Variationist Approach Research Articles

Theoretical implications of research on bilingual subject production: The Vulnerability Hypothesis

In this paper we propose a new hypothesis for the formal analysis of cross-linguistic influence, the Vulnerability Hypothesis (VH), with the support of data from subject personal pronoun use in Spanish and Catalan in Minorca, and contrast it to the Interface Hypothesis (IH). The VH establishes a categorical–variable continuum of permeability, that is, structures that show variable distributions are permeable while those that exhibit categorical distributions are not. To test the predictions of the VH, Spanish language samples were collected from 12 monolingual Spanish speakers, 11 Spanish-dominant bilinguals, and 12 Catalan-dominant bilinguals, and Catalan language samples from 12 Catalan-dominant speakers. Following a variationist comparative analysis, 4,466 first person singular (1sg) and 1,291 third person singular (3sg) tokens were coded for speech connectivity, verb form ambiguity, and semantic verb type. The language-external variable included in the analysis was language group (Spanish monolinguals, Spanish-dominant bilinguals, Catalan-dominant bilinguals, and Catalan controls). Results indicated that speech connectivity is the highest ranked variable in the Spanish control group (most categorical variable), while ambiguity and verb type are ranked lower, with only ambiguity reaching significance. The VH would, therefore, predict bilinguals would be similar to monolinguals in the most categorical variables, in this case, speech connectivity. This is in contrast to the IH, which would predict bilinguals would exhibit difficulty with the pragmatically driven distributions (e.g. speech connectivity), while they would show no contact effects or lesser effects with distributions at the lexico-semantic interface with syntax (e.g. verb form ambiguity and verb type). The prediction of the VH bears out in our data. Bilinguals do not differ with respect to speech connectivity. Ambiguity, on the other hand, is no longer significant in the bilingual groups and verb type reaches significance with 1sg (and not with 3sg) subjects. These results are discussed, redefining the concepts of convergence and simplification from language contact research to adapt to the variationist analysis used. Simplification is specified as the reduction of lower ranked predicting variables, while convergence is defined as an increase in parallels across languages with respect to the variables that are significant, their effect size (variable ranking), and the direction of effects (constraint ranking). Regarding language group, it was not returned as significant in 1sg data. Thus, the groups did not differ in their rates of overt pronominal expression. Differences, however, emerged across groups in the 3sg data, where bilinguals used significantly more overt pronominal subjects than monolinguals do. This paper contributes to current discussions in the fields of language contact, second language acquisition, and bilingualism, introducing a new hypothesis and contrasting it with the IH. In addition, it contributes to variationist approaches by examining a novel community of bilingual speakers.

The syntax of nominal modification in Italian Sign Language (LIS)

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate structural aspects of nominal modification in Italian Sign Language (LIS), a language with a relatively flexible word order. In order to tackle the issue, this study combines different approaches, including generalizations from typological universals on word order, their formal counterparts, and a variationist approach to language facts. Data come from the largest corpus of LIS currently available. Despite the absence of categorical rules, our mixed approach shows that LIS data are consistent with the general tenets of nominal modification. Results from the statistical analysis indicate that the attested language-internal variability is constrained both by linguistic and social factors. Specifically, a fine-grained structure of nominal modification is able to capture the internal variability of LIS. Processing effects, age, gender, and early exposure to the language also play a relevant role in determining order preferences.

Revisiting Hudson’s (1992) OO = O2 hypothesis: a usage-based variationist approach to the English ditransitive construction

In an important paper on the English “double-object”, or ditransitive, construction, Richard Hudson proposes a hypothesis that conflates the ditransitive direct object, or O2, and the monotransitive direct object, or OO, into the same syntactic functional category. While making important departures from a number of unfortunate assumptions within mainstream formal theories of linguistics at the time, the OO = O2 hypothesis itself is problematic in the perspective of contemporary cognitive linguistics. This paper addresses the hypothesis from the perspective of usage-based construction grammar. Applying simple collexeme analysis and multifactorial heatmap analysis to instances of OOs and O2s in ICE-GB, this paper shows that the usage-patterns of both are far too complex, displaying cross-register variation, for the OO = O2 hypothesis to be tenable. The findings provide support for a usage-based variationist account in defining syntactic functional categories.

Competing modal periphrases in Spanish between the 16th and the 18th centuries

AbstractThe history of Spanish modal constructions has been widely discussed in the literature, focusing primarily on the semantic differences between the available alternatives. This paper offers an innovative analysis of the evolution of these constructions by adopting a diachronic variationist approach that takes into account a wider range of semantic, syntactic, morphological and stylistic factors that influence the choice between the competing modal periphrases during two key stages in the evolution of Spanish. The data is drawn from a diachronic corpus of personal correspondence, reflecting actual language usage during the respective periods as closely as possible. Particular attention is paid to the question of whether the influence of different factor groups remains stable over time or not, and it is shown that the most frequent form – context pairings are particularly resistant to innovation. This can be explained by cognitive entrenchment of the respective variant in specific linguistic environments.

What We Gain by Combining Variationist and Concept‐Oriented Approaches: The Case of Acquiring Spanish Future‐Time Expression

AbstractThis study aimed to advance research on first and second language future‐time expression in Spanish and to demonstrate the strengths of combining functionalist, concept‐oriented approaches (e.g., Andersen, 1984; Bardovi‐Harlig, 2000; Shirai, 1995; von Stutterheim & Klein, 1987) with variationist approaches. The study targeted 140 participants (120 English‐speaking learners of Spanish of varying proficiency and 20 native speakers of Spanish) who completed an oral task responding to eight prompts (e.g., describe tus planes para este fin de semana “describe your plans for this weekend”). Results from cross‐tabulations and multinomial regressions indicated gradual inclusion of new linguistic and social variables as learner proficiency increased and demonstrated the value of considering both group and individual behavior. Findings were discussed in relation to stages of acquisition of future‐time expression.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. All materials are publicly accessible in the IRIS digital repository at http://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

A Variationist Approach to Nigerian English Phonology

Since the Phonology of Nigerian English has been described variously by different researchers this paper sought toexplained the features of Nigerian English from the perspectives of the sociolinguistic variables of age, sex,occupation, education, exposure and motivation. The study examined the factors that underscore the social andethnic variables exhibited by Educated Nigerians in their attempt to use the English language efficiently at thephonological level. The theoretical framework for this study wasthe adapted synthesis of ascribed and acquiredsociolinguistic variables according toLabov (1966) and Preston (1989). The data for the study were elicited fromover a hundred speakers of English selected along the lines of the different variables earlier mentioned. Their voiceswere recorded and their renditions were phonemically transcribed in the A.C. Gimson’s model of transcription andacoustically analyzed using the Pratt software. The findings in the study suggest among others that adult speakers ofEnglish in Nigeria perform better in approximation to Standard British English. It also reveals that the vocalic systemin Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo languages shares slightly,lengthening of English vowel quality as demonstrated by oursubjects.Some Nigerian Female speakers of English tend to devoice voiced consonants in their speeches. On thewhole, we concluded that all the sociolinguistic variables best explain the differences and the features in the qualityof speech sounds observed among Nigerian speakers of English.

A call for more diverse sources of data: Variationist approaches in non‐English contexts

Over the past 50 years, variationist sociolinguists have taken the influential ideas and pioneering methods of Labov () to many locations around the world. But the majority of variationist research still focuses on English and other European languages, rather than lesser‐studied language communities. Like other subfields of linguistics, the variationist paradigm needs to continually explore new data from a range of languages. The present article examines how the principles and methods of Labov () have been applied to non‐English language communities, testing the impact and relevance of those half‐century‐old notions in new and sociolinguistically diverse settings, and calling for more research in new field sites.

El predominio de <i>uno</i> en Bogotá, Colombia: ¿estrategia para desfocalizar o para subjetivizar?

Este artículo analiza los factores semántico-pragmáticos que influyen en el uso del pronombre uno en el habla de Bogotá. Mediante un enfoque variacionista y con base en los resultados del programa estadístico Goldvarb, se advierte una reducción de la característica impersonal de uno, pues se utiliza principalmente como marcador de la postura del hablante (subjetivización del discurso) más que como mecanismo para disminuir su protagonismo. Los resultados de las variables de clase semántica del verbo, tipo de discurso y clase de entrevista aportan evidencia acerca de la utilización de uno casi con las mismas funciones referenciales de yo con verbos emotivos, mentales y estativos, en narraciones y situaciones hipotéticas, y en interacciones informales y espontáneas. Estos resultados apuntan a la pérdida de la antigua connotación socio-pragmática de un sobreuso característico de los individuos con menor nivel económico y educativo.

The universal structure of categories: Towards a formal typology by Martina Wiltschko

Reviewed by: The universal structure of categories: Towards a formal typology by Martina Wiltschko Karen Zagona The universal structure of categories: Towards a formal typology. By Martina Wiltschko. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. 356. ISBN 9781107038516. $99 (Hb). The nature of functional categories has been a topic of long-standing interest for descriptive, typological, and theoretical linguistics. Essentially three approaches have been assumed, which differ with respect to whether the language faculty (universal grammar, or UG) provides a universal set of functional categories, and if so, whether every grammar has all of them or only a subset. The ‘variationist’ approach posits that languages may vary arbitrarily in their grammatical categories (Comrie 1976, Jespersen 1932); this is assumed to be possible without limiting the expressive power of the language because there are alternative ways of communicating the information that is carried by functional elements. The (strong) ‘universalist’ position assumes as a working hypothesis that grammars are essentially invariant, which implies that all functional categories that are available in UG are present in every grammar. This is the approach adopted in Cinque 1999 and in an extensive body of research in the ‘cartographic’ research program.1 A weaker universalist position claims that only a subset of the functional categories that are available in UG are present in any individual grammar. There has been lively debate in the literature over the past decade or more, both about the universality of individual functional categories and about the nature of crosslinguistic variation. Martina Wiltschko’s monograph presents a new approach to these questions, combining elements of the variationist approach (there is no universal [End Page 744] inventory of functional categories) with a new proposal for a different type of universal: a class of functional elements that are themselves devoid of substantive content (such as definiteness, number, tense, or aspect) but that provide the basis for constructing functional categories in individual languages. The claims are thoughtfully developed and are illustrated with data from a variety of languages. The centerpiece of the discussion is in-depth analyses of Halkomelem and Blackfoot, languages that have been studied extensively by W and collaborators (Ritter 2014, Ritter & Rosen 2010, Ritter & Wiltschko 2009, 2014, among others), and supporting evidence is drawn from comparisons with a number of other languages. W begins by stating the principal issues for a theory of functional categories: whether or not they are universal, and if they are not, in what ways they differ across languages. W also raises a methodological issue: since syntactic categories need to be motivated on distributional grounds, the fact that most category diagnostics are language-specific poses a methodological problem: that is, how is it possible to ensure that crosslinguistic comparisons are in fact comparisons of the same category? W’s proposals are introduced in Chs. 1–3. Ch. 1 argues that there are two language-independent tests for grammatical categories. One test is the existence of ‘multi-functionality’, such as the occurrence of perfect have in English alongside possessive have. W notes that, although these phenomena are usually analyzed either as accidental homophony or are attributed to grammaticalization paths, their similarity across languages implies that they reflect a universal process of recategorization. W incorporates this generalization into her approach, claiming that all functional categories are formed in particular grammars by processes of (re)categorization. The outcome of this process is that a category label mediates between the item (have, for example) and an interpretation. The nature of this process is discussed in Chs. 2 and 3, to which I return below. The second language-independent diagnostic is based on patterns of contrast in the value of features. In English, the morphological alternation between plural -s and its absence corresponds to a semantic alternation. In Halkomelem, the plural/∅ morphological alternation does not correspond to a semantic alternation. A zero-marked nominal may be either singular or plural in interpretation. W argues that the difference is based on whether plural marking is realized as a functional category. If it is, then the category will have semantic values regardless of the absence of morphological marking. If the language does not have the category Number, then the absence of overt marking is...

Fine-grained and probabilistic cross-linguistic influence in the pronunciation of cognates: Evidence from corpus-based spontaneous conversation and experimentally elicited data

AbstractThe present study examines variable realizations of Spanish word-initial voiced and voiceless dental stops in Spanish-English cognate pairs. Employing a variationist approach to naturalistic data, we report significantly decreased likelihood of reduced articulations of word-initial /d/ in cognates in spontaneous bilingual Puerto Rican discourse, and no such probabilistic effect for cognates in monolingual Spanish of the same speech community. Using experimentally controlled elicited data of Spanish word-initial /t/, we also find evidence of significant fine-grained effects of English on the articulations of Spanish cognates in the form of lengthened VOT for Spanish-English bilinguals. These results indicate that cross-language lexical connections affect phonetic categories in the speech production of Spanish-English bilinguals. It is proposed that both fine-grained and probabilistic effects of the phonology of one language on another can be explained within the Exemplar Model of Lexical Representation.

A Needs Analysis of Undergraduate Students of Communicative Skills: The Case of Tertiary Institutions in Ghana

For over three decades now, research on undergraduate student pedagogy has shifted focus from an error analysis tradition to an emphasis on learner needs. As part of this shift, we examined the needs of students who offered Communicative Skills in an English-medium university in Ghana, and whether their needs were discipline-specific. Data were collected from two hundred and forty students and twenty lecturers, using a two-pronged sampling method. Major results showed a great need for grammar and writing skills among students, though they held that note taking and note making skills, outlining and skimming be expunged from the programme. The study also indicated that although teachers of Communicative Skills preferred a variationist approach, the reverse was the case among their students. Surprisingly, while students desired to be exposed to modern skills such as CV and Proposal writing, their instructors, on the other hand, were of the view that paragraph and essay development were not so useful. The study, thus, resonates with proclivities for further interventionist methods, specialist instructor (re)training and future research in undergraduate student writing.

Labov: a guide for the perplexed

Acknowledgements List of Figures 1. The Challenges of Labov 2. Linguistics and Sociolinguistics before Labov 3. How to Establish a Field as a Graduate Student 4. A Variationist Approach to Language 5. Speech Styles and Discourse 6. The Socio of Sociolinguistics 7. Labov as Historical Linguist 8. African American English: Lessons Learned, Lessons Taught 9. The Revolution at 50 Bibliography Index

Labiodental fronting of /θ/ in London and Edinburgh: a cross-dialectal study

This study examines the lexical and grammatical diffusion of TH-fronting amongst adolescents in London, where TH-fronting is well established, and Edinburgh, where it is a relatively new phenomenon. Our results reveal that the application of TH-fronting is constrained in Edinburgh in ways that are not relevant for London, and vice versa. Specifically, whereas TH-fronting is sensitive to phonotactic context and prosodic position in Edinburgh, we observe no such effects amongst the London speakers. Morphological complexity, on the other hand, is a significant predictor of TH-fronting in both regions; however, we also find evidence of significant gender differences in the use of fronting in London that do not emerge in our Edinburgh data. We argue that these results attest to the more established nature of TH-fronting in London as compared to Edinburgh. We also address the question of how speech perception influences the emergence and spread of innovative neutralisation phenomena like TH-fronting. The results of this study further highlight the usefulness of a comparative variationist approach to understanding patterns of dialectal variation and change.

A corpus-based variationist approach to bei passives in Mandarin Chinese

This article aims to explore the diachronic change and synchronic variation of passive constructions in Mandarin Chinese by combining the variationist sociolinguistic approach and the comparative method of historical linguistics. In particular, this study contributes to the literature on cross-linguistic grammaticalization by illustrating how Mandarin bei passives have evolved diachronically with possible respect to English. Based on 3,414 tokens of passive constructions from three comparable corpora across two significant time periods in Chinese linguistic history, the findings of our study reveal that the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic constraints on the bei passive in modern Mandarin Chinese have changed significantly from the era in which there was no contact with English. The empirical methods used in our study (multivariate analysis and the quantitative comparison of various Chinese varieties) lend credence to our findings that change and variation of bei passives can be ascribed to the influence of English at least to a certain extent. Our results suggest that this cross-linguistic contact might have contributed to the grammaticalization of the morpheme bei as well as the process of passivization in Mandarin Chinese.

Cognitive Sociolinguistics meets loanword research: Measuring variation in the success of anglicisms in Dutch

AbstractThis paper introduces a new, concept-based method for measuring variation in the use and success of loanwords by presenting the results of a case-study on 149 English person reference nouns (i.e. common nouns used to designate people, such as manager) in Dutch. With this paper, we introduce four methodological improvements to current quantitative corpus-based anglicism research, based on the general tenets of Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Geeraerts 2005; Kristiansen and Geeraerts 2007; Geeraerts 2010; Geeraerts et al. 2010): (1) replacing raw frequency as a success measure by a concept-based onomasiological approach; (2) relying on larger datasets and semi-automatic extraction techniques; (3) adding a multivariate perspective to the predominantly structuralist orientation of current accounts; (4) using inferential statistical techniques to help explain variation. We illustrate our method by presenting a case-study on variation in the success of English person reference nouns in Dutch. Generally, this article aims to show how a Cognitive Sociolinguistic perspective on loanword research is beneficial for both paradigms. On the one hand, the concept-based approach provides new insights in the spread of loanwords. On the other hand, attention to contact linguistic phenomena offers a new expansion to the domain of cognitive linguistic studies taking a variationist approach.

A Variationist Approach to Text: What Role-Players Can Teach Us about Form and Meaning

The purpose of my essay is twofold: (1) I demonstrate how analytical techniques from the variationist research paradigm in sociolinguistics provide the scholar with additional tools to understand the relationship between form and meaning, and (2) through this kind of analysis, I present an example of how real-world notions of gendered speech are extended to the dialogue in texts that emerge from virtual interactions. I use the term form in the linguistic sense to represent a meaningful unit of language. In this sense, go and going are two distinct linguistic forms. By contrast, literary form, as it is typically construed, represents the assembly of linguistic forms into a literary composition. For example, poets utilize the syllabic structure of particular linguistic forms in the creation of systematically metered verses. In this case, aspects of the linguistic form (i.e., syllable structure) are integral to the development of the literary (i.e., poetic) form. For authors who leverage dialogue as a means of characterization (e.g., William Faulkner), vernacular linguistic forms are used to create a sense of authenticity, which contributes to the plausibility of their fiction. While distinct, the meanings associated with linguistic forms help to shape the meaning that readers associate with particular literary forms. Through quantitative analysis, I describe how social meaning—those ideologically grounded notions that emerge from the social experiences and understandings of a particular group—becomes associated with particular linguistic forms and how these meanings serve to characterize a particular text. I examine collaboratively authored texts that emerge from interactions in an online role-playing game to demonstrate that authors’ use of nonstandard spellings helps create stereotypically male characters who are linguistically positioned in opposition to non-male characters in their dialogue. In order to understand why a variationist approach can be useful to literary scholars, I will begin by exploring why previous quantitative approaches have had little success in contributing to literary theorization and will then describe how the variationist approach differs.

A Variationist Approach to Text: What Role-Players Can Teach Us about Form and Meaning

A Variationist Approach to Text: What Role-Players Can Teach Us about Form and Meaning

Style repertoire and social change in British Asian English

This study has two goals: empirically, it accounts for variation found in the use of ethnically‐marked variants among British‐born Asians; methodologically, it assesses the variationist approach against a repertoire approach. In Part I, analysis of one Punjabi‐derived phonetic trait, examined in interview data only, suggests that younger women shift to exclusive use of the British prestige variant. Part II expands the analysis to four variables and to broader speech repertoires for four individuals. The repertoire analysis shows the conclusions in Part I to be inaccurate, and instead reveals: (1) retention of Punjabi traits by young women in the home domain; (2) two types of repertoire – flexible and fused; (3) a gendered reversal in repertoire type over time; and (4) a network diversity basis for these differences. Unlike the initial variationist analysis, the use of repertoire analysis and a new Network Diversity Index leads to the discovery of a shift among lower‐middle‐class British Asians from traditional Punjabi to urban British social structures.

The development of coda perception in second language phonology: A variationist perspective

Within a variationist approach for data collection and analysis, this study investigates the acquisition in perception of post-vocalic word-final stops (codas) by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese learning English as a foreign language in a classroom environment. Because codas are illicit in this variety of Portuguese, the hypothesis holds that learners will process this foreign structure as followed by an illusory epenthetic vowel, [i], a manifestation of ‘perceptual foreign accent’. In a forced-choice phone identification task, 51 participants listened to series of English pseudowords and then decided on whether each word ended in a consonant or in a vowel. The statistical results of the experiment indicate that codas are more likely to be perceived in the following cases: (1) in more advanced levels of proficiency, (2) in the context of segments that belong to the class of coronals [t d] and labials [p b], and (3) when the coda consonant is preceded by a lax vowel. The latter as well as the non-significant word size factor contradict the results established in the investigation of the production of this syllabic constituent. To some extent, the results obtained show a correlation between speech perception and production, and support the view that perception precedes production in the development of second language codas.

Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English

In the multilingual centres of Northern Europe's major cities, new varieties of the host languages are emerging. While some analyse these ‘multiethnolects’ as youth styles, we take a variationist approach to an emerging ‘Multicultural London English’ (MLE), asking: (1) what features characterise MLE; (2) at what age(s) are they acquired; (3) is MLE vernacularised; and (4) when did MLE emerge, and what factors enabled this? We argue that innovations in the diphthongs and the quotative system are generated from the specific sociolinguistics of inner‐city London, where at least half the population is undergoing group second‐language acquisition and where high linguistic diversity leads to a heterogeneous feature pool to select from. We look for incrementation (Labov 2001) in the acquisition of the features, but find this only for two ‘global’ changes, BE LIKE and goose‐fronting, for which adolescents show the highest usage. Community‐internal factors explain the age‐related variation in the remaining features.