Research Article
A closer look at the constraint hierarchy: Order, contrast, and geographical scale
- Barbara M. Horvath, Ronald J. Horvath
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 November 2003, pp. 143-170
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Close examination of five constraint hierarchies involved in the vocalization of /l/ in Australian and New Zealand English across five geolinguistic scales (individual, local, regional, national, and supranational) reveals patterns of variation that allow us to distinguish linguistic processes that are universal from those that are particular. Based on 42 goldvarb analyses, we use probability weights to measure the variation in the order and contrast within and across constraint hierarchies. Geolinguistic scale analysis shows that some constraints are scale independent (i.e., they do not vary in order or contrast with changes in geolinguistic scale), whereas others are clearly scale dependent and do vary systematically with changes in geolinguistic scale. We propose a universality continuum in which constraint hierarchies that exhibit near invariance across all geolinguistic scales are at one end of the continuum and constraint hierarchies that vary with geolinguistic scale are at the other end. Scale dependency in constraint hierarchies identifies where social processes can intervene in universal linguistic processes.
We would like to thank Sali Tagliamonte for engaging with us in a discussion of the problems associated with comparing goldvarb analyses. We would also like to thank Meriam Meyerhoff for suggesting that we look at the individual scale. In addition, a thoughtful reviewer carefully laid out the potential statistical problems associated with our approach to the comparison of goldvarb analyses. We have attempted to defend the approach taken, but recognize that the discussion of comparative goldvarb analysis warrants further consideration.
Dialect contact in a Southern Basque town
- Bill Haddican
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 November 2003, pp. 1-35
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This article describes five dialect-based changes in progress in the Southern Basque town of Oiartzun. Based on data collected in sociolinguistic interviews with thirteen local Basque speakers, this article examines dialectal variation in elements chosen from different parts of the grammar: two lexical items, two morphosyntactic alternations on auxiliary verbs, and a phonological process, apheresis. In particular, several claims are made about dialect contact in Oiartzun. Strong apparent-time evidence exists that four out of five of these elements are undergoing change. Older speakers tend toward forms characteristic of dialects to the east of Oiartzun, whereas younger speakers prefer western forms. In each case, male speakers appear to be leading the process of change; men show significantly higher frequencies of incoming western forms than women. The data, however, provide little support for the hypothesis that the recently introduced Basque literary standard has influenced young people's vernacular.
I am deeply grateful to the people of Oiartzun for their generous support and hospitality during my stay in their beautiful town. Special thanks to Iñaki Arbelaitz for sharing with me his encyclopedic knowledge of local culture, language, and geography. Also, thanks to Larraitz Sanzberro, Katrin Abal, Inazio Retegi, Xabier Artiagoitia, Roslyn Frank, and Toki Alaiko denak. Thanks to John Singler for invaluable theoretical and methodological guidance in this study and to Renée Blake, Begoña Echeverria, Gregory Guy, John Singler, Koldo Zuazo, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts. All shortcomings are my own.
The English Vernacular of the Creoles of Louisiana
- Sylvie Dubois, Barbara M. Horvath
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 March 2004, pp. 255-288
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The English spoken by Creole African Americans in southern Louisiana reveals language change in the shift from French to English and the persistence of local forms of English. The overview of the socioeconomic history of Louisiana details the number of ethnic groups and the fluctuating social and linguistic relations among them over time. The study sample consists of 42 African Americans with French ancestry living in Opelousas in St. Landry Parish and Parks in St. Martin Parish. The high rate of the absence of glides in the vowels (ai, au, oi, i, u, e, o) is maintained across all generations of the 24 male speakers described. A possible source of glide absence, such as foreign language influence, is explored but found unconvincing. A more plausible explanation is that glide absence was part of the English brought to the area by native speakers in the early 19th century.
We acknowledge the generous support of the National Science Foundation (BSR-0091823) as well as the coding work done by two research assistants Vicky Polston and David Herrell. We also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of the text and their valuable comments.
The case for politeness: Pronoun variation in co-ordinate NPs in object position in English
- Philipp S. Angermeyer, John Victor Singler
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 November 2003, pp. 171-209
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The use of the nominative 1sg pronouns in co-ordinate NPs in object position, most famously between you and I, has received much attention from prescriptivists and formal linguists, but it has never been the object of a variationist study that compares its usage to that of other variants. This article seeks to fill the gap, based on a data set of co-ordinate NPs in object position, gathered through observation of everyday speech as well as in experimental sociolinguistic interviews. Arguing that the choice of NP case and of NP order is inseparably related, we identify three major patterns of co-ordinate NPs: Vernacular me and X and two post-Vernacular patterns, Standard X and me and Polite X and I. We then examine social and linguistic factors that constrain the usage of individual patterns. We conclude that all three patterns are robust and that they exist in stable ternary variation.
This article, which we authored jointly, arose from a paper we presented with Cecilia Cutler and Keith Fernandes at NWAVE–XXVII in Athens, Georgia. Cece and Keith worked with us in gathering the data and participated in extensive discussion with us concerning the phenomenon under study. We are grateful to them. The NWAVE paper itself grew out of a project in a linguistic variation class at NYU. The other participants in the class project were Tiffany Dugan and Agnieszka Rakowicz, and we thank them for their help. We benefited from discussions with Arto Anttila, Jeff Parrott, and Sharon Klein and from audiences at NYU and Stanford. E. W. Gilman called our attention to several relevant articles, and Maryam Bakht-Rofheart, Erik Falkensteen, Bill Haddican, and Ken Lacy provided us with relevant examples from the media. We also thank Sandra Singler Harding, Tom Leu, Erez Levon, Pat Reilly, and Arnold Zwicky. The quotation from an Episcopal missionary appears courtesy of The Archives of the Episcopal Church USA. We thank Jennifer Peters, archivist, and her staff for their assistance.
Copula variability in Gullah
- Tracey L. Weldon
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 December 2003, pp. 37-72
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Many researchers have investigated the copula for possible links between African American Vernacular English (aave) and Atlantic Creoles, a connection that has served as the foundation of the Creolist Hypothesis in the on-going debate over the origins of aave. One variety that has been of particular interest in this debate is Gullah, which has been hypothetically linked to aave since some of the earliest statements of the Creolist Hypothesis. To date, however, very little research has been done on copula variability in Gullah itself. This study, therefore, provides an analysis of copula variability in present affirmative contexts in Gullah. Variation is found among full, contracted, and zero forms in 1st person singular, plural/2nd person singular, and 3rd person singular environments. The analysis also reveals some parallels between Gullah and aave that offer support for the theory of an aave/creole connection.
I would like to acknowledge the Department of Linguistics and the Center for African Studies at Ohio State University for covering the cost of some of the fieldwork for this study. I would also like to acknowledge the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina for providing several hours of recordings used for the study. My sincerest thanks to research assistants Jason Sellers and Cherlon Ussery for help with transcriptions and data tabulation and to the following friends and colleagues for their help and support during various stages of this project: Emily Bender, Eugenia Deas, Vennie Deas-Moore, Brian Joseph, Michele Nichols, Terence Odlin, John Paolillo, Donald Winford, and Walt Wolfram. And, finally, my thanks to James Walker and an anonymous LVC reviewer for their helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. I accept full responsibility for any remaining errors.
Bare English-origin nouns in Spanish: Rates, constraints, and discourse functions
- Rena Torres Cacoullos, Jessi Elana Aaron
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 March 2004, pp. 289-328
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We test the hypothesis that single other-language-origin words are nonce loans (Sankoff, Poplack, & Vanniarajan, 1990) as opposed to code-switches in a corpus-based study of English-origin nouns occurring spontaneously in New Mexican Spanish discourse. The object of study is determinerless nouns, whose status is superficially ambiguous. The study shows that, even with typologically similar languages, variable rule analysis can reveal details of the grammar that constitute conflict sites, even when relative frequencies for variants are similar. Though the rate of bare nouns is identical, their distribution patterns in Spanish and English differ. Linguistic conditioning parallel with the former, and at odds with the latter, shows that the contentious items are loanwords. In information flow terms (Dubois, 1980; Thompson, 1997), it is not lack of grammatical integration but nonreferential uses of nonce-loan nouns to form recipient-language predicates that is manifested in zero determination.
We are grateful to Neddy A. Vigil for access to the New Mexico–Colorado Spanish Survey tapes. Mayra Cortes-Torres, Matt Alba, Jens Clegg, and Mark Waltemire helped with data transcription and extraction. This work was supported by a University of New Mexico Research Allocations Committee grant to Torres Cacoullos (#02-01). Work was completed during a postdoctoral fellowship for Torres Cacoullos at the University of Ottawa Sociolinguistics Laboratory, for which we thank Shana Poplack. A preliminary version was presented at NWAV-31, Stanford University, October 2002.
Language variation and local elements in family discourse
- Annick De Houwer
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 March 2004, pp. 329-349
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This study focuses on language variation in three families with small children in Antwerp, an officially Dutch-speaking large city in Belgium. Language variation is mainly considered here in terms of whether utterances contain local dialect features or not. Phonetic transcriptions of recorded natural family interaction were coded for language variation on an utterance-by-utterance basis. The following distinctions in usage emerge: “local” utterances containing dialect elements tend to be used when older children and adults in the family address each other. “Neutral” forms, which are common all over Flanders, may also be used, whereas “distal” features, which are imports from a Dutch variety outside Flanders, are to be avoided. However, when older children and adults address the younger members of the family, they increase their use of neutral forms, substantially reduce their use of local forms, and occasionally use distal forms. The younger children use mainly utterances categorized as neutral, dependent on who they are addressing. Implications of this variation across family members for language change are discussed.
Financial support for the project reported on in this article comes from the Belgian National Science Foundation (KAN-grant to the author) and the Research Council of the University of Antwerp/UIA. Many thanks to the families, schools, and students who helped at the data collection stage. I also thank Wolfgang Wölck and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Second language acquisition and “real” French: An investigation of subject doubling in the French of Montreal Anglophones
- Naomi Nagy, Hélène Blondeau, Julie Auger
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 November 2003, pp. 73-103
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We investigated the French of the first generation of Montreal Anglophones who had had access to French immersion schooling. Our aim was to determine the extent to which these Anglophones had acquired the variable grammar of their Francophone peers and how that was related to the type of French instruction received and to the types of exposure to French. In Montreal French, a subject NP may be “echoed” by a pronoun without emphatic or contrastive effect. Because this is not a feature of standard French, Anglophones who learned French primarily in school were not expected to exhibit it. On the other hand, Anglophones who frequently spent time with Montreal Francophones were expected to have picked it up. To test this hypothesis, we used a database of speech from 29 speakers, varying in their quantity and type of exposure to French. Multivariate analyses determined the degree of correlation of several linguistic and social factors (related to type and quantity of exposure to French) to the presence of a doubled subject. These data were then compared with that for L1 French. Speakers who were more nativelike with respect to the rate of subject doubling and effects of linguistic factors were those who had had more contact with native speakers, especially as adults.
We thank Pierrette Thibault and Gillian Sankoff for graciously allowing us to use this corpus. The interviews in French, which provide the linguistic data and some sociological data, were conducted by Hélène Blondeau, Marie-Odile Fonollosa, Lucie Gagnon, and Gillian Sankoff. The follow-up interviews in English, which provide additional sociological data, were conducted by Naomi Nagy. The authors gratefully acknowledge the interviewers' work, the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers, and the support of a Summer Research Fellowship from the University of New Hampshire to the first author in 1997.
Variation and merger of the rising tones in Hong Kong Cantonese
- Robert S. Bauer, Cheung Kwan-hin, Cheung Pak-man
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 November 2003, pp. 211-225
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Two male speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese varied the endpoints of High Rising and Mid-Low Rising tones and merged them in both directions under experimental conditions. The variation and merger of the two rising tones raise the possibility that at least four tonal subsystems may coexist within the Hong Kong Cantonese speech community. Sociolinguistic research over the past 20 years has documented variation and change among Cantonese sound segments but not the tones. Tonal variation in Hong Kong Cantonese appears to be a potentially important sociolinguistic variable.
This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 33rd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics in Trang, Thailand, on October 5, 2000. The research reported here was supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. PolyU 5249/99H Linguistics) and by Hong Kong Polytechnic University Research Grant G-YB57.
The Northern Subject Rule in Ulster: How Scots, how English?
- Kevin McCafferty
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 November 2003, pp. 105-139
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In diffusionist accounts of the Northern Subject Rule (NSR), this subject–verb concord system spread from Scotland via Ulster to North America and elsewhere. Thus, the NSR in Mid-Ulster English dialects of districts originally settled from England is attributed to diffusion from Ulster-Scots. But the NSR was also a feature of dialects of the North and North Midlands, the regions that contributed most of the English settlers to the Ulster Plantation. Since English and Scottish settlement patterns established in the seventeenth century have been reflected in Ulster dialect boundaries since then, the founder principle provides an alternative account of the persistence of the NSR in Northern Irish English. Usage in nineteenth-century emigrant letters indicates that the NSR was as strong in English-influenced dialects of Mid-Ulster as in Ulster-Scots and suggests that the NSR in Ulster may be a direct import from England as well as Scotland.
The author thanks Anniken Telnes Iversen, Toril Swan, and Hilde Sollid for reading and commenting on various drafts of this article; Herbert Schendl, Graham Shorrocks, and Dieter Stein for providing references, questions, and answers; and Laura Wright and Lukas Pietsch for offering both kinds of help as well as furnishing copies of forthcoming work that proved interesting and useful. Thanks also to Jack Chambers for copies of his papers. I am also grateful to the anonymous referees for LVC. Their comments, objections, and suggestions have been accommodated as far as possible and the responses to them have, I hope, improved the result. In the usual way, responsibility for any remaining errors lies with me.
The importance of interaction effects
- Robert Sigley
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 November 2003, pp. 227-253
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Published studies of linguistic variation usually concentrate on the main effects apparent for linguistic and social factor groups. By contrast, interaction effects, whereby the influence of some factor(s) is conditional on the values of other factor groups, have received considerably less attention and, even when recognized, are rarely quantified. Interaction effects involving linguistic factor groups are especially rarely acknowledged, even though the existence of interactions between social factors is widely recognized. This article reclaims interaction effects as an object of systematic variationist study and demonstrates the benefits of including such effects in quantitative modelling: first, by outlining practical methods for investigation of interaction effects within variable-rule analysis; second, by providing direct evidence for the incidence of interaction effects in linguistic data, through reanalyzing several pre-existing studies of phonological variation containing both linguistic and extralinguistic factor groups; and finally, by discussing their interpretation.
This article is the result of many years of collaboration with Janet Holmes, who generously provided all of the datasets reanalyzed here. Thanks are also due to David Britain, Peter Patrick, Tom Veatch, and John Paolillo for advice and correspondence on goldvarb/varbrul at various stages over the past decade. The present version has greatly benefitted from audience feedback at the 14th New Zealand Linguistic Society Conference (Christchurch, August 2001) and from the detailed comments of the anonymous referees for LVC.
The social status of Arabic, French, and English in the Senegalese speech community
- Fallou Ngom
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 March 2004, pp. 351-368
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This study is part of a larger unpublished work. The data collection is based on the Labovian sociolinguistic interview: 200 randomly selected Wolof speakers were interviewed and recorded for 20 minutes in Senegal. They were divided into two groups: 100 subjects over 50 years old and 100 subjects between 20 and 30 years old. Each group comprised 50 males and 50 females. The number of loanwords from Arabic, French, and English in subjects' vernacular was statistically analyzed using the Wilcoxon (rank sums) test across three registers (cultural, political, and religious), age groups, and gender. The study argues that loanwords in Wolof reflect the social groups in Senegal and the prestige of lender-languages. First, the article discusses the influence of foreign languages in Senegal. Second, it examines the social status of loanwords from these languages. Third, it shows the relationships between loanwords, registers, age group, and gender in Senegal.