In 1972, Labov, Yaeger, and Steiner reported a series of “near-mergers” that have since proved to be difficult to assimilate to the standard conception of the phoneme and that challenged our current understanding of how language production is related to perception and learning (Labov, Yaeger, & Steiner, 1972). In these situations, speakers consistently reported that two classes of sounds were “the same,” yet consistently differentiated them in production. Labov (1975a) suggested that this phenomenon was the explanation for two “falsely reported mergers” in the history of English, where word classes were said to have merged and afterward separated. It appears that sound change may bring two phonemes into such close approximation that semantic contrast between them is suspended for native speakers of the dialect, without necessarily leading to merger. This article reports on further observations of near-mergers, which confirm their implications for both synchronic and diachronic issues, and presents the results of experiments that show how phonemic contrast is suspended for an entire community.

Adopting a grammaticalization path perspective on the envelope of variation, that is, the range of grammatical functions along the cross-linguistic perfect-to-perfective path, and employing the variationist comparative method, we compare use of the Present Perfect and Preterit in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish to identify the default past perfective form in each dialect. The linguistic conditioning of the variability provides evidence that the Present Perfect is becoming the default exponent of past perfective in Peninsular Spanish; in empirical terms, the default expression is the one appearing more frequently (combined effect of corrected mean and factor weight) in the most frequent and, crucially, the least specified contexts. The quantitative analysis of natural speech production—rather than elicited—data also suggests a different trajectory for perfect-to-perfective grammaticalization than the commonly assumed route via remoteness distinctions: the Present Perfect's shift from hodiernal to general perfective advances in temporally indeterminate past contexts.

Although variationists have explored the diffusion of linguistic changes from one social group to another and from one linguistic environment to another in some detail, they have done much less work on the spatial diffusion of changes. In fact, Trudgill's (1974, 1975) use of Hagerstrand's gravity model to explain in hierarchical diffusion of innovations in East Anglia and Norway was the only systematic account of spatial diffusion in the literature. This article uses data from the random sample telephone survey portion of a Survey of Oklahoma Dialects (SOD) to explore the spatial diffusion of linguistic innovations in Oklahoma. It analyzes that data using a variety of techniques of computer cartography and the General Linear Models procedure in SAS. The data clearly show that, whereas some linguistic innovations diffuse hierarchically (as linguists have long contended), others diffuse contrahierarchically, while still others diffuse in complex patterns that show characteristics of both contagious and hierarchical diffusion. An analysis of the barriers to and amplifiers of diffusion suggests that these different types of diffusion are a consequence of the different social meanings that linguistic forms carry.

The role of gender in language change, as discussed in Eckert (1989a) and Labov (1990), forms the context for an exploration of the role of gender in the development of Cajun English. Neither Principle I, Ia, or II predicts the role of gender in Cajun English, which leads us to question the generalizability of the principles to the specific sociolinguistic setting of this study—a closed cultural enclave. The study of four sociolinguistic variables and three generations of speakers reveals two patterns of language change: a curvilinear or v-shaped age pattern and a linear age pattern. These patterns relate in a complex way to changes from above and below the level of consciousness. We support Eckert's call for a finer specification of the social categories but suggest alternatives to the ethnographic method. Using a variety of sources of information on the social life and sociohistory of three generations, we find an intimate association between the sociohistory of this Cajun community and the linguistic behavior of each generation.

We explore two unresolved methodological issues in the study of copula variation in African-American Vernacular English, assessing their quantitative and theoretical consequences via multiple variable rule analyses of data from East Palo Alto, California. The first is whether is- contraction and deletion should be considered separately from that of are. We conclude that it should not, because the quantitative conditioning is almost identical for the two forms, and a combined analysis offers analytical advantages. The second issue is whether the alternative methods that previous researchers have used to compute the incidence of “contraction” or “deletion” (“Labov Contraction and Deletion,” “Straight Contraction and Deletion,” “Romaine Contraction”) fundamentally affect the results. We conclude that they do, especially for contraction. We also discuss implications of our analysis for two related issues: the ordering of contraction and deletion in the grammar, and the presence of age-grading or change in progress in East Palo Alto.

Richness of subject-verb agreement is implicit in the functional compensation interpretation of variable second person /-s/ in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS). Because /-s/ is not variable in Madrid Spanish (MS), richer agreement is assumed, and a lower rate of pronominal expression is expected. Central to this interpretation are effects associated with ambiguous marking of person on finite singular verbs. Although an increase of pronominal expression correlates to ambiguous marking for PRS speakers, a similar result has not been reported for MS speakers. Nonetheless, a varbrul analysis yields similar weights for this constraint in both dialects. Moreover, ambiguity effects are best understood as constraints on null subject variation that interact with switch reference. Identity of varbrul weights for constraints on pronominal and null subject variation in PRS and MS also supports the Constant Rate Hypothesis. However, the two dialects do show a diametrically opposed effect associated with nonspecific tú.

This article contributes to the understanding of the origin and function of verbal -s marking in the Black English grammar by systematically examining the behaviour of this affix in two corpora on early Black English. To ascertain whether the variation observed in (early and modern Black English) -s usage has a precedent in the history of the language, or is rather an intrusion from another system, we focus particularly on the linguistic and social contexts of its occurrence, within a historical and comparative perspective. Our results show that both third person singular and nonconcord -s are subject to regular, parallel environmental conditioning. The finding that both insertion and deletion are conditioned by the same factors suggests that verbal -s marking is a unitary process, involving both concord and nonconcord contexts. Moreover, the (few) variable constraints on verbal -s usage reported throughout the history of the English language remain operative in early Black English. These results, taken in conjunction with indications that -s marking across the verbal paradigm was a prestige marker in the dialect at some earlier point in time, lead us to hypothesize that the contemporary pattern might be a synchronic reflex of the constraint ranking on -s usage in the varieties of English that provided the linguistic model for the slaves. Many of the conditioning effects we report would have been subsequently overridden by the grammaticalization of -s as the Standard English agreement marker. We conclude that present-tense marking via verbal -s formed an integral part of the early Black English grammar.

Glottalization and glottal replacement (particularly of /t/ in British English) have traditionally been assumed to be variants characteristic of male, lower-class speakers. Both phenomena have been heavily stigmatized, but are spreading rapidly. Recent studies in various parts of the British Isles (including Tyneside) have suggested that glottal replacement of /t/ is led by middle-class and/or female speakers. A fuller understanding of the nature of this linguistic change depends on treating glottalization of /p, t, k/ (a more localized Tyneside feature) and glottal replacement as independent phenomena, rather than as points on a lenition scale corresponding to a social continuum (e.g., casual to careful style). The studies of Tyneside glottalization reported here show that, while females lead in the use of glottal replacement, males prefer glottalization. This pattern is interpreted in terms of a preference of males for localized variants, whereas females lead in adopting supra-local norms.

Early linguistic experience has been shown to affect speech perception in a variety of ways. The present experiment investigated the effects of early linguistic experience on dialect perception. Two groups of participants listened to sentences read by talkers from six American English dialects and were asked to identify where they thought the talkers were from using a forced-choice categorization task. We found that “army brats,” who had lived in at least three different states, performed better than “homebodies,” who had lived only in Indiana, in terms of overall categorization accuracy. Army brats who had lived in a given region also categorized talkers from that region more accurately than army brats who had not lived there. Clustering analyses on the stimulus-response confusion matrices revealed significant differences in the perceptual similarity spaces for the two listener groups. These results suggest that early exposure to linguistic variation affects how well listeners can identify where unfamiliar talkers are from.This work was supported by the NIH-NIDCD R01 research grant DC00111 and the NIH-NIDCD T32 training grant DC00012 to Indiana University. We would like to thank Caitlin Dillon for her assistance in selecting the talkers, Luis Hernandez for his technical advice and support, Robert Nosofsky for his assistance with the clustering analysis, and Adam Tierney and Jeffrey Reynolds for their help in collecting the data.

English has a class of “semiweak” verbs, which in the past tense have root-vowel ablaut as well as reflexes of the apical stop suffix, for example, kept, told. This study traces the development of this class in a sample of speakers aged 4–65. The evidence is derived from the variable rates of occurrence of the final -t,d in these words in the speech of individuals of different ages. The rate of -t,d absence in semiweak verbs systematically declines with increasing age. We identify three ontogenetic stages in the development of the class. In children's speech, these segments rarely appear, suggesting they are underlyingly absent. In young adults they appear but undergo the variable -t,d deletion process of English at the same high rate as noninflectional -t,d in words like west, old, implying that such speakers do not treat them as affixes. Finally, some adult speakers show a lowered deletion rate, suggesting that they accord the final stops separate morphemic status. The age distribution of this pattern implies that speakers only arrive at this analysis in adult life, after the age when acquisition is often assumed to be complete.

This study examines the retention of a non-native dialect feature by British Asians in London. We examine the use of one Punjabi feature (t-retroflexion) and one British feature (t-glottaling) across three groups: first-generation non-native immigrants and two age groups of second-generation British Asians. Cognitively oriented models predict that non-native features will either be innately blocked (Chambers, 2002) or reallocated by native generations. A socially oriented model allows for more gradual change. Contrary to the cognitive view, the older second generation neither blocks nor clearly reallocates use of t-retroflexion; they closely mirror the first generation's non-native use. However, they simultaneously control nativelike t-glottaling, reflecting a robust bidialectal ability. It is the younger second generation who exhibit focused reallocation in the form and function of t-retroflexion. This 20-year lag corresponds to major changes in demographics and race relations in the community over 5 decades. The study shows that acquisition of the local dialect and retention of exogenous features should be seen as independently constrained rather than as mutually exclusive.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, a Southern U.S. city, five decades of in-migration of technology-sector workers from outside the South has resulted in large-scale contact between the local Southern dialect and non-Southern dialects. This paper investigates the speed and magnitude of the reversal of the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) with respect to the five front vowels, using Trudgill's (1998) model of dialect contact as a framework. The data consist of conversational interviews with 59 white-collar Raleigh natives representing three generations, the first generation having reached adulthood before large-scale contact. Acoustic analysis shows that all vowels shift away from their Southern variants across apparent time. The leveling of SVS variants begins within the first generation to grow up after large-scale contact began, and contrary to predictions, this generation does not show wide inter- or intraspeaker variability. Previous studies of dialect contact and new dialect formation suggest that leveling of regional dialect features and the establishment of stable linguistic norms occurs more quickly when children have regular contact with one another. Dialect contact in Raleigh has occurred primarily within the middle and upper classes, the members of which are densely connected by virtue of schools and heavy economic segregation in neighborhood residence.

The rise of the periphrastic future (PF) at the expense of the inflected future (IF) is an established historical trend in Québécois French over at least the past 150 years. Previous research has also found higher rates of PF among younger speakers, many displaying categorical use in affirmative contexts. Because an apparent time interpretation of the synchronic data fits the historical record, we expected concomitant speaker stability across the lifespan. On the contrary, our panel study of 60 Montréal speakers (1971–1984) reveals age grading in a retrograde direction. As they aged, two-thirds of the speakers we studied increased their frequency of IF, an effect heightened for members of higher socioprofessional groups. Though not sufficiently robust to stem the historical tide, increased IF use by older speakers may retard the change somewhat, providing continuing IF input to child L1 acquisition. Rather than vitiating an apparent time interpretation, these results indicate that the rate of change may be slightly overestimated if age grading acts in a retrograde direction.

Trudgill (2004) proposed that the emergence of New Zealand English, and of isolated new dialects generally, is purely deterministic. It can be explained solely in terms of the frequency of occurrence of particular variants and the frequency of interactions between different speakers in the society. Trudgill's theory is closely related to usage-based models of language, in which frequency plays a role in the representation of linguistic knowledge and in language change. Trudgill's theory also corresponds to a neutral evolution model of language change. We use a mathematical model based on Croft's usage-based evolutionary framework for language change (Baxter, Blythe, Croft, & McKane, 2006), and investigate whether Trudgill's theory is a plausible model of the emergence of new dialects. The results of our modeling indicate that determinism cannot be a sufficient mechanism for the emergence of a new dialect. Our approach illustrates the utility of mathematical modeling of theories and of empirical data for the study of language change.

If every productive form of linguistic expression can be described by some idealized human grammar, an individuals's variable linguistic behavior (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968) can be modeled as a statistical distribution of multiple idealized grammars. The distribution of grammars is determined by the interaction between the biological constraints on human grammar and the properties of linguistic data in the environment during the course of language acquisition. Such interaction can be formalized precisely and quantitatively in a mathematical model of language learning. Consequently, we model language change as the change in grammar distribution over time, which can be related to the statistical properties of historical linguistic data. As an empirical test, we apply the proposed model to explain the loss of the verb-second phenomenon in Old French and Old English based on corpus studies of historical texts.

Cantonese has six lexical tones (T), but some tone pairs appear to be merging: T2 [25] vs. T5 [23], T3 [33] vs. T6 [22], and T4 [21] vs. T6 [22]. Twenty-eight merging participants and thirty control participants in Hong Kong were recruited for a perception experiment. Both accuracy rate and reaction time data were collected. Seventeen merging participants also participated in a production experiment. Predictive discriminant analysis of the fundamental frequency data and judgments by native transcribers were used to assess production accuracy. Results show that the merging participants still had six tone categories in production, although their “tone space” was more reduced. Tones with lower type frequency were more prone to change. The merging group was significantly slower in tone perception than the control group was. In illustrating the patterns of the ongoing tone merging process in Cantonese, this study contributes to a better understanding of the forces of sound change in general.

This article presents data bearing on the question of what happens at the phonetic level during a sound change of the type which Labov, Yaeger, and Steiner (1972) labeled an “apparent merger.” Our production data come from three generations of native Utahns who participated in the Intermountain Language Survey (ImLS) and four New Yorkers who served as control subjects. The phonetic subject of our study is the ongoing change in the tense-lax pairs /i-I, e-ε, u-υ/ before tautosyllabic dark [†] in Utah English. Previous studies reported that the resultant vowels are usually, but not always, perceived by both transcribers and speakers as lax. Acoustic analysis, self-categorization data, and perception data demonstrate that, after the usual F1/F2 contrast has been lost, contrasts between these and lax vowels may persist in phonation differences and that these phonation differences may be available to hearers.

Traditionally used as a “heuristic device” (Labov, 1978), the sociolinguistic variable has taken on a new role as a primitive of speaker/hearer mental models in third-wave variation work (Eckert, 2005, 2008). Results from a sociolinguistic perception study suggest that at least in some cases, variants of the same variable function independently as loci of indexically linked social meaning. Listener responses were collected to three matched guises of the English variable (ING): -in, -ing, and a neutral guise with no audible (ING) tokens. The results counter the study hypothesis that listener expectation, triggered by speaker regional accent, would shape (ING)'s impact. Instead, the two variants showed distinct social associations: the -ing guises were rated as more intelligent/educated, more articulate, and less likely to be a student than either the -in or neutral guises, which did not differ significantly. In contrast, -in guises made speakers sound less formal and less likely to be gay than the -ing and neutral guises, which did not differ. These results suggest that third-wave work needs to more closely examine the role of the variable in theorizing the relationship between linguistic and social structures.

Based on an impressionistic study of 16 young Canadians, mostly from Ontario, Clarke, Elms, and Youssef (1995) reported that the short front vowels of Canadian English are involved in a chain shift, the “Canadian Shift,” triggered by the merger of in low-back position, whereby is retracted to low-central position, and are lowered toward the low-front space vacated by . This article extends the study of the Canadian Shift to the English-speaking community of Montreal, Quebec, using acoustic rather than impressionistic analysis and a larger and more diverse sample. The new data motivate a revised view of the Shift, at least as it operates in Montreal, in which the three front vowels are retracted in a set of parallel shifts, rather than rotating in a chain shift.An earlier version of this paper was presented at NWAVE 32 (University of Pennsylvania, October 10, 2003). Thanks are due to members of the audience at that presentation, as well as to anonymous reviewers of the present version of the article, for helpful comments. In the preparation of the present version, the author is especially indebted to Anicka Fast and Erika Lawrance for research assistance and to Myrtis Fossey for assistance with statistical analysis. This research received financial support from three sources: the Research Grants Office of McGill University, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (Grant #2003-NC-81927).

This article reports sociolinguistic research on linguistic change in an intonation feature of New Zealand English, namely, the use of high rising terminal contours (HRTs) in declarative clauses. Recorded interviews from 75 inhabitants of Porirua, a small city north of Wellington, were analyzed for the use of HRTs. The speaker sample was subdivided according to years of age (20–29, 40–49, 70–79), sex, ethnicity (Maori and Pakeha), and class (working and middle). The results show that linguistic change is in progress, the use of HRTs being favored by young Maori and by young Pakeha women. The results are explained in terms of the function of HRTs as positive politeness markers. The usefulness of the term “linguistic variable” in the analysis of intonational change and discourse features is assessed.