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Introduction: Analysing and Explaining Syntactic Variation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2022

By
Tanya Karoli Christensen  and
Torben Juel Jensen
Edited by
Tanya Karoli Christensen  and
Torben Juel Jensen
Tanya Karoli Christensen
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Torben Juel Jensen
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
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Summary

The introduction to this volume sums up and discusses some of the issues fundamental to the study of syntactic variation, such as the problem of semantic equivalence (since syntactic variants often have different meanings), the delimitation of syntactic alternations, the relation between linguistic and social conditioning of syntactic variables, and the explanatory frameworks that are proposed in the chapters to account for the linguistic choices speakers make when employing syntactic alternants.

Keywords

the sociolinguistic variableexplanatory frameworkssemantic equivalencesocial conditioninglinguistic conditioninglanguage variation and changelanguage attitudes
Type
Chapter
Information
Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation , pp. 1 - 29
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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