ABSTRACT
In observing language change in progress, sociolinguists have had to tackle the question of time one way or another. As mentioned in Chapter 4, the examination of changes in real time is often impossible for the contemporary researcher. Developments are so slow that grasping them takes longer than a researcher’s active career or whole lifetime. Useful data on earlier stages of the language for comparative research are seldom available today, and they were even rarer 30 years ago when sociolinguistic studies were first introduced.
