Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T11:23:49.557Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction: Analysing and Explaining Syntactic Variation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2022

By
Tanya Karoli Christensen  and
Torben Juel Jensen
Edited by
Tanya Karoli Christensen  and
Torben Juel Jensen
Tanya Karoli Christensen
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Torben Juel Jensen
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Get access

Summary

The introduction to this volume sums up and discusses some of the issues fundamental to the study of syntactic variation, such as the problem of semantic equivalence (since syntactic variants often have different meanings), the delimitation of syntactic alternations, the relation between linguistic and social conditioning of syntactic variables, and the explanatory frameworks that are proposed in the chapters to account for the linguistic choices speakers make when employing syntactic alternants.

Keywords

the sociolinguistic variableexplanatory frameworkssemantic equivalencesocial conditioninglinguistic conditioninglanguage variation and changelanguage attitudes
Type
Chapter
Information
Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation , pp. 1 - 29
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aaron, Jessi Elana. 2010. ‘Pushing the Envelope: Looking Beyond the Variable Context’. Language Variation and Change 22 (1): 1–36.Google Scholar
Anttila, Arto and Cho, Young-Mee Yu. 1998. ‘Variation and Change in Optimality Theory’. Lingua 104 (1–2): 31–56.Google Scholar
Arroyo, José Luis Blas and Schulte, Kim. 2017. ‘Competing Modal Periphrases in Spanish between the 16th and the 18th Centuries: A Diachronic Variationist Approach’. Diachronica 34 (1): 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.34.1.01bla.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, Renée. 1997. ‘Defining the Envelope of Linguistic Variation: The Case of “Don’t Count” Forms in the Copula Analysis of African American Vernacular English’. Language Variation and Change 9 (1): 57–79. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394500001794.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bock, J. Kathryn. 1986. ‘Syntactic Persistence in Language Production’. Cognitive Psychology 18: 355–87.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight L. 1977. Meaning and Form (English Language Series, 11). London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bowcher, Wendy L. and Liang, Jennifer Yameng, eds. 2016. Society in Language, Language in Society: Essays in Honour of Ruqaiya Hasan. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, Cueni, Anna, Nikitina, Tatiana and Harald Baayen, R.. 2007. ‘Predicting the Dative Alternation’. In KNAW Academy Colloquium: Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation, edited by Bouma, Gerlof, Krämer, Irene and Zwarts, Joost, 69–94. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, Deo, Ashwini and Sharma, Devyani. 2007. ‘Typology in Variation: A Probabilistic Approach to Be and n’t in the Survey of English Dialects’. English Language and Linguistics 11 (2): 301–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674307002274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2006. ‘From Usage to Grammar: The Mind’s Response to Repetition’. Language 82 (4): 711–33.Google Scholar
Cedergren, Henrietta J. and Sankoff, David. 1974. ‘Variable Rules: Performance as a Statistical Reflection of Competence’. Language 50 (2): 333–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, Jack K. 2003. Sociolinguistic Theory, 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Chambers, Jack K. 2013. ‘Patterns of Variation Including Change’. In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics), edited by Chambers, Jack K. and Schilling, Natalie, 297–323. Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons, Incorporated.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 1987. ‘Syntactic Variation, the Linguistic Variable and Sociolinguistic Theory’. Linguistics 25 (2): 257–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 1996. ‘Syntactic Variation and the Concept of Prominence’. In Speech Past and Present, edited by Klemola, Juhani, Kytö, Merja and Rissanen, Matti, 1–17. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 1998. ‘Taming the Vernacular: Some Repercussions for the Study of Syntactic Variation and Spoken Grammar’. Te Reo 41: 6–27.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 2005. ‘Syntactic Variation and Beyond: Gender and Social Class Variation in the Use of Discourse-New Markers’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 9 (4): 479–508.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 2007. ‘Discourse Variation, Grammaticalisation and Stuff Like That’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (2): 155–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, Kerswill, Paul and Williams, Ann. 2005. ‘Phonology, Grammar, and Discourse in Dialect Convergence’. In Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages, edited by Auer, Peter, Hinskens, Frans and Kerswill, Paul, 135–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cloran, Carmel. 2000. ‘Socio-Semantic Variation: Different Wordings, Different Meanings’. In Researching Language in Schools and Communities: Functional Linguistic Perspectives, edited by Unsworth, Len, 152–83. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Cornips, Leonie and Corrigan, Karen P., eds. 2005a. Syntax and Variation: Reconciling the Biological and the Social (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 265). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornips, Leonie and Corrigan, Karen P.. 2005b. ‘Toward an Integrated Approach to Syntactic Variation’. In Syntax and Variation: Reconciling the Biological and the Social, edited by Cornips, Leonie and Corrigan, Karen P., 1–27. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornips, Leonie and Gregersen, Frans. 2016. ‘The Impact of Labov’s Contribution to General Linguistic Theory’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 20 (4): 498–524.Google Scholar
Covington, Michael A. 1990. A Dependency Parser for Variable-Word-Order Languages. Athens: University of Georgia.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dines, Elizabeth R. 1980. ‘Variation in Discourse: “And Stuff Like That”’. Language in Society 9 (1): 13–31.Google Scholar
Diver, William. 2011 [1975]. ‘The Nature of Linguistic Meaning’. In Language – Communication and Human Behavior: The Linguistic Essays of William Diver, edited by Huffman, Alan and Davis, Joseph, 47–63. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Dubois, Sylvie. 1992. ‘Extension Particles, Etc.’ Language Variation and Change 4 (2): 179–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ebert, Robert Peter. 1980. ‘Social and Stylistic Variation in Early New High German Word Order: The Sentence Frame (>Satzrahmen<)’. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache 102: 357–98.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. ‘Variation and the Indexical Field’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12 (4): 453–76.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2019. ‘The Limits of Meaning: Social Indexicality, Variation, and the Cline of Interiority’. Language 95 (4): 751–76.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope and Labov, William. 2017. ‘Phonetics, Phonology and Social Meaning’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 21 (4): 467–96.Google Scholar
Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth. 1996. Content, Expression and Structure: Studies in Danish Functional Grammar (Studies in Language Companion Series, 29). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Feagin, Crawford. 1979. Variation and Change in Alabama English: A Sociolinguistic Study of the White Community. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk, Kristiansen, Gitte and Peirsman, Yves, eds. 2010. Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Cognitive Linguistics Research, 45). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grafmiller, Jason and Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2019. ‘Mapping out Particle Placement in Englishes around the World: A Study in Comparative Sociolinguistic Analysis’. Language Variation and Change 30 (3): 385–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. 1997. ‘Competence, Performance, and the Generative Grammar of Variation’. In Variation, Change and Phonological Theory, edited by Hinskens, Frans, Roeland, van Hout and Leo Wetzels, W., 125–43. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. and Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M.. 2013. Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar, 4th ed. London: Taylor and Francis Group.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harder, Peter 2010. Meaning in Mind and Society: A Functional Contribution to the Social Turn in Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasan, Ruqaiya. 2009. The Collected Works of Ruqaiya Hasan, vol. 2: Semantic Variation: Meaning in Society and in Sociolinguistics, edited by Webster, Jonathan J.. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Hasan, Ruqaiya. 2009 [1989]. ‘Semantic Variation and Sociolinguistics’. In The Collected Works of Ruqaiya Hasan, vol. 2: Semantic Variation: Meaning in Society and in Sociolinguistics, edited by Webster, Jonathan J., 180–230. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Hasan, Ruqaiya and Cloran, Carmel. 1990. ‘A Sociolinguistic Study of Everyday Talk between Mothers and Children’. In Learning, Keeping and Using Language: Selected Papers from the Eighth World Congress of Applied Linguistics, Sydney, 16–21 August 1987, edited by Halliday, Michael A. K., Gibbons, John and Nicholas, Howard, 67–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Hinskens, Frans. 1998. ‘Variation Studies in Dialectology and Three Types of Sound Change’. Sociolinguistica 12: 155–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1972 [1934]. Sprogsystem og sprogforandring (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague, 15). Copenhagen: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag.Google Scholar
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1993 [1943]. Omkring sprogteoriens grundlæggelse (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague, 25). Copenhagen: The Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul. 1991. ‘On Some Principles of Grammaticization’. In Approaches to Grammaticalization, edited by Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Heine, Bernd, 17–35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.Google Scholar
Hudson, R. A. 1996. Sociolinguistics (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics), 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jensen, Torben Juel. 2017. ‘Generic “du” in Time and Context. A Study of Intra-Individual Variation and Change’. In Creativity and Continuity: Perspectives on the Dynamics of Language Conventionalisation, edited by Duncker, Dorthe and Perregaard, Bettina, 209–34. Copenhagen: UPress.Google Scholar
Joshi, Aravind K. 1987. ‘Word-Order Variation in Natural Language Generation’. In AAAI-87 Proceedings, 550–5. Seattle, WA: AAAI Press.Google Scholar
Kristiansen, Gitte and Dirven, René, eds. 2008. Cognitive Sociolinguistics, Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems (Cognitive Linguistics Research, 39). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. ‘The Linguistic Variable as a Structural Unit’. Washington Linguistics Review 3: 4–22.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1969. ‘Contraction, Deletion, and Inherent Variability of the English Copula’. Language 45 (4): 715–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1993. ‘The Unobservability of Structure and Its Linguistic Consequences’. Paper presented at NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) 22, University of Ottawa, 16 October 1993.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change, vol. 2: Social Factors. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, Baranowski, Maciej, Nagy, Naomi and Ravindranath, Maya. 2006. ‘Listeners’ Sensitivity to the Frequency of Sociolinguistic Variables’. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 12 (2): 105–29.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, Ravindranath, Maya, Weldon, Tracey, Baranowski, Maciej and Nagy, Naomi. 2011. ‘Properties of the Sociolinguistic Monitor’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15 (4): 431–63.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 2001. Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: De Gruyter, Inc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavandera, Beatriz L. 1978. ‘Where Does the Sociolinguistic Variable Stop?’ Language in Society 7 (2): 171–82.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez and Buchstaller, Isabelle. 2015. ‘Perception, Cognition, and Linguistic Structure: The Effect of Linguistic Modularity and Cognitive Style on Sociolinguistic Processing’. Language Variation and Change 27 (3): 319–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. 2009. ‘Replication, Transfer, and Calquing: Using Variation as a Tool in the Study of Language Contact’. Language Variation and Change 21 (3): 297–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam and Walker, James A.. 2013. ‘An Existential Problem: The Sociolinguistic Monitor and Variation in Existential Constructions on Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines)’. Language in Society 42 (4): 407–28.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Michael. 1989. ‘Exploring the Roots of Appalachian English’. English World-Wide 10 (2): 227–78.Google Scholar
Moore, Emma and Podesva, Robert. 2009. ‘Style, Indexicality, and the Social Meaning of Tag Questions’. Language in Society 38 (4): 447–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 2006. ‘Two Linguistic Systems in Contact: Grammar, Phonology and Lexicon’. In The Handbook of Bilingualism, edited by Bhatia, Tej K. and Ritchie, William C., 147–68. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
Neely, James H. 1977. ‘Semantic Priming and Retrieval from Lexical Memory: Roles of Inhibitionless Spreading Activation and Limited-Capacity Attention’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 106 (3): 226–54.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu and Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, eds. 1996. Sociolinguistics and Language History: Studies Based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (Language and Computers, 15). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Nørgård-Sørensen, Jens, Heltoft, Lars and Lene, Schøsler. 2011. Connecting Grammaticalisation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo and Zentella, Ana Celia. 2012. Spanish in New York: Language Contact, Dialectal Leveling, and Structural Continuity. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pichler, Heike. 2010. ‘Methods in Discourse Variation Analysis: Reflections on the Way Forward’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14 (5): 581–608.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 2001. ‘Exemplar Dynamics: Word Frequency, Lenition and Contrast’. In Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, edited by Bybee, Joan and Hopper, Paul, 137–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana. 1980. ‘The Notion of the Plural in Puerto Rico Spanish: Competing Constraints on /S/ Deletion’. In Locating Language in Time and Space, edited by Labov, William, 55–67. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana. 2011. ‘Grammaticalization and Linguistic Variation’. In The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization, edited by Heine, Bernd and Narrog, Heiko, 209–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana and Malvar, Elisabete. 2007. ‘Elucidating the Transition Period in Linguistic Change: The Expression of the Future in Brazilian Portuguese’. Probus 19 (1): 121–69.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana and Tagliamonte, Sali A.. 1989. ‘There’s No Time Like the Present: Verbal -S Inflection in Early Black English’. Language Variation and Change 1 (1): 47–84.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana and Tagliamonte, Sali A.. 1999. ‘The Grammaticization of Going to in (African American) English’. Language Variation and Change 11 (3): 315–42.Google Scholar
Pütz, Martin, Robinson, Justyna A. and Reif, Monika. 2014. Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Social and Cultural Variation in Cognition and Language Use. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. 1988. ‘Variation and Historical Linguistics: A Survey of Methods and Concepts’. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 89 (2): 136–54.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. 1975. ‘Carrying the New Wave into Syntax: The Case of Black English Bin’. In Analyzing Variation in Language, edited by Fasold, Ralph W. and Shuy, Roger W., 162–83. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. 1982. Socio-Historical Linguistics: Its Status and Methodology (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. 1984. ‘On the Problem of Syntactic Variation and Pragmatic Meaning in Sociolinguistic Theory’. Folia Linguistica 18 (3–4): 409–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rydén, Mats. 1991. ‘The Be/Have Variation with Intransitives in Its Crucial Phases’. In Historical English Syntax, edited by Kastovsky, Dieter, 343–54. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David and Laberge, Suzanne. 1978. ‘Statistical Dependence among Successive Occurrences of a Variable in Discourse’. In Linguistic Variation: Models and Methods, edited by Sankoff, David, 119–26. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David and Thibault, Pierette. 1981. ‘Weak Complementarity: Tense and Aspect in Montreal French’. In Syntactic Change (Natural Language Studies), edited by Johns, Brenda B. and Strong, David R., 205–16. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. 1973. ‘Above and Beyond Phonology in Variable Rules’. In New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English, edited by Bailey, Charles-James N and Shuy, Roger W., 44–61. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale, edited by Bally, Charles and Sechehaye, Albert. Paris: Éditions Payot & Rivages.Google Scholar
Scherre, Maria Marta Pereira and Naro, Anthony J.. 1991. ‘Marking in Discourse: “Birds of a Feather”’. Language Variation and Change 3: 23–32.Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott A. and Cacoullos, Rena Torres. 2008. ‘Defaults and Indeterminacy in Temporal Grammaticalization: The “Perfect” Road to Perfective’. Language Variation and Change 20 (1): 1–39.Google Scholar
Sharma, Devyani, Bresnan, Joan and Deo, Ashwini. 2008. ‘Variation and Change in the Individual: Evidence from the Survey of English Dialects’. In Language in Flux: Dialogue Coordination, Language Variation, Change and Evolution (Communication, Mind and Language), edited by Cooper, Robin and Kempson, Ruth, 265–321. Rickmansworth: College Publications.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2012. Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2013. ‘Comparative Sociolinguistics’. In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, edited by Chambers, Jack K. and Schilling, Natalie, 128–56. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2014. ‘A Comparative Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Dative Alternation’. In Linguistic Variation, edited by Torres, Rena, Dion, Nathalie and Lapierre, André, 297–318. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina. 2011. ‘The Pragmatic Variable: Toward a Procedural Interpretation’. Language in Society 40: 343–72.Google Scholar
Travis, Lisa Demena. 1984. ‘Parameters and Effects of Word Order Variation’. PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Weiner, Judith and Labov, William. 1983. ‘Constraints on the Agentless Passive’. Journal of Linguistics 19 (1): 29–58.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel, Labov, William and Herzog, Marvin I.. 1968. ‘Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change’. In Directions for Historical Linguistics: A Symposium, edited by Lehmann, W. P. and Malkiel, Y., 95–188. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. 1996. ‘The Problem of Syntactic Variation’. In Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory and Analysis; Selected Papers from NWAV 23 at Stanford, edited by Arnold, Jennifer, Blake, Renée, Davidson, Brad, Schwenter, Scott A. and Solomon, Julie. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walter A. 1969. A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech (Urban Language Series, 5). Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×