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We tried to show in Chapter 4 how a specific français de Paris may have developed initially through a process of koinéisation in the social and linguistic melting-pot of the medieval city. In this chapter we will see what information may be gleaned from contemporary written documents. If we follow the quantitative methodology pioneered by A. Dees, we might be able to discern in the writing system used in medieval Parisian documents distant traces of the dialect-mixing and variation characteristic of medieval Parisian speech. We will conclude the chapter with general remarks on the city's sociolinguistic structure at the end of the thirteenth century. Although Paris was not a port-city with colonies of speakers drawn from widely scattered areas of the known world, in the thirteenth century it became a dialect melting-pot, and has continued to be one ever since. It attracted relatively large numbers of English-speakers, Flemish-speakers, Italian-speakers, Latin-speakers (see Beaulieux 1927: 112–26), but the most important element in the formation of its patterns of speech was the constant flow, in and out of the city, of speakers of other north Gallo-Romance dialects like Picard, Champenois and Norman, and, of course, HDP. It has been observed that in bourgeoning cities in the modern world, high levels of in-migration and population-mixing induce a corresponding level of dialect-mixing, which may lead eventually to koinéisation (see Manessy 1994: 23). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The desirability of a multidimensional approach to linguistic history is easy enough to argue nowadays. What is nothing like so easy is to find the data which would make such a study possible. This chapter must begin with the central and most intractable problem in the book: that of evidence. We will set out the main types of data available in the different periods of Parisian French, with for ever at the back of our mind the basic uncertainty over whether historical sociolinguistics is possible at all (§ 2.1). In the second and third parts we will look at general factors in urban history and dialect development which will help us limit the range of constructions we can place upon our very imperfect data-base. Since language and society are inextricably entwined, any patterns we detect in urban dialect development must be compatible with the patterns identified by urban historians in the development of European cities over the relevant period (§ 2.2). Furthermore, whatever patterns we see in the past must be broadly in line with the insights derived by modern dialectologists from analogous, and infinitely better documented, linguistic situations in the contemporary world. The ‘uniformitarian principle’ is no panacea, but it may be possible to project backwards to obtain a better understanding of earlier stages of the French language (§ 2.3). All of this will be incorporated into the general analytical frame which we will set out in the concluding paragraph and which will structure the rest of the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]