I-IV -- Preface -- List of participants -- The dangers of dialect parochialism: the Scottish vowel length rule -- Remarks on the question of dialects in Old Irish -- Center and periphery: adoption, diffusion, and spread -- Syntactic change in Finnish dialects -- What is in a name? -- Propositions for the study of Old French and its dialects -- Dialects wanting homes: a numerical approach to the early varieties of Coptic -- Stylistic dialects in Fox linguistic change -- The study of Early Modern English variation - the Cinderella of English historical linguistics? -- The unnaturalness of naturalness -- A lost Middle English dialect -- The phonological incorporation of Spanish into Mexicano (Nahuatl) -- Historical implications of a dialectological approach to convergence -- Social dialect influence in language change: the halting of a sound change in Oslo Norwegian -- The importance of dialectology for a new look at Romance linguistic history -- Bartoli's second "norm" -- Ladin and other relic language forms in the eastern Alpine region -- The actuation problem for gender change in Wessex versus Newfoundland -- On the state and possible aims of Middle English word geography -- Dialectology in historical grammar -- The relative WHAT: two kinds of evidence -- Change in the perception of language varieties -- Formation and evolution of the feminine and masculine nominative singular nouns in Old French la maison(s) and li charbons -- On the role of dialect contact and interdialect in linguistic change -- The history of voicing of initial fricatives in Southern England: a case of conflict between regional and social dialect -- Old English glossaries and dialectology -- The phonology of South-Western English 1500-1700 -- Die Vokalentwicklungen des Neiderländisch- Schlesischen in strukturgeographischstrukturhistorischer Sicht -- Metaphors in dialectological diction. A critical note -- Index of names