As a so-called non-null subject language, it has been proposed that in English, unexpressed subjects occur only in registers that have specific grammatical properties. We test this hypothesis through a comparison of the conditioning of subject expression for third-person singular human specific subjects in English conversation and narrative. Despite a stark difference in the rates of nonexpression (4% in conversation vs. 22% in narratives), there is no evidence of different grammars across the registers—in both, outside of coreferential clauses conjoined with a coordinating conjunction, unexpressed subjects only occur in prosodic initial position in main clause declaratives. Within the variable context, in both registers, expression is sensitive to accessibility, priming, and temporal sequentiality. A register effect is, however, evident in the contextual distribution, with a larger proportion of the narrative tokens occurring in contexts propitious to unexpressed subjects, and it is this that accounts for the higher rate of nonexpression in this register.

The acoustic energy of 996 tokens of word-initial /f/ in the speech of 38 speakers of Mexican Spanish was analyzed. The results suggest that the frequency with which words occur in phonological contexts favorable to reduction (Frequency in a Reducing Context or FRC) conditions the reduction of /f/, even after taking into account the immediate phonological context. Despite this, it is also found that the conditioning effect of FRC is less robust than the influence of the immediate phonological context, thus confirming the preeminence in these data of the online articulatory factors in comparison to the usage-based frequency factors.

New York City English (NYCE) and New Orleans English (NOE) demonstrate remarkable similarity for cities located 1300 miles apart. Though the question of whether these dialects feature a shared history has fueled papers on the subject (Berger, 1980; Labov, 2007), there remain a number of issues with the historical record that prevent researchers from arriving at a consensus (Eble, 2016). This article presents linguistic evidence from constraint ranking comparisons of variable nonrhoticity and bought-raising in comparable contemporary samples of NYCE and NOE speakers. Findings demonstrate strikingly similar systems for (r), but dissimilar systems for bought-raising. We examine the results of our analyses in the context of evidence from previous comparisons of NYCE and NOE, concluding that the resemblance between the two dialects is likely due to diffusion from New York City to New Orleans, occurring in the 19th century before bought-raising emerged in either variety.

The spread of the new quotative be like throughout the English-speaking world is a change from above for each community that receives it. Diffusion of this form into Philadelphia is traced through the yearly interviews of the Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus, beginning with young adults in 1979 and spreading to adolescents in 1990, a generation later. The first users of be like form the Avant Garde, young adults with extensive awareness of linguistic patterns within and without the city. The use of this quotative in Philadelphia is favored by constraints that are found elsewhere, particularly to introduce inner speech that is not intended to be heard by others and to cite exemplars of a range of utterances. Not previously reported is a strong tendency to be favored for quotations with initial exclamations, prototypically expressions of surprise and alarm such as “Oh” and “Oh my god!”.

This study reconstructs the present temporal reference system of Early African American English by investigating the linguistic factors conditioning several variables within the domain of present temporal reference in three representative varieties. Previous studies have focused only on the opposition between Ø and -s in the present tense, ignoring other morphosyntactic constructions. Expanding the variable context to present temporal reference, I demonstrate that different constructions convey different aspects: the previously noted association between -s and habitual aspect is confirmed, but Ø is also associated with an aspectual distinction—that of duration. The progressive is used most often with nonstative verbs to denote durative aspect, whereas its much rarer use with statives appears to reflect an older stage in its “grammaticization.” Combining variationist analysis with the comparative method, this reconstruction provides linguistically meaningful explanations of the observed variability and places it within the context of the development of the English language.

This paper examines variation in the use of rhotics in Santomean Portuguese. In Portuguese, the distribution of rhotics is determined by syllable structure (Bonet & Mascaró, 1997). However, the emerging variety of Portuguese spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe diverges from the standard norm and shows great variability in its use of rhotics; specifically, Santomeans often use a strong-R in positions that require a weak-r in European and Brazilian Portuguese. Sociolinguistic interviews with 56 speakers from the capital of São Tomé and Príncipe and its surroundings provide 5287 data points for analysis. Based on the apparent-time construct (Bailey, 2004; Bailey et al., 1991), variation patterns show a language change in progress in the use of the strong-R, with younger speakers using it more frequently. Results also reveal the emergence of rhotic fricatives in the speech of Santomeans born after the independence of the country.

This article examines two well-known innovations in Canadian English (CE)—(æ) Retraction and Lowering (e.g., mad, pat) and (aw) Fronting (e.g., loud, mouse)— with a view to discovering the routes by which phonological change diffuses. The data are from St. John's, Newfoundland, one of the few remaining Canadian communities where the variety spoken by the founding population remains relatively intact. Because this variety is leveling toward CE (Clarke, 1991), the St. John's context enables us to tap into processes of dialect shift while they are taking place. This glimpse reveals the developmental nature of linguistic constraints during the early stages of change. Moreover, by focusing on preadolescent and adolescent speakers, age groups that are often overlooked in favor of adult samples (Eckert, 1988:183), the analysis situates the locus of change on the adolescent years. Taken together, these results provide an important gauge for tracking the progress of phonological change.Special thanks to Jack Chambers, Sandra Clarke, Hank Rogers, and Sali Tagliamonte for generously sharing their support, insights, and expertise. Appreciation also goes to Erik Thomas for imparting his knowledge of phonetic conditioning effects. Finally, I am grateful to the four anonymous reviewers whose comments strengthened this article enormously. All errors remain, of course, my own. An earlier version of this article was presented at NWAV 31 in October 2002. This work was supported in part by a Dean's Fellowship at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and by SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship #752-2002-2177.

We analyze change in variable subject/verb and noun phrase concord in Rio de Janeiro Portuguese using trend samples from 1980 and 1999/2000. Plural marked forms exhibit increased frequency in this period, reversing earlier trends toward loss or stability in a development typical of flows and counterflows in the community. The directionality of most structural and social dimensions does not change, but age patterns shift. Our aim is to investigate how groups of speakers evolve over time. Comparison of same-age groups at different moments does not yield insight and is not conducive to apprehending patterns of evolution because speakers move from one age group to another. We set up age cohorts so as to sample virtually the same universes. Examining age cohorts, we see increased frequency of number concord, although the original pattern of relative usage is preserved. Speakers are on the move, but constrained by social patterns in which they are situated. The pattern is broken precisely by those who were not in it, the unborn in the 1980s, who reverse direction dramatically toward increased usage of concord.

Language variation is often symptomatic of ongoing historical change, including grammaticalization. Signed languages lack detailed historical records and a written literature, so tracking grammaticalization in these languages is problematic. Grammaticalization can, however, also be observed synchronically through the comparison of data on variant word forms and multiword constructions in particular contexts and in different dialects and registers. In this paper, we report an investigation of language change and variation in Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Signs glossed as finish were tagged for function (e.g., verb, noun, adverb, auxiliary, conjunction), variation in production (number of hands used, duration, mouthing), position relative to the main verb (pre- or postmodifying), and event types of the clauses in which they appear (states, activities, achievements, accomplishments). The data suggest ongoing grammaticalization may be part of the explanation of the variation—variants correlate with different uses in different linguistic contexts, rather than social and individual factors.

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.

An individual's language can change in the moment due to the topic of conversation and over time because of regional mobility. This paper investigates the relationship between these two types of shifts by asking whether speakers with substantial second dialect exposure change their pronunciation more when the topic changes in a regionally meaningful way compared to speakers with less exposure. Specifically, topic-based shifts on three phonological variables that differ between British and US English are investigated in native speakers of both dialects as a function of the migrant status of the speaker. Experience matters in that speakers only shift between variants in their repertoire, and expatriates have acquired some second dialect features that nonmigrants do not have. However, it does not appear that more exposure to, or increased rates of usage of a variant leads to more topic-based shifting toward that variant. These findings, interpreted within the existing literature, suggest that topic-based shifts are driven primarily by stereotypical sociolinguistic representations.

We present acoustic and auditory analyses of changes to coda /r/ and voice quality in Glasgow English in the early twentieth century. Our initial acoustic analysis suggests that /r/ was weakening across the board based on an increase in F3. However, an auditory analysis of the same data finds no significant changes. An acoustic analysis of the same speakers’ vowels reveals that the shift in F3 is not unique to /r/. It reflects a change in voice quality, which we link to velarization using Vocal Profile Analysis. We then reanalyze the acoustic /r/ data, controlling for voice quality, and find only moderate changes that are restricted to females. These findings provide new evidence for diachronic changes in voice quality, contribute to our understanding of the development of /r/ in Glasgow English, and highlight the importance of investigating speech sounds in their broader context using multiple methodologies.

Comprehensive investigations of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) have demonstrated that most features of AAVE reported in the sociolinguistic literature are consistently seen in nearly every African-American speech community in which vernacular speech has been documented. This article highlights quantitative regional differences in the speech produced by African-American children from three U.S. cities in an academic setting. In this analysis, 157 5- to 8-year-old African-American children in New Orleans, LA, Washington, DC, and Cleveland, OH imitated the sentences of a story presented in Standard American English (SAE) by teachers. The 15 sentences included many items that were possible mismatches between the child's vernacular and SAE. Afterwards, the children retold the story in their own words. Children's use of SAE and AAVE features in both tasks was analyzed. Higher rates of AAVE feature use occurred in New Orleans than in Cleveland or Washington, DC.

This article explores the relationship between the global functions of variable subject-verb order and morpholexical class of subjects in the spoken Arabic of the Arabian peninsula. Using corpus-based methods, it is shown that lexical class—pronoun, pronominal, noun—definiteness, and the discourse-defined lexical specificity of a noun all correlate significantly with subject-verb or verb-subject word order. The global function of the two orders is explored using an array of measures to show that verb-subject order prototypically presents events, while subject-verb signals available referentiality. Using the quantitatively based study of Anthony Naro and Sebastiao Votre ([1999]. Discourse motivations for linguistic regularities: Verb/subject order in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Probus 11:75–100.) on Brazilian Portuguese as a point of comparison, a typological framework is developed for understanding languages with variable subject-verb order.

This article describes a morphosyntactic feature of the Xining dialect that is unique among all Chinese dialects: that is, the use of a postposition to express ablative nominal relationships. The postposition [t[curly-tail lowercase c]ia] is invariably pronounced in the neutral tone and has no cognates in either earlier varieties of Chinese or among present Chinese dialects. The morpheme's origin is shown to have come from a neighboring non-Sinitic language. Moreover, the variations within the syntactic expression of the ablative are correlated with various sociolinguistic groups. These correlations suggest an ongoing change in the dialect's morphosyntactic system of a kind rarely observed among Chinese dialects. Finally, the process of linguistic change is correlated with demographic changes within the Xining region that show Xining is a place where language contact and rapid linguistic change are likely to be found.

Previous studies of language contact in multilingual urban neighborhoods in Europe claim the emergence of new varieties spoken by immigrant-background youth. This paper examines the sociolinguistic conditioning of variation in allophones of Swedish /ε:/ of young people of immigrant and nonimmigrant background in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Although speaker background and sex condition the variation, their effects differ in each city. In Stockholm there are no significant social differences and the allophonic difference appears to have been neutralized. Gothenburg speakers are divided into three groups, based on speaker origin and sex, each of which orients toward different norms. Our conclusions appeal to dialectal diffusion and the desire to mark ethnic identity in a diverse sociolinguistic context. These results demonstrate that not only language contact but also dialect change should be considered together when investigating language variation in modern-day cities.

This paper uncovers evidence for two linked levels of morphosyntactic change occurring in Canadian English. The more ordinary is a lexical replacement: with finite subordination after seem, the complementizer like has been overtaking all the alternatives (as if, as though, that, and Ø). On top of this, there is a broader syntactic change whereby the entire finite structure (now represented primarily by like) is beginning to catch on at the expense of infinitival subordination after seem. Drawing on complementary evidence from British English and several partial precedents in the historical linguistics literature, I take this correlation to mean that like has reached sufficient rates among the finite strategy to have instigated the second level of change, to the point that it has ramifications for epistemic and evidential marking with the verb seem. I propose that the best model of these trajectories is a set of increasingly large envelopes of variation, one inside the next, and argue that the envelope might itself be an entity susceptible to change over time.

This article examines the perception of the (ing) variants, [ɪŋ] and [ɪn], in three regionally distinct localities in Britain: London in the South of England; Manchester in the North; and Edinburgh in Scotland. Data was gathered in perceptual tests in which respondents from each location rated stimuli doublets, each containing only one of the variants of (ing), on multiple social attribute scales. In London and Manchester, the perception of [ɪŋ] and [ɪn] broadly matches findings made for the United States in that speakers using [ɪŋ] are considered more articulate and hardworking, and less casual than speakers using [ɪn]. In Edinburgh, results are markedly different. We argue that these differences are due to a combination of factors that include the historical development of (ing) in a particular locale, which led to differences in production, variations in language ideology and, as a result, class-specific evaluations that appear to be regionally dependent.

We examine the loss of the Northern Cities Shift raising of trap in Ogdensburg, a small city in rural northern New York. Although data from 2008 showed robust trap-raising among young people in Ogdensburg, in data collected in 2016 no speakers clear the 700-Hz threshold for NCS participation in F1 of trap—a seemingly very rapid real-time change. We find apparent-time change in style-shifting: although older people raise trap more in wordlist reading than in spontaneous speech, younger people do the opposite. We infer that increasing negative evaluation of the feature led Ogdensburg speakers to collectively abandon raising trap between 2008 and 2016. This indicates a role for communal change in the transition of a dialect feature from an indicator to a marker.

The different population ecologies of slavery-era America necessitate an investigation into the issue of regional variation in Early African American English (AAE). This article addresses this issue through the Ottawa Repository of Early African American Correspondence, a corpus of letters written by semiliterate African American settlers in Liberia between 1834 and 1866. We investigate nonstandard verbal -s and its conditioning by linguistic and social factors, including each writer's regional origin in the United States. Results show that, despite differences in overall rates across regions, the linguistic conditioning largely remains constant. These results suggest that subtle regional distinctions in Early AAE existed when specific settlement and population ecologies encouraged them, but that the shared history and circumstances of language contact and development led to an overall identity of forms and conditioning factors across regional varieties.The data on which this study is based are taken from the Ottawa Repository of Early African American Correspondence (OREAAC; Van Herk & Poplack, 2003), housed in the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. Financial support was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the form of a postdoctoral fellowship to the first author. Earlier versions of the analyses reported here were presented at meetings of the American Dialect Society (Chicago, January 2000) and the Canadian Linguistics Association (University of Toronto, June 2002). We thank the audiences at these presentations for their comments and suggestions, and we thank Shana Poplack and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Any remaining errors are our own responsibility.