Written and spoken language are known to differ substantially (Biber, 1988; 1995; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999). Standard written language is highly uniform and governed by prescription, whereas the vernacular is most revealing of structured heterogeneity (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968). We focus on four English morphosyntactic variables that problematize assumptions about the nature of variation in the vernacular: the genitive, the comparative, the dative, and relative pronouns. Each is characterized in casual speech by functional divides that reflect discrete configurations of variant use. After detailing the patterning of these variables in speech, we explore a characteristic arguably shared by each: its historical pathway into the language, where analogy and prestige were powerful motivations for variant choice. We suggest that this combination of systemic and social factors contributed to the nature of these variables in the vernacular grammar. Furthermore, we advocate for greater scrutiny of written and spoken data and the outcomes of change from above and below within each register. The type of innovation and its trajectory may affect the nature of the emergent variable grammar.

This paper presents a sociolinguistic analysis of the variable devoicing of /ʒ/ in Buenos Aires Spanish, a phenomenon previously characterized as a change in progress. A novel method is implemented to determine the completion of the devoicing change by comparing the voicing levels of /ʒ/ to the inherent voicing variability of /s/, as well as by comparing the allophonic patterns of /ʒ/ to those of /s/. If the voicing levels of /ʒ/ are not significantly different from those of /s/ and the /ʒ/ no longer exhibits positional affrication, then the speaker's underlying postalveolar fricative is /ʃ/: they are a “devoicer.” The results suggest that, although older speakers, of both middle and upper classes, exhibit variation in the distribution of “voicers,” most younger speakers are devoicers, indicating that the /ʒ/ devoicing change is nearing conclusion. As a result, the underlying fricative for the majority of Buenos Aires Spanish speakers may very well be /ʃ/.

The Interface Principle posits that morphosyntactic variation does not elicit the same kinds of perceptual reactions as phonetic variables because “members of the speech community evaluate the surface form of language but not more abstract structural features” (Labov, 1993:4). This article examines the effect of linguistic modularity on listeners' social evaluations. Our point of departure is the sociolinguistic monitor, a hypothesized cognitive mechanism that governs frequency-linked perceptual awareness (Labov, Ash, Ravindranath, Weldon, & Nagy, 2011). Results indicate that “higher level” structural variables are available to the sociolinguistic monitor. Moreover, listeners' reactions are conditioned by independent effects of region of provenance and individual cognitive style. Overall, our findings support the claim that sociolinguistic processing is influenced by a range of social and psychological constraints (Campbell-Kibler, 2011; Preston, 2010; Wagner & Hesson, 2014) while also demonstrating the need for models of sociolinguistic cognition to include patterns of grammatical variation (Meyerhoff & Walker, 2013; Walker, 2010).

One consistent finding across sociolinguistic studies is the tendency for female speakers to lead in ongoing change. Different explanations have been proposed for this and a key method of testing these explanations is to identify whether the pattern occurs in the languages of a wider range of societies than have been studied thus far. Historical societies are relatively understudied in this regard, but undertaking variationist research into gender in historical varieties presents many challenges. One way to overcome these is to examine variation internal to fiction data. This paper presents an analysis of the effect of gender on the adverb selected for sentential negation in Old Norse prose fiction. It finds that female characters lead consistently in this change over time. In doing so, it demonstrates the feasibility of using fiction data when examining the effect of gender in historical varieties such as Old Norse.

This paper investigates the degree to which individual speakers follow the morphosyntactic hierarchy governing grammatical constraints on (ING) in the Southern U.S. city of Raleigh, North Carolina. (ING) was used as the variable of study for its well-studied internal constraints and comparability to previous studies on the internal constraints of t/d deletion. A lexical category constraint hierarchy for the community was determined via multivariate mixed-effects statistical models, and each speaker's (ING) pattern was compared to this hierarchy. Results show maintenance in grammatical constraints even when taking phonological factors into account, unlike some work on t/d deletion. Uniformity exists across speakers with respect to the ordering of internal constraints despite the overall decline in rates of –in over time, but constraint weights (expressed as log odds) vary significantly from speaker to speaker, with no correlates to social or internal factors. These results have consequences for representation of individuals in terms of an aggregate pattern, questioning the consistency of factor weight values at the speaker level despite consistent ordering of constraints.