationship between Romance languages and Latin has provided an optimal theoretical framework for both parent fields. Whilst thriving within sociolinguistics, Romance also has had to share in the burden of problems (as well as efforts at resolving them) that have dogged the mother-field, especially theoretical ones, which generations of sociolinguists have drawn attention to, e.g., Romaine’s (1982, 110) characterization of William Labov’s assumption about the homogeneity of linguistic behaviour as “a convenient post hoc justification […], which affect[s] most sociolinguistic research”. The first part of this chapter, therefore, addresses speakers’ sociolinguistic behaviour, the main driving force behind perpetual variation, overwhelming continuity and relatively restrained instances of change. The second part reviews some studies on Romance, mostly conducted within the traditional, change-orientated framework, but with very interesting results.