Vernacular Varieties Research Articles

Negative Concord as an English “Vernacular Universal”

This article is a contribution to the study of English vernacular universals, and its aims are twofold. Its empirical aim is to give a sociolinguistic account of the use and nonuse of negative concord, or multiple negation, from Late Middle to Late Modern English between 1400 and 1800. Its second aim is theory-driven: to consider the spread of nonassertive indefinites (negative polarity items) into negative contexts in terms of linguistic typology. In particular, the discussion will connect the generalization of nonassertive forms across interrogatives, conditionals, comparatives, and negatives in the history of English using the semantic map proposed by Haspelmath (1997). The article comes to the conclusion that while this negative polarity concord affects the choice of indefinites, negative versus nonassertive, which come under the scope of negation in standard and vernacular varieties of English, it does not alter the basic typology of English verbal negation with indefinites.

Language ideologies and the education of speakers of marginalized language varieties: Adopting a critical awareness approach

For over 40 years, sociolinguists have been demonstrating that all varieties of language are equal in linguistic terms. Yet vernacular varieties such as African American English and Hawai‘i Creole are still generally marginalized and excluded from the educational process, with the result that speakers of these varieties are disadvantaged in education as well as other areas. This article discusses four interrelated language ideologies that contribute to this state of affairs. Then it describes the “awareness” teaching approach, which in opposition to these ideologies includes marginalized varieties in the curriculum. This is followed by an examination of the extent to which the awareness approach deals with the inequalities perpetuated by the prevailing language ideologies. The article goes on to argue that a critical version of the awareness approach is a more effective alternative.

Tense Variation in Preadolescent Narratives

Most of the previous research on variation in tense-aspect morphology in narrative has focused on the discourse functions of the alternation between the simple past and the conversational historical present (CHP). However, it is not clear what discourse functions may be implicated in narrative by switches between the simple past and other tense-aspect categories and whether there are differences between contemporary vernacular varieties of English in this regard. This article addresses these issues by examining tense variation in the narrative complicating action clauses embedded in fifty-six narratives of personal experience recounted by a small group of preadolescents recorded in Greater London in the southeast of England. Using a variationist methodology incorporating distributional and multivariate analyses of tense variation in a circumscribed narrative subcomponent, the article examines switches between the simple past, the CHP, and the present perfect. Building on the foundational research conducted on the alternation between the simple past and the CHP in narrative, the results presented here suggest that alternations between the present perfect and other tense forms are motivated by structural and pragmatic considerations associated with the segmentation and evaluation of narrative episodes.

L'évolution des variantes phonétiques méridionales dans le sud-est de la France

This article is based on a survey of French pronunciation in the Nice area, which attempts to determine whether southern features are being lost in that region and, if so, to what extent, in which part of the system and according to what stylistic and sociolinguistic modalities. To this end, a corpus of readings and spontaneous speech recordings was gathered by interviewing 25 local subjects. An auditory analysis was then conducted on 3 typical southern French phonetic features, mute e , nasal vowels and mid-vowels. In general, the analysis shows a shift from the vernacular variants to their standard French equivalents, with negligible gender and stylistic variation. This change can be explained in terms of convergence or opposition between several internal and external factors of evolution.

SOUTHERN AMERICAN ENGLISH PERSONAL DATIVES: THE THEORETICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF DIALECTAL VARIATION

The Southern Double Object Construction, a regular form in Southern vernacular varieties of American English, is well attested. Among speakers of Southern Vernacular English, its use is not stigmatized, and it appears that it can be exchanged variably with its mainstream English approximate, the “self” reflexive (e.g., Sheiwent to the store to get herisome candy vs. Sheiwent to the store to get herselfisome candy). In this article, we contextualize the Southern Double Object Construction within the scope of syntactic literature on double object constructions. We contend that although syntactic theories, such as the Principles and Parameters model, can explain Southern Double Object Constructions in general terms, they overlook idiosyncratic, language-specific properties that we argue, like Fillmore, Kay, and O'Connor (1988), constitute theoretically important information essential to evaluation of a grammar.

Language attitudes of the first postcolonial generation in Hong Kong secondary schools

Following the return of sovereignty from Britain to China, Hong Kong has undergone significant sociopolitical and educational changes. This study is a quantitative investigation of the language attitudes of 1,048 secondary students from the first postcolonial generation brought up amid the significant changes after the political handover. The results show that the respondents feel the most integratively inclined to Cantonese (the vernacular variety), and they perceive English (the colonizers' language) as the language of the highest instrumental value and social status, while Putonghua (the language of the new ruler) is rated the lowest from both the integrative and the instrumental perspectives. Unlike what has been predicted by scholars, Putonghua has not yet taken the place of English as the language of power. Despite this, there are signs of a subtle transition toward an accommodating attitude to Putonghua, mainly induced by the growing instrumental value of the language for economic purposes. (Language attitudes; postcolonial Hong Kong.)

Phonological Variation in Child-Directed Speech

Segmental features of child-directed speech (CDS) were studied in a corpus drawn from thirtynine mothers living in Tyneside, England. Focus was on the phonetic variants used for (t) in word-medial and word-final prevocalic contexts since it is known that these variants display clear sociolinguistic patterning in the adult community. Variant usage in CDS was found to differ markedly from that in interadult speech. Effects were also found with respect to the age and gender of the children being addressed. Speech to girls generally contained more standard variants than speech to boys, which, by contrast, contained higher rates of vernacular variants. The differentiation by gender was most apparent for the youngest children. The findings are assessed in comparison to other studies of CDS. It has previously been claimed that modifications made in the CDS register help children to learn linguistic structures and also to learn that speech is a social activity. Our findings suggest that CDS may play an additional role, providing boys and girls as young as 2;0 with differential opportunities to learn the social-indexical values of sociolinguistic variables.

No taming the vernacular! Insights from the relatives in northern Britain

In this article we conduct a quantitative analysis of the markers used to introduce relative clauses in three vernacular varieties of English in Britain. In each variety there is a surprisingly low frequency of WH words in subject relatives and negligible use in nonsubject relatives, suggesting that the WH forms have not yet penetrated the respective vernaculars. Variable rule analyses of the multiple factors conditioning that and zero relative markers reveal that the varieties pattern quite similarly with respect to significance of factors. For the zero variant, there is a favoring effect of (1) sentence structure and (2) indefinite antecedents; however there are dialect specific differences in some nuances of the constraint ranking of factors. On the other hand, the use of zero is also highly correlated with contextual constraints relating to surface level processing, that is, clause length, as well as clause complexity, across all communities. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for both dialect specific and universal constraints on relative marker use, which can be used to further elucidate the task of conducting broad cross-community comparisons. The results also provide support for an important distinction in linguistic change – those changes that are imposed from the outside (like the WH relative markers) and those that arise from within (like that and zero relative markers) proceed very differently in mainstream as compared to peripheral varieties.The first author acknowledges with gratitude the generous support of the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom (the ESRC) for research grant #R000239097, Back to the Roots: The Legacy of British Dialects. We thank our colleagues Karen Corrigan and Anthony Warner for stimulating and insightful discussion of this article, which greatly improved the final version it has taken. We also are indebted to Jonathan Hope, Terttu Nevalainen, Ronald Macaulay, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Suzanne Romaine, and James Walker for comments, as well as two anonymous reviewers. We dedicate this article to the “northerners” in Cumnock, Culleybackey, Maryport, and Portavogie who took the time to share their stories with us, providing this legacy of British dialects for the future.

First-person plural in Prince Edward Island Acadian French: The fate of the vernacular variant je…ons

In Atlantic Canada Acadian communities, definite on is in competition with the traditional vernacular variant je…ons (e.g., on parle vs. je parlons “we speak”), with the latter variant stable only in isolated communities, but losing ground in communities in which there is substantial contact with external varieties of French. We analyze the distribution of the two variants in two Prince Edward Island communities that differ in terms of amount of such contact. The results of earlier studies of Acadian French are confirmed in that je…ons usage remains robust in the more isolated community but is much lower in the less isolated one. However, in the latter community, the declining variant, while accounting for less than 20% of tokens for the variable, has not faded away. Although it is not used at all by some speakers, it is actually the variant of choice for others, and for still other speakers, it has taken on a particular discourse function, that of indexing narration. Comparison with variation in the third-person plural, in which a traditional variant is also in competition with an external variant, shows that the decline of je…ons is linked to its greater saliency, making it a prime candidate for social reevaluation.An earlier version of this article was presented at UKLVC-3, held in July 2001 at the University of York, U.K. We thank audience members for comments. We also thank Raymond Mougeon, along with this journal's anonymous referees, for useful comments on an earlier written version. The research was funded by standard research grants awarded to King and Nadasdi by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Proyecto de investigación de la formación de dialectos (FORDIAL)

The research project on Dialect Formation (DIALFOR) focuses on dialect contact between southern varieties of Spanish in urban contexts boosted by migration from the rural Hinterland in Andalusia in the course of the last thirty years. Either loyalty to rural vernacular varieties or convergence towards regional and national standard is constrained by the speakers' degree of integration into the large (urban) speech community. The analysis of the social networks where ordinary people live and communicate allows us to explain the speakers' choices. To carry out this research, two sample surveys (Granada and Malaga) using the same fieldwork methodology and theoretical background have been prepared, where commuters and migrant citizens are separated. A third control group of speakers is studied in each rural community where migrants come from. Theoretical foundations and empirical bases are taken from contemporary trends of European social dialectology research on dialect convergence and divergence (Auer/ Hinskens, 1996a; Mattheier, 2000), with special reference to studies on dialect formation in new towns (Kerswill, 1994a, 2002). Long term network research carried out on Malaga and Granada speech communities are taken as a point of depart (Villena, 1994, 2001; Moya, 1997, 1998).

Gabriel Manessy: the foundations of an open linguistics

Resorting to concepts such as vehicularization, creolization, and semantax, Gabriel Manessy demonstrated that a language develops under the combined constraints of culture-specific ways of thinking and of social norms inherent to community membership. Manessy devoted the last twenty years in his life to the comparison of the vehicular and the vernacular varieties of the same language, in two kinds of communicative situations, each marked by a different kind of social norms exerting their pressure on the speakers: situations of vehicular communication (lingua franca) and situations of vernacular communication. Each variety can be identified and observed in areas of urban immigration in French-speaking Africa, where a speaker's integration can be measured by reference to the degree of vernacularization reached by his discourse practices. In this perspective the creole languages in the plantation societies, being the result of the vernacularization process, were the field slaves' linguistic answer to the social double-bind their masters had designed to control them.

Identity and Language Variation in a Rural Community

This article investigates an external variable critical to the understanding of sociolinguistic variation in a rural, tri-ethnic community in the Southern United States. Cultural identity, the orientation of the speaker to the community, was first observed in variationist work by Labov (1963) but has not been regularly analyzed as have sex, age, and ethnicity. Cultural identity is postulated as a speaker's orientation to the local and larger regional cultures, and in Warren County, North Carolina, this orientation correlates strongly with vernacular variants of present and past tense be. For copula absence (e.g. They O real nice people), was regularization (e.g. We was going), and past tense wont (e.g. We wont gonna go), the cultural identity of the speaker had statistically significant effects on language variation. To understand language variation in this community, the interactions of cultural identity and other external variables must be considered.

Tibetan (review)

Reviewed by: Tibetan by Philip Denwood Gonzalo Rubio Tibetan. By Philip Denwood. (London Oriental and African language library 3.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999. Pp. xix, 372. Although attention is given to other dialects and to Preclassical (PT) and Classical Tibetan (CT), this overview is actually a thorough linguistic description of the modern dialect spoken in the Lhasa area. The first chapters deal with the geographic framework (1–11), the history (13–19), and the dialects (21–45) of Tibetan and its speakers. A discussion of the levels of analysis—graphematic, phonological, and lexicogrammatical—(47–53) is followed by a presentation of the script and some morphophonological matters linked to the writing interface (55–68). The next eight chapters (69–242) are devoted to the Lhasa [End Page 868] dialect, covering phonology, morphology, and syntax in detail. A short sketch of PT and CT (243–73) provides the reader with a mesmerizing window into the grammar of this culturally and historically important language. The final chapter (275–87) presents a few parsed textual samples of Lhasa, PT, and CT. The appendixes include a list of dialects (289–95) and a brief description of the phonology of other Tibetan dialects (297–306). The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography (307–56) and indexes (357–72). It is rather surprising that Denwood appears reluctant to accept that all Tibetan dialects are historically part of the same Tibetan language sensu stricto (43–44). It is true that one should reject any reductionist approach to the linguistic history of Tibetan— i.e. attempts at making PT or CT the direct ancestor of any of the modern spoken or written variants. There were certainly other vernacular variants which were never written and may well account for the ancestry of most contemporary dialects. It is also clear that the traditional tree model, with its monolithic Ursprache, works as a Procrustean bed on which a wide and complex range of evidence can hardly fit. However, one cannot deny that, regardless of the specifics of their internal relationship, the different ancient and modern Tibetan dialects belong to a branch of the Tibeto-Burman group within the larger Sino-Tibetan family. It is simply quite farfetched to propose, as D does, that the conspicuous and consistent correspondences between the different dialectal variants are either the result of a creole-like model of interaction or due to external influence. Probably the guidelines for the series and the overwhelming focus on the modern dialect of Lhasa have prevented D from exploring some potentially fecund avenues, especially concerning historical developments. For instance, when discussing the issue of the ’a-chung or ‘small a’ (57), usually transliterated as an apostrophe, there is no mention of the possible prenasal feature represented by this grapheme as a prefix in CT, as is probably reflected in some modern Tibetan dialects with prenasalized clusters; see Stephan V. Beyer (The Classical Tibetan language, 47. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992). Such a consideration would carry considerable weight in the ongoing discussion on the reconstruction of the intransitivizing prefix in Old Chinese (either a voiced laryngeal *ɦ- or a nasal segment *N- whose articulation point is determined by the following segment); see Laurent Sagart (The roots of Old Chinese, 74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999). In spite of these few observations, this book offers an excellent overview of Lhasa Tibetan as well as some insights on PT and CT. This focus on a modern dialect makes the book especially valuable for linguists, but it may discourage some general readers whose interest lies in the Classical language. Gonzalo Rubio Ohio State University Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

Language variation on Internet Relay Chat: A social network approach

This paper examines linguistic variation on an Internet Relay Chat channel with respect to the hypothesis, based on the model of Milroy and Milroy (1992), that standard variants tend to be associated with weak social network ties, while vernacular variants are associated with strong network ties. An analysis of frequency of contact as a measure of tie strength reveals a structured relationship between tie strength and several linguistic variants. However, the variant features are associated with social positions in a way that does not correlate neatly with tie strength. An account of these results is proposed in terms of the social functions of the different variables and the larger social context of IRC affecting tie strength.

PHONOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF ETHNIC IDENTITY: EVIDENCE OF DIVERGENCE?

Like clothing, hairstyles, and other culturally variable phenomena, language offers a wealth of resources on which people may draw to meet their sociosymbolic needs. As a result, linguistic features of all sorts may come to serve as markers of whatever social distinctions are seen as important to a society’s members. Among the distinctions marked in this way are those drawn in terms of broad categories such as gender, social class, and age, as well as others based on categories that may be relevant only in a given community. The research reported here examines the linguistic marking of distinctions constructed by ethnicity. The importance of ethnicity as a social factor shaping variation in American English is hard to deny. The sociolinguistic ramifications of ethnic divisions have been explored in numerous studies and have often been found to involve considerable linguistic differences. This is certainly the case with the best-known—and best-studied—ethnically defined variety in the United States: African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which has been shown to incorporate several linguistic features that distinguish it from vernacular varieties used by European Americans (see, e.g., Bailey and Thomas 1998). Of course, in many American communities, ethnic categorization goes well beyond black and white, and so too may the linguistic marking of these categories. There is value in considering the relationships among a range of ethnically defined varieties, as has been shown in studies conducted by Walt Wolfram and his research team in a North Carolina county populated by roughly equal numbers of speakers of European, African, and Native American descent (see, e.g., Wolfram 1996; Dannenberg and Wolfram 1998). A comparable ethnic complexity exists in the community discussed here, and the present study seeks to examine some of that complexity by sampling speakers representing different ethnic groups. The linguistic correlates of these ethnic categories are examined through a study of phonological variables. A variety of pronunciation

A New Perspective on the History of Arabic Variation in Marking Agreement with Plural Heads

This paper examines variation in marking agreement in Arabic. In particular, the investigation focuses on the variation between plural and feminine singular agreement with plural head nouns. Tape-recorded naturalistic speech from sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Cairo constitute the data for the study of agreement in New Arabic. These results are compared to agreement patterns found in a corpus of Old Arabic texts. Some have suggested that the agreement variation found in New and Old Arabic varieties is random and meaningless. However, multivariate analysis of the Cairene and the Old Arabic patterns indicate both are systematic and that the two are similar in many respects. The agreement patterns in question appear to be a resource which speakers exploit to classify referents. It is generally agreed that the language contact situation resulting from the spread of Islam had a profound effect on the development of vernacular varieties of Arabic. Some have argued that the process of language shift to Arabic was rapid, resulting in deep-reaching changes in spoken varieties of Arabic. On the other hand, the formal variety of Arabic that came to be Classical Arabic is touted as having changed little. This study suggests that Classical Arabic, too, appears to be the result of some contact induced change and that the agreement system of Cairene is, in some ways, closer to that of early Old Arabic than is that of its standardized cousin, Modern Standard Arabic. From the standpoint of agreement, it would appear that varieties such as Cairene have changed less and that Classical Arabic changed more than one might suppose. These findings suggest that a re-examination of the history of Arabic is in order

From Accent to Marker in Cajun English

The English of bilingual Cajuns living in southern Louisiana has been described as an accented variety of English, the result of interference from French. In order to investigate this proposition, we present a variationist study of four features of Cajun English: 1) the interdental fricatives /th, ð7 realized by the dental stops [t, d]; 2) the failure to aspirate the stops /p, t, k/; 3) the monophthongization of /ai/ and 4) vowel nasalization. The data for this study are taken from the Cajun French/ English Sociolinguistic Survey; the survey has confirmed that English has become dominant in these communities over the last two generations. A sub-sample of 28 speakers, divided by gender into three age groups, is taken from St Landry Parish. If interference from French is the source of these features of Cajun English, we would expect a steady decrease in frequency over apparent time so that these vernacular features will be used more frequently by the older and less frequently by the middle-aged and least of all by the younger generation. The results of GoldVarb analysis of the variables show a complex interrelationship of age, gender and social network. All of the variables studied followed the expected pattern; the old generation use more of the vernacular variants than all others; the middle-aged dramatically decrease their use of the vernacular but the young generation exhibit a number of complex patterns in their use of the vernacular features. Interestingly the young follow the decreasing pattern for (p, t, k) but they show a level of usage for the other variables closer to the old generation so that there is a v-shaped age pattern rather than a pattern showing a steady decrease of the so-called accented features of Cajun English. We argue that although the vernacular forms produced by the older group can be considered part of an ethnic accent, they play a very different role in the younger generation which can be attributed both to French language attrition and to the on-going blossoming of a Cajun cultural renaissance. Being Cajun is now socially and economically advantageous; the younger generation, unlike the middle-aged, take pride in their Cajun identity. The functions of French for people under 40 years old have been significantly reduced so that it is now generally limited to the family domain and even more restricted in that it is used primarily in speaking with older members of the extended family. Given this situation, the only linguistic way to signal "Cajunness" is left to English.

Modelos probabilísticos multinomiales para el estudio del ceceo, seseo y distinción de /s/ y /?/: datos de la ciudad de Málaga

The aim of this paper is to propose a multinomial probabilistic model able to account for the variation of /?s/ in Southern Spanish varieties. The current analyses carried up till now are based on frequency counts of mergers between /s/ and /?/, which are labeled 'ceceo' and 'seseo', as two social and regional norms of pronunciation. Standard Spanish distinction between /s/ and /?/ is therefore to be deduced from the total body of cases, counting every [s] corresponding to an etymological or canonical s as an occurrence of /s/, including the tokens of those individuals whose pronunciation pattern of /?s/ is overtly 'seseo' (exactly the same for the contrary case of 'ceceo'). Since both types (s > ? and ? > s) currently coexist in Southern speech communities as in Málaga city, it is not obvious to decide about the high proportion of cases where /s/ and /?/ are pronounced in a canonical way. Therefore we need a procedure to decide the rate of cases of canonical pronunciation due to chance. Two related multinomial models have been developed, implemented and tested on a sociological body of data from a social network of 31 individuals from Málaga city, extracted from a sociolinguistic investigation of vernacular varieties in Málaga (M.U.V.-Project). The first model calculates the single probability of seseo (s > s and ? > s), ceceo (? > ? and s > ?) and distinction (s > s and ? > ?) for every individual studied. The second model calculates the single probability of distinction (s > s and ? > ?) vs. the single probability of reduction or 'confusión' (s > ? and ? > s). To measure the degree of fit of both models, a maximum likelihood estimator has been developed with consistent and hopeful results. Comparison between relative frequency and probabilistic results demonstrates, finally, the more realistic approach lo this problem on the basis presented here.

Convergent explanation and alternative regularization patterns:Were/weren'tleveling in a vernacular English variety

ABSTRACTAlthough the process of analogical leveling seems relatively straightforward and its directionality readily predictable, the existence of cross-dialectal leveling alternatives suggests that the processes that actuate and embed analogical leveling can actually be quite complex. Using the case of a vernacular variety spoken on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, we demonstrate how linguistic-systemic principles such as remorphologization, psycholinguistic principles of perceptual saliency, and sociolinguistic processes of symbolic identity converge to account for the development and maintenance of leveling toweren't(I/you/(s)he/we/ you/they weren't here) in this post-insular island community.

Word-final consonant devoicing in a variety of working-class French – a case of language contact?

AbstractThe article examines the variable distribution of word-final consonant devoicing (=WFCD) among working-class speakers in the Roubaix district, with respect to phonological conditioning and speaker characteristics. WFCD is shown to affect coronals, labials and velars in that order, and to be favoured by pre-pausal position. Among speakers over forty-five WFCD is primarily associated with female speakers, and to a lesser degree with male speakers under thirty. This sociolinguistically unusual distribution of a strongly vernacular variant may plausibly be attributed to language/dialect contact consequent on the immigration of Flemish-speaking textile workers. Such language contact would have tended to reinforce an already existing characteristic of Picard patois rather than introducing a totally new feature as the brief review of other Picard varie-ties would suggest.