This paper explores the synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a quantitative study of a corpus of naturally occurring data of the modern language and an investigation of object marking in a 17th-century catechism. We show that both animacy and topicality, but not definiteness, affect whether a direct object is marked in modern Guaraní, a finding that has implications for cross-linguistic theories of differential object marking, not all of which recognize topicality as a factor. We also find no categorical constraints on differential object marking in Guaraní, contrary to Bossong (1985b). Our study of the 17th-century catechism provides further support for Bossong's (1985b, 2009) claim that Guaraní did not have differential object marking when it came into contact with Spanish. The paper concludes with a discussion of the hypothesis that differential object marking in Guaraní resulted from contact with Spanish.

This paper explores the ways in which structural and practice-based social constraints contribute to the maintenance of nonstandard were in Bolton, England. Using data from a school ethnography, 2747 tokens of first- and third-person singular was/were are analyzed according to informants' social class, community of practice, self-identification, and place of birth. Varbrul analyses reveal consistencies in the linguistic constraints on variation irrespective of the type of social analysis undertaken. These patterns generally confirm the findings of previous was/were studies. However, comparisons of log likelihood results suggest that although different social factors constrain this variation with varying degrees of accuracy, no one factor alone sufficiently explains it. Comparisons of groups and individual speakers reveal that nonstandard were maintenance is in fact explained by the combined effect of an established correlation between nonstandard were and local social structures and on-going revitalization of the form in contemporary forms of social practice.

In the wake of numerous analyses of vowels in African American English (AAE), this study examines acoustically the phonetic production of a consonant—the word-initial lateral /l/—across several generations of speakers from a long-standing African American community in central North Carolina. The results of the study show that /l/ is darker in younger AAE speakers than in older ones, independent of phonetic context. Comparisons with ex-slave recordings suggest that a light variant of /l/ may be a substrate feature of AAE that has changed in recent decades. Additional comparisons with regional European Americans suggest that the darkening may be due to convergence with majority American English dialects.

The system of English resultative constructions is in a state of flux characterized by variation between two of its most prominent competitors, way-constructions as in She worked herwayto the top and reflexive structures as in She worked herselfto the top. Although this competition has occasionally been addressed in the literature (cf. Jackendoff, 1990:213; Kirchner, 1951:158; Salkoff, 1988:54ff.), the present findings reveal that the long-standing rivalry between these structures has resulted in an increased use of the way-construction at the expense of reflexive structures. In addition, the coexistence of way-constructions with semantically overlapping reflexive structures eventually culminated in a reorganization of the system of English resultatives involving a diversification of the functions performed by each variant resulting in a semantically motivated division of labour. The way-construction turns out to be particularly successful in conveying concrete meanings, whereas reflexive structures can still to some extent stand their ground with abstract uses. The present paper relates the proliferation of the way-construction to grammaticalization theory.

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.