Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T19:26:39.766Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The role of sociocognitive salience in the acquisition of structured variation and linguistic diffusion: Evidence from quotative be like

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2020

Julia Davydova
Julia Davydova*
Affiliation:
Pädagogissche Hochschule Vorarlberg, Feldkirch, Austria
*
Address for correspondence: Julia Davydova, Pädagogissche Hochschule Vorarlberg, Vorarlberg University of Higher Education, Liechtensteinerstraße 33-37, 6800Feldkirch, Austria[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Quotative be like is a much discussed variable linguistic feature recruited in this investigation in order to revisit the hypothesis of linguistic diffusion (Labov 2007) predicting re-ordering of original patterns by L2 populations. As a sociocognitively salient variant spreading above the level of conscious awareness, be like has been appropriated by adult speakers from two distinctive L2 English ecologies with a high degree of precision, a finding previously not reported in studies exploring the acquisition of structured variation. In this article, I explain how, supported by frequency and constraint complexity, sociocognitive salience may have contributed to the generally accurate replication of the variable grammar for be like and, by this token, how it can inform existing models of language change. (Sociocognitive salience, linguistic diffusion, L2 acquisition of structured variation, variationist sociolinguistics, World Englishes, be like)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 171 - 196
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abrahamsson, Niclas (2012). Age of onset and nativelike L2 ultimate attainment of morphosyntactic and phonetic intuition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 34:187–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrahamsson, Niclas, & Hyltenstam, Kenneth (2009). Age of onset and nativelikeness in a second language: Listener perception versus linguistic scrutiny. Language Learning 59:249–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adamson, Hugh D., & Regan, Vera (1991). The acquisition of community speech norms by Asian immigrants learning English as a second language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 13(1):1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1979/1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Baars, Bernard J. (1997). In the theatre of consciousness: Global workspace theory, a rigorous scientific theory of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 4:292–309.Google Scholar
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen (1987). Markedness and salience in second-language acquisition. Language Learning 37(3):385–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baxter, Gareth, & Croft, William (2016). Modeling language change across the lifespan: Individual trajectories in community change. Language Variation and Change 28:129–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bierma, Nathan (2005). It's been, like, 10 whole years since ‘Clueless’ helped spread Valley slang. Chicago Tribune, July 20. Online: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2005-07-20-0507190293-story.html.Google Scholar
Birdsong, David (1999). Introduction: Whys and why nots of the critical period hypothesis for second language acquisition. In Birdsong, David (ed.), Second language acquisition and the critical period hypothesis, 1–22. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birdsong, David (2005). Interpreting age effects in second language acquisition. In Kroll, Judith F. & Groot, Annette De (eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 109–27. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Birdsong, David, & Molis, Michelle (2001). On the evidence for the maturational constraints in second language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language 44:235–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle (2003). The co-occurrence of quotatives with mimetic performances. Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 12:1–10.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle (2008). The localization of global linguistic variants. English World-Wide 29(1):15–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle (2014). Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle (2016). Investigating the effect of socio-cognitive salience and speaker-based factors in morpho-syntactic life-span change. Journal of English Linguistics 44(3):199–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burridge, Kate, & Bergs, Alexander (2017). Understanding language change. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Buschfeld, Sarah, & Schneider, Edgar W. (2017). World Englishes: Postcolonial Englishes and beyond. In Low, Ee Ling & Pakir, Anne (eds.), World Englishes: Re-thinking paradigms, 29–46. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan (2002). Phonological evidence for exemplar storage of multiword sequences. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24(2):215–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan (2008). Usage-based grammar and second language acquisition. In Robinson, Peter & Ellis, Nick C. (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition, 216–36. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carey, Stan (2013). And I'm like, quotative ‘like’ isn't just for quoting. Sentence first: An Irishman's blog about the English language, August 1. Online: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/and-im-like-quotative-like-isnt-just-for-quoting/#more-16096; accessed 23 January 2019.Google Scholar
Casenhiser, Devin M., & Goldberg, Adele E. (2005). Fast mapping of a phrasal form and meaning. Developmental Science 8(6):500–508.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chapman, Carol (1995). Perceptual salience and analogical change: Evidence from vowel lengthening in modern Swiss German dialects. Journal of Linguistics 31(1):1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny (1996). Syntactic variation and the concept of prominence. In Klemola, Juhani, Kytö, Merja, & Rissanen, Matti (eds.), Speech past and present: Studies in English dialectology in memory of Ossi Ihalainen, 1–17. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Cintrón-Valentín, Myrna C., & Ellis, Nick C. (2016). Salience in second language acquisition: Physical form, learner attention, and instructional focus. Frontiers in Psychology 7(1284):1–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, Herbert H., & Gerrig, Richard J. (1990). Quotations as demonstrations. Language 66(4):764–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Lynn, & Schleef, Erik (2010). The acquisition of sociolinguistic evaluation among Polish-born adolescents learning English: Evidence from perception. Language Awareness 19(4):299–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croft, William (2001). Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Davydova, Julia (2012). Englishes in the outer and expanding circles: A comparative study. World Englishes 31(3):366–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davydova, Julia (2013). Detecting historical continuity in a linguistically diverse urban area. In Duarte, Joana & Gogolin, Ingrid (eds.), Linguistic superdiversity in urban areas: Research approaches, 193–225. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davydova, Julia (2019). Quotation in indigenised and learner English: A sociolinguistic account of variation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davydova, Julia, & Buchstaller, Isabelle (2015). Expanding the circle to learner English: Investigating quotative marking in a German student community. American Speech 90(4):441–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davydova, Julia; Tytus;, Agniezska Ewa & Schleef, Erik (2017). Acquisition of sociolinguistic awareness by German learners of English: A study in perceptions of quotative be like. Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences 55(4):1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2003). Dialogue – sociolinguistics and authenticity: An elephant in the room. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7:392–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24(2):143–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick C (2015). Implicit AND explicit learning: Their dynamic interface and complexity. In Rebuschat, Patrick (ed.), Implicit and explicit learning of languages, 3–23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C (2016a). Frequency in language learning and language change. In Behrens, Heike & Pfänder, Stefan (eds.), Experience counts: Frequency effects in language, 239–56. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C (2016b). Salience, cognition, language complexity, and complex adaptive systems. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 38(2):341–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick C (2017). Salience in language usage, learning and change. In Hundt, Marianne, Mollin, Sandra, & Pfenninger, Simone (eds.), The changing English language: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 71–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick C, & Collins, Laura (2009). Input and second language acquisition: The roles of frequency, form and function. Introduction to the special issue. The Modern Language Journal 93(3):329–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ender, Andrea (2017). What is the target variety? The diverse effects of standard-dialect variation in second language acquisition. In Vogelaer, Gunther De & Katerbow, Matthias (eds.), The acquisition of sociolinguistic variation, 155–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiske, Susan T., & Morling, Beth A. (1996). Salience. In Manstead, Antony S. R. & Hewstone, Miles (eds.), The Blackwell encyclopedia of social psychology, 489. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Galloway, Nicola, & Rose, Heath (2015). Introducing global Englishes. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hazen, Kirk (2006). IN/ING variable. In Brown, Keith (ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, vol. 5, 2nd edn., 581–84. Oxford: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Paul, & Traugott, Elisabeth C. (2003). Grammaticalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Jennifer (2015). Global Englishes: A resource book for students. 3rd edn. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jensen, Marie (2013). Salience in language change: A socio-cognitive study of Tyneside English. Newcastle: University of Northumbria dissertation.Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel Ezra (2009). Getting off the Goldvarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistic Compass 3(1):359–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Jacqueline S., & Newport, Elissa L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition or English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology 21:60–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kachru, Braj B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In Quirk, Randolph & Widdowson, H. G. (eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kachru, Braj B (ed.) (1992). The other tongue: English across cultures. 2nd edn. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul (1985). A sociophonetic study of connected speech processes in Cambridge English: An outline and some results. Cambridge Papers in Phonetics and Experimental Linguistics 4:1–39.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul, & Williams, Ann (2002). ‘Salience’ as an explanatory factor in language change: Evidence from dialect levelling in urban England. In Jones, Mari & Esch, Edith (eds.), Language change: The interplay of internal, external and extra-linguistic factors, 81–110. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William (2001). The anatomy of style-shifting. In Eckert, Penelope & Rickford, John R. (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 85–118. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William (2007). Transmission and diffusion. Language 83(2):344–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William (2018). The role of the Avant Garde in linguistic diffusion. Language Variation and Change 30:1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George (2013). What studying the brain tells us about arts education. Talk presented at Big Ideas Fest 2012, Halfmoon Bay, California, 17 February. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpIa16Bynzg; accessed 28 November 2018.Google Scholar
Lenneberg, Eric H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levon, Erez, & Buchstaller, Isabelle (2015). Perception, recognition, and linguistic structure: The effect of linguistic modularity and cognitive style on sociolinguistic processing. Language Variation and Change 27(3):319–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levon, Erez, & Fox, Sue (2014). Social salience and the sociolinguistic monitor: A case study of ING and TH-fronting in Britain. Journal of English Linguistics 42(3):185–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayerthaler, Willi (1981). Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion.Google Scholar
McDonough, Kim, & Kim, Joujin (2009). Syntactic priming, type frequency and EFL learners’ production of wh-questions. The Modern Language Journal 93(3):386–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, Jürgen M.; Elsig;, Martin & Rinke, Esther (2013). Language acquisition and change: A morphosyntactic perspective. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mesthrie, Rajend, & Bhatt, Rakesh M. (2008). World Englishes: The study of new linguistic varieties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam, & Schleef, Erik (2012). Variation, contact and social indexicality in the acquisition of (ing) by teenage migrants. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16(3):398–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam, & Niedzielski, Nancy (2003). The globalisation of vernacular variation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4):534–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko (1991). Pidgins, creoles, typology and markedness. In Byrne, Francis & Huebner, Thom (eds.), Development and structures of creole languages, 123–43. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mundkur, Nandini (2005). Neuroplasticity in children. Indian Journal of Pediatrics 72(10):855–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naro, Anthony J. (1981). The social and structural dimensions of a syntactic change. Language 57(1):63–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penfield, Wilder, & Roberts, Lamar (1959). Speech and brain mechanisms. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, Britt (2015). Linguists are like, ‘Get used to it!’: Why a new way to quote has taken English by storm. The Boston Globe, January 25. Online: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/01/25/linguists-are-like-get-used/ruUQoV0XUTLDjx72JojnBI/story.html; accessed 23 January 2019.Google Scholar
Rácz, Péter (2013). Salience in sociolinguistics: A quantitative approach. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regan, Vera (1996). Variation in French interlanguage: A longitudinal study of sociolinguistic competence. In Bayley, Richard & Preston, Denis (eds.), Second language acquisition and linguistic variation, 177–201. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne, & Lange, Deborah (1991). The use of like as a marker of reported speech and thought: A case of grammaticalisation in progress. American Speech 66(3):227–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor H. (1973). Natural categories. Cognitive Psychology 4(3):328–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rundell, Michael (2013). What's not to like about ‘like’? MacMillan Dictionary Blog. Online: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/whats-not-to-like-about-like; accessed 23 January 2019.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David; Tagliamonte, Sali A., & Smith, Eric (2005). Goldvarb X: A multivariate analysis application. Department of Linguistics. University of Toronto and Department of Mathematics, University of Ottawa. Online: http://individual.utoronto.ca/tagliamonte/goldvarb.html; accessed 14 December 2018.Google Scholar
Sapolsky, Robert (2018). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Sayers, Dave (2014). The mediated innovation model: A framework for researching media influence in language change (Focus article). Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(2):185–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schleef, Erik (2017). Developmental sociolinguistics and the acquisition of T-glottalling by immigrant teenagers in London. In Vogelaer, Gunther De & Katerbow, Matthias (eds.), Variation in language acquisition, 311–47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schleef, Erik; Meyerhoff, Miriam; & Clark, Lynn (2011). Teenagers’ acquisition of variation: A comparison of locally-born and migrant teens’ realisation of English (ing) in Edinburgh and London. English-World-Wide 32(2):206–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Richard W. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics 11(2):129–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Richard W (2001). Attention. In Robinson, Peter (ed.), Cognition and second language instruction, 3–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seliger, Herbert W.; Krashen;, Stephen & Ladefoged, Peter (1975). Maturational constraints in the acquisition of a native-like accent in second language learning. Language Sciences 36:20–22.Google Scholar
Selinker, Larry (1972). Interlanguage. IRAL 10:209–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. (1985). Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity. In Slobin, Dan I. (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, vol. 2: Theoretical issues, 1157–1249. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Spolsky, Bernard (1989). Conditions for second language learning: Introduction to a general theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & D'Arcy, Alexandra (2004). He's like, she's like: The quotative system in Canadian youth. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(4):493–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & D'Arcy, Alexandra (2007). Frequency and variation in the community grammar: Tracking a new change through the generations. Language Variation and Change 19(2):199–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A.; D'Arcy;, Alexandra & Louro, Celeste Rodrígez (2016). Outliers, impact, and rationalization in linguistic change. Language 92(4):824–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talmy, Leonard (2008). Aspects of attention in language. In Robinson, Peter & Ellis, Nick C. (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition, 27–65. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Taylor, Shelley E., & Fiske, Susan T. (1978). Salience, attention, and attribution: Top of the head phenomena. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 11:249–88.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael (2006). Acquiring linguistic constructions. In Damon, William & Lerner, Richard M. (eds.), Handbook of child psychology, vol. 2: Cognition, perception, and language, 6th edn., 255–98. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, & Trousdale, Graeme (2013). Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treisman, Anne M., & Gelade, Garry (1980). A feature-integration theory attention. Cognitive Psychology 12(1):97–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trudgill, Peter (1986). Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna (1974). The semantics of direct and indirect discourse. Papers in Linguistics 7(3/4):267–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winford, Donald (2003). An introduction to contact linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt (1985). Variability in tense marking: A case for the obvious. Language Learning 35(2):229–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfson, Nessa (1978). A feature of performed narrative: The conversational historical present. Language in Society 7(2):215–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wulff, Stefanie, & Ellis, Nick C. (2018). Usage-based approaches to second language acqusition. In Miller, David, Bayram, Fatih, Rothman, Jason, & Serratrice, Ludovica (eds.), Bilingual cognition and language: The state of the science across its subfields, 37–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Richard (1991). Variation in interlanguage morphology. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold (2006). Like, a Christmas gift card. Language Log, December 28. Online: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003978.html; accessed 23 January 2019.Google Scholar