Seeking Systematicity in Variation: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations on the " Variety " Concept (original) (raw)
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Balirano, G. / Bamford, J. / Vincent, J. (eds) 2012. Variation and Varieties in Contexts of English
Balirano, G. / Bamford, J. / Vincent, J. (eds) 2012. Variation and Varieties in Contexts of English. Anglistica AION: An Interdisciplinary Journal 16(1-2) [Special Issue]. ISSN: 2035-8504., 2012
This issue of Anglistica deals with variation and varieties of English from a wide range of perspectives and methodological approaches mainly from within sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. The empirically oriented papers analyse a range of different types of field-gathered authentic data and corpora, covering intra- and inter-language, intra- and inter-speaker variation, variously involving register, genre, stylistic, diaphasic, diatopical, diastratic and diachronic types of variation. The issue aims to contribute to the ongoing debates on language variation and its implications, highlighting its dynamic social and socio-psychological functions and meanings as well as some taxonomic and terminological issues.
Convergence between dialect varieties and dialect groups in the Dutch language area
Linguistic Variation in Text and Speech, 2014
Editorial Board Michel Espagne (paris) . Marino Freschi (Rom) Ekkehard Konig (Berlin) Michael Lackner -i rlangen-urnberg) Per Linell (Linkoping) . Angelika inke (ZUrich) Chri tine Maillard ( trasbourg) ' orenza M ndada (Basel) Pieter Muyskeo (Nijmegen) . Woifgaog Raible (Freiburg) Monika chmitz-Emans (Bochum) 28 De Gruyter Aggregating Dialectology, Typology, and Register Analysis Convergence between dialect varieties and dialect groups in the Dutch language area* Abstract We aim to show that dialects are changing and becoming less differentiated.
Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2007
When asked by an interviewer what he thought of sociolinguistics, Noam Chomsky responded that whereas such work might have value for dispelling misconceptions and prejudice about non-standard language varieties, the study of the relation between social class and linguistic variables has no more scientific interest than butterfly collecting. "If you like butterflies, that's fine, but such work must not be confounded with research, which is concerned to discover explanatory principles of some depth" (Language and Responsibility, Noam Chomsky, with Mitsou Ronat, Pantheon Books, 1979:57). The two books under review would appear to afford a vantage point for assessing the relation between sociolinguistics and formal grammatical theory three decades later. The collection Dialect Change, according to its editors, is offered as evidence that there is more science to sociolinguistic lepidoptery than meets the eye: "The overall aim is to proceed from the idiographic level, i.e. the level of the description of unique, particular, situation-specific findings regarding single dialect features, to the nomothetic level, the level of general, preferably universal, principles" (p. 48). David Lightfoot, for his part, intends his How New Languages Emerge to show butterfly-collectors how science is really done. Dialect Change comprises 13 chapters by 17 researchers, many of them participants in an international research network on "The Convergence and Divergence of Dialects in a Changing Europe." The four papers in the first section of the volume examine dialect convergence or divergence from the standpoint of linguistic structure. It is here that the interest of dialect studies for formal theories of language is made explicit, although for the most part the studies carried out by the authors only serve to point out the limitations of these frameworks in accounting for the outcomes of dialect-contact and dialect-change phenomena. According to Jeffrey Kallen's discussion of mutations undergone by /t/ in dialects of English (pp. 51-80), Optimality Theory-which represents phonological processes in terms of hierarchies of output constraints-can account for the range of attested pronunciations, but in each speech community the actual trajectory of change depends on the "social embedding of norms" (pp. 54-55, 79-80). Gaetano Berruto's study of the interaction between local dialects and regional and national standard varieties of Italian (pp. 81-95), reveals that the influence is not always unidirectional. Alongside the "Italianisation of dialect," Berruto notes that the "dialectisation of Italian" can also occur, giving rise to regional varieties of the national language (italiano popolare, p. 83). He also critiques linguistic models of code-switching and code-mixing phenomena, since his data call into question the concept of a "matrix language" which governs the morphosyntactic frame into which elements from the second code are inserted (pp. 87-93). Leonie Cornips and Karen Corrigan's chapter (pp. 96-134) aims to reconcile the "Internalist" linguistic theories of formalists with the "Externalist" models used by variationist sociolinguists. The authors' data on "middle" constructions (the equivalents of This shirt washes easily and similar sentence types) in Dutch dialects reveals evidence for an Aspect parameter of the type postulated by Lightfoot for the internal grammar ("I-language") of the individual speaker, which provides an elegant account for the distribution of superficially dissimilar syntactic constructions in the dialects under investigation (p. 127). The claim has been made that the formalists base their representation of language principally upon the evidence of syntactic phenomena, whereas sociolinguists construct their models of the correlation between linguistic behavior and socioeconomic factors almost entirely on phonetic data-rather like the blind men and the elephant. Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, and Ann Williams ask the question whether "generalisations concerning the spread of sound change apply equally well to other types of language change," such as syntax (pp. 135-167). Their study of speech recorded in British urban centers uncovers some intriguing instances of syntactic variation, such as the use of pronominal tags (e.g., I don't like it me, p. 159), but these give rise to more questions than answers for the analysts. The five chapters in the second section are concerned with "macrosociolinguistic motivations" such as language standardization (Inge Lise Pedersen, pp. 171-195), migration, and urbanism.
Language Variation: Sociolinguistic Variationist Analysis
Handbook of Linguistics, 1997
The study of language variation in linguistics is a hybrid enterprise. In some respects, it is a branch of sociolinguists, examining the ebb and flow of language in society. In other respects, it is more closely aligned with linguistics, developing explanations and models for complex linguistic systems. From this diverse work, the study of variation is often connected to the communities themselves, and scholars have worked to rectify false perceptions of vernacular dialect varieties.
This paper deals with the question of how areas with different syntactic variability can be identified. It uses data from the Syntactic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland (SADS) which uses multiple informants in each survey location. As a starting point the well-known doubling construction with the verb aafange 'begin' is used to illustrate how the different regions differ with respect to inter-personal variation and how the different variants can be mapped in terms of predominance, i.e. to what extent they co-occur or compete with the other variants. As a quantitative measure, the intensity value of the dominant variant (i.e. the agreement rate between those informants providing the dominant variant as their variant) is used as the basis to create a so-called "variation index". This technique is applied to a larger set of SADS data, and the results are mapped onto the survey points indicating the syntactic variability for each location. To assess the validity of the method, several subgroups are created which turn out to correlate with the whole data set at a significant level. By performing a hot spot analysis, regional clusters of high/low syntactic variability can be identified.
The morphosyntax of varieties of English worldwide: A quantitative perspective
Lingua, 2009
What are the large-scale patterns and generalizations that emerge when investigating morphosyntactic variation in World Englishes from a bird's eye perspective? To address this question, this study draws on the questionnaire-based morphosyntactic database of the Handbook of Varieties of English, utilizing a number of quantitative analysis techniques (frequency and correlation measures, multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and principal component analysis). We demonstrate (i) that the database yields a number of generalizations and implicational tendencies relating to vernacular angloversals and universals of New Englishes, (ii) that there is a surprisingly consistent typological division between English L1 vernaculars, on the one hand, and English-based pidgins and creoles on the other hand, and (iii) that World Englishes can, on aggregate, be seen to vary along two major dimensions which we interpret as being indicative of morphosyntactic complexity and analyticity. In conclusion, we offer that the Handbook's morphosyntactic database presents some interesting methodological challenges to dialectology and dialectometry.
In addition to the examination of non-linguists’ evaluations of different speech varieties, in recent years sociolinguists and sociophoneticians have afforded greater attention towards the ways in which na€ıve listeners perceive, process, and encode spoken language variation, including the identification of language varieties as regionally or socially localised forms. The present study attempts to extend understanding of non-linguists’ perceptions of linguistic diversity through the investigation of how accurately and consistently UK-born students, resident in the north-east of England, can identify the speaker place of origin of six forms of L1 and L2 English. The results demonstrate that whilst the process of encoding indexical properties to and categorisations of speech stimulus as belonging to a specific language variety is complex, there is a clear tendency amongst informants to initially identify the speech as either native or non-native, most especially through the perception of specific segmental and non-segmental phonological features, before attempting more fine-grained classifications. The findings also point to the recognition of speaker place of origin at different levels of awareness, above and below the level of individual consciousness.
Sociolects and Registers – a Contrastive Analysis of Two Kinds of Linguistic Variation
Investigationes Linguisticae, vol. XX, pp. 60-79, 2010
The paper, which is a theoretical contribution to investigations of social varieties of language, deals with two major dimensions of sociolinguistic variation: sociolectal and registerial. Drawing upon the views of Polish and Anglo-Saxon linguists, the author explores the concepts of sociolect (social dialect) and register, focusing mainly on their definitions, controlling variables, methodological frameworks, and typologies. In the final section, he attempts to shed some new light on the two kinds of variation and suggests new methodological solutions that could be applied in studies of sociolinguistic variation.