However the variable context is defined, it is standard variationist practice to exclude tokens outside this context from further quantitative analyses. The role of occurrences of forms in contexts that lie outside the shared space of grammaticizing constructions in variation, ranging from highly infrequent occurrences to vast and diverse territories, has yet to be adequately explored. Spanish Synthetic Future (SF) in epistemic contexts does not overlap functionally with Spanish Periphrastic Future (PF). Four Goldvarb analyses of SF-PF variation since 1600, alongside quantitative analysis of epistemic SF, reveal an intimate relationship. Beyond a parallel rise in frequency of PF and epistemic SF, a connection between epistemic SF patterns and SF-PF variation is found in shifts in relative magnitudes of effect. It is argued that quantitative analysis of frequently occurring contexts that fall outside the envelope of variation may provide valuable explanatory insight regarding diachronic shifts within the variable context.

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.

The role of outliers in vowel distributions is examined through an experiment that registers subjects' assessments of symmetrical and asymmetrical distributions. Subjects first scaled their subjective impressions of a series of six resynthesized tokens of the word bad ranging from low front to upper mid front. They were then asked to register on this scale their overall impressions of four series of five phrases including bad: low symmetrical, low with a very low outlier, high symmetrical, high with a very high outlier. Subjects show the capacity to integrate outliers into their overall assessments in a manner consistent with their acoustic properties. The effect of low outliers was significantly greater, reflecting the socially marked status of this form in the Philadelphia community.

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.

This paper examines a short-lived innovation, quotative all, in real and apparent time. We used a two-pronged method to trace the trajectory of all over the past two decades: (i) Quantitative analyses of the quotative system of young Californians from different decades; this reveals a startling crossover pattern: in 1990/1994, all predominates, but by 2005, it has given way to like. (ii) Searches of Internet newsgroups; these confirm that after rising briskly in the 1990s, all is declining. Tracing the changing usage of quotative options provides year-to-year evidence that all has recently given way to like. Our paper has two aims: We provide insights from ongoing language change regarding short-term innovations in the history of English. We also discuss our collaboration with Google Inc. and argue for the value of newsgroups to research projects investigating linguistic variation and change in real time, especially where recorded conversational tokens are relatively sparse.

Following recent work that questions traditional social categories, this paper examines the role of ethnicity in conditioning linguistic variation. Reporting on a large-scale project in the multicultural context of Toronto, we argue for combining emic and etic approaches to social categorization. Focusing on the Chinese and Italian communities, our analysis of two sociolinguistic variables shows that speakers may vary in overall rate, but linguistic conditioning remains largely constant across and within ethnic groups. Whereas there is evidence for language transfer in the first generation, differences between generations suggest that transfer does not persist. Some speakers appear to use overall rates to express ethnic identity. Differences between communities may be explained in terms of different timelines of settlement and visible-minority status.

This paper reports a speaker evaluation experiment that investigated the competition between three regional accents of Standard Dutch and references to the speaker's profession as determinants of attitude formation. A stratified sample of listener-judges rated speech stimuli that were presented in two guises, a neutral guise and a teacher guise (the latter containing multiple references that revealed the speaker to be a high school teacher of Dutch). The experimental findings corroborate our earlier claim that regional flavoring is embedded in lay conceptualizations of Standard Dutch. Although teachers of Dutch may be the last “gatekeepers” of the standard in the Low Countries, they are not automatically downgraded when they have a regional accent: What matters is, clearly, which accent they have. Analysis of the ratings further suggests a hierarchical relation between accent and occupation as perception triggers: Even though regional accent clearly is the stronger attitude determinant, it does not suppress occupational information but interacts with it to generate richer social meaning.

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.

This article reports on research which seeks to compare and measure the similarities between phonetic transcriptions in the analysis of relationships between varieties of English. It addresses the question of whether these varieties have been converging, diverging, or maintaining equilibrium as a result of endogenous and exogenous phonetic and phonological changes. We argue that it is only possible to identify such patterns of change by the simultaneous comparison of a wide range of varieties of a language across a data set that has not been specifically selected to highlight those changes that are believed to be important. Our analysis suggests that although there has been an obvious reduction in regional variation with the loss of traditional dialects of English and Scots, there has not been any significant convergence (or divergence) of regional accents of English in recent decades, despite the rapid spread of a number of features such as TH-fronting.

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.

The influence of linguistic and social factors on (r) in Boston and two New Hampshire towns is described. The preceding vowel and geographic, ethnic, and age-related differences were found to have strong effects. In comparison to Bostonians, New Hampshire speakers exhibit a higher rate of rhoticity, and fewer factors constrain their variability. Younger speakers are more rhotic than older speakers, as are more educated speakers and those in higher linguistic marketplace positions. This study demonstrates that these patterns fit the transmission (within Boston) and diffusion (to New Hampshire) framework (Labov, 2007) only with the addition of accommodation theory (Niedzielski & Giles, 1996), which connects our linguistic findings to evidence that many New Hampshire residents do not identify with Boston. The effects on (r) in other studies are compared to determine which effects are particular to individual communities (nonuniversal) and which occur across all communities examined. The nonuniversal effects are therefore available as measures of contact-induced change. This study introduces a method for quantitatively comparing the amount of change between communities.

Spanish is characterized by number concord in determiner phrases (DPs) and predicate nominals; the plural marker /s/ is attached to all relevant elements in a plural DP. Exceptions to this rule usually involve phonetically motivated processes of /s/-weakening in coda position, and do not result in a functionally different system of plural marking. A distinct pattern is found in two isolated dialects of Spanish spoken in ethnically cohesive Afro-descendent communities where Spanish was originally acquired as a second language by speakers of African languages. In both varieties, characterized by the absence of /s/-reducing phenomena, plural /-s/ tends to be marked only on the first element of plural DPs, usually a determiner. In one of the dialects, spoken in Ecuador, these “stripped plurals” alternate with full multiple plural concord, similar to vernacular Brazilian Portuguese. In the other dialect, spoken in Bolivia, stripped plurals appear to be a recent development, emerging from a more restructured traditional variety in which plural /-s/ was not used at all. A variational analysis of both dialects finds little evidence for spontaneous drift away from canonical multiple plural marking, but rather suggests an evolution from earlier contact-induced interlanguages that exhibited even less systematic plural marking. The appearance of Afro-Hispanic stripped plurals is tentatively correlated with the shift from a depleted definite article system to a configuration more closely resembling modern Spanish. A similar set of circumstances may have contributed to the formation of stripped plurals in vernacular Brazilian Portuguese.

A characteristic of children's social orders is gender segregation. When children can choose, girls play more with girls and boys with boys. This begins around age three and peaks in later childhood. If children separate into same-gender groups, their interactions across the gender line will not be as frequent as those with members of the same sex. Following on Bloomfield's assertion (1933:46) that “density of communication” results in the “most important differences of speech” within a community, I predict that differences will increasingly emerge between girls and boys. I test this using two sociolinguistic variables, (dh) and (ing), in the English spoken by children in an elementary school. The prediction is supported. Results contribute to research into language socialization and the acquisition of gendered linguistic expression.

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.

The system of stative possession has been subject to variation and change since at least the Early Modern period, with have got rising in frequency in British and Antipodean varieties of English. In Canadian English, as represented by data from the largest city, Toronto, have predominates. Nonetheless, the full set of constraints previously reported for this variable are operative, corroborating the longitudinal maintenance of linguistic factors across time and space (Kroch, 1989). At the same time, variation among possessive forms is conditioned by robust sociolinguistic patterns. Have is correlated with education and with female speakers, whereas less-educated men favor have got and got. Such findings demonstrate that the domination of one form or another in a variable system can be the result of historical accident, in this case a founder effect at a particular point in history, and that the social value of forms is a product of local circumstances at the time of change.