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When does variation indicate linguistic change in progress?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

William J. Ashby
William J. Ashby
Affiliation:
Department of French & Italian, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, 93106USA
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Abstract

It is argued that two variables of Modern French (the negative particle ne and the consonant l of clitic pronouns such as il) are indeed indices of ongoing linguistic change, even though this change appears to be of long duration. This conclusion is based not only on the distribution of the variables in a corpus of natural French discourse, but also on independent linguistic evidence, together with the available historical record. In the absence of adequate ‘real-time’ data, variationist analysis yielding synchronic, “apparent-time” data provides a useful means of charting the drift of the language.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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