In line with a growing body of literature suggesting that mergers are reversible given the adequate dialect contact and social context, the present study examines the phonetic split of the Andalusian Spanish merger of ceceo into the Castilian Spanish feature of distinción. Specifically, the study analyzes 19,420 coronal fricatives produced by 80 Western Andalusian speakers from the city of Huelva and the nearby town of Lepe using a reading passage and wordlist. The analyses find that leaders of this change are younger speakers, women, those with more educational attainment, those of service and professional occupations, and those from Huelva. The implications are that large-scale societal changes have allowed for the split of the ceceo merger into distinción in both speech communities, albeit at different rates of change due to their unique socioeconomic histories, demonstrating that a split is possible given the right social context.

This paper examines the nature of the dependency between the availability of null subjects and the “richness” of verbal subject agreement, known as Taraldsen's Generalisation (Adams, 1987; Rizzi, 1986; Roberts, 2014; Taraldsen, 1980). We present a corpus-based quantitative model of the syncretization of verbal subject agreement spanning the Medieval French period and evaluate two hypotheses relating agreement and null subjects: one relating the two as reflexes of the same grammatical property and a variational learning-based hypothesis whereby phonology-driven syncretization of agreement marking creates a learning bias against the null subject grammar. We show that only the latter approach has the potential to reconcile the intuition behind Taraldsen's Generalisation with the fact that it has proven nontrivial to formulate the notion of agreement richness in a way that would unequivocally predict whether a language has null subjects.

Labov's classic study, The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966), paved the way for generations of researchers to examine sociolinguistic patterns in many different communities (Bell, Sharma, & Britain, 2016). This research paradigm has traditionally tended to focus on Western industrialized communities and large world languages and dialects, leaving many unanswered questions about lesser-studied indigenous minority communities. In this study, we examine whether Labovian models for age, sex, and social stratification (Labov, 1966, 2001; Trudgill, 1972, 1974) may be effectively applied to a small, endangered Tibeto-Burman language in southwestern China: Ganluo Ersu. Using new field recordings with 97 speakers, we find evidence of phonological change in progress as Ganluo Ersu consonants are converging toward Chinese phonology. The results suggest that when an endangered language undergoes convergence toward a majority language due to intense contact, this convergence is manifested in a socially stratified way that is consistent with many of the predictions of the classic Labovian sociolinguistic principles.

This article studies palatalization gestures in the production of /t/ and /d/ in standard Belgium French through the use of electropalatography. The articulatory results are compared with an acoustic study of the affricated realization of these consonants when followed by /i/, /y/, /j/, and /[inverted h]/ in Quebec French (Bento, 1993). The study examines regional and individual differences in palatalization gestures to show how affrication can be ascribed to palatalization. Results are analyzed with regard to temporal, articulatory (electropalatography), and voicing aspects to compare production strategies across French variants, speakers, and phonetic contexts. The aim is to understand coordination processes, which are explained in terms of biomechanical constraints resulting from the coordination of adjacent gestures. These processes are used to show how palatalization traces in a variant with no recognized affrication (Belgium French) are similar in nature to the affrication in Quebec French, because palatalization is due to the coarticulation of the stop with a following high front vowel or a palatal approximant. Results are also compared with diachronic data to propose explanations for some patterns in the development from Latin to French.

This study examines synchronic variation in vowels in an effort to advance our understanding of the “transmission problem” in language change, in particular, the cross-generational perseverance of vowel shifts. Seeking a connection to patterns and directions of shifts in vowel systems over time, we examine the role of a largely neglected parameter of structured heterogeneity: prosodic prominence. Experimental data from two Midwestern dialects of American English—central Ohio and south-central Wisconsin—show that, for the vowels studied here, the changes in vowel characteristics observed under higher degrees of prosodic prominence (or greater emphasis) correspond to the changes predicted by well-established principles of chain shifting. An acoustic study assesses variation in prosodic prominence by examining formant frequencies at multiple locations in the course of vowel duration, which provides information about vowel quality dynamics. A perceptual study determines listeners' sensitivity to the obtained acoustic variation, as manifested in specific patterns of vowel identification, confusions, and category goodness ratings. Finally, a prosodically based explanation of the transmission of sound change is described, which offers new connections between structural and social factors in sound change, notably the roles of “social affect” and speaker gender.This article builds on earlier conference papers (Fox, Jacewicz, & Salmons, 2003; Jacewicz & Salmons, 2003; Jacewicz, Salmons, & Fox, 2004a, 2004b; Salmons & Jacewicz, 2004). Additional acoustic analyses and perceptual results from the data set presented here can be found in Jacewicz et al. (forthcoming) and Fox et al. (forthcoming). We thank three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. We also thank Kristin Hatcher, Jennifer Mercer, and Dilara Tepeli for help with collection of the perception data. Work supported by NIH NIDCD R01 DC006871-01 and NIH NIDCD R03 DC 005560 to The Ohio State University (Ewa Jacewicz, PI).

This study applies multinomial regression analysis to a parallel corpus of Spanish medieval translations of the Bible in order to study the different factors that condition variation in the expression of possession in Old Spanish. Our methodology allows us to determine the degree to which less frequent possessive constructions (ART + POSS, as in la su casa ‘the his house’; GEN, as in la casa de él ‘the house of him’; and ART/BARE, as in la casa ‘the house’) can be considered competitors to the dominant POSS construction (as in su casa ‘his house’) as a function of usage context differences. In comparison to the POSS construction, the ART + POSS construction usually expresses pragmatic functions such as reverence, the GEN construction is typically used to disambiguate a reference, and the ART/BARE construction is bound to contexts in which the possessor is highly accessible. Crucially, the analysis also sheds light on historical changes in the balance between structural and contextual constraints on the use of these different variants. Whereas in the 13th century, structural and stylistic constraints are almost equally important, the importance of structural constraints diminishes in the 15th century. The study thus illustrates how in reductive processes of language change, variation due to structural constraints yields to stylistic variation.

A re-examination of primary school descriptions by Anglo, Greek, and Italian speakers in the Sydney sociolinguistic survey focuses on the interactional patterns that characterize the elicitation of a particular text type. Two aspects of the interaction are analyzed—the type or mixture of types of questions asked by the fieldworker within the same or different turns at talk, and the response behavior of the speaker—in order to determine what part of the variability in the text data is the result of the interaction process itself rather than of the characteristics and intentions of the respondents. We hypothesize that a constant feature of every interaction is the negotiation of tension between interviewer and speaker. The results confirm that varying the details of the interviewer's questioning strategy, even when the referential content of the questions seem uniform, can have strong and predictable effects on the nature of the speaker's response. We also demonstrate links among stylistic variation, interactional patterning, and ethnicity differentiation. Where differences in behavior in the same setting have often been attributed to learned patterns of different ethnic or social groups, much of this may instead be due to different degrees of interactional tension. We show that less negotiation of interactional tension is required when the interviewer and the speaker share a set of sociolinguistic assumptions through common ethnic identity, and more negotiation is required when this is not the case.

Individual-level variation is a recurrent issue in variationist sociolinguistics. One current approach recommends addressing this via mixed-effects modeling. This paper shows that a closely related model with fixed effects for individual speakers can be directly estimated using Goldvarb. The consequences of employing different approaches to speaker variation are explored by using different model selection criteria. We conclude by discussing the relation of the statistical model to the assumptions of the research design, pointing out that nonrandom selection of speakers potentially violates the assumptions of models with random effects for speaker, and suggesting that a model with fixed effects for speakers may be a better alternative in these cases.

This study readdresses the loss of Negative Concord (NC) in Standard English. A detailed study of negation in Late Middle English and Early Modern English reveals that the loss of NC was a case of a natural change triggered by some internal factors. A close study of n-words in negative contexts and their ultimate replacement with negative polarity items (NPIs) in a number of grammatical environments shows that the decline of NC follows the same pattern across contexts in a form of parallel curvature, which indicates that the loss of NC is a natural change. However, this study reveals that the decline is not constant across time (see Contra Kroch's Constant Rate Hypothesis [CRH], 1989). Context behavior suggests an alternative principle of linguistic change, the context constancy principle. A context constancy effect is obtained across all contexts, indicating that the loss of NC is triggered by a change in a single underlying parameter setting. Accordingly, a theory-internal explanation is suggested.I would like to thank the reviewer of this article for his/her comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper and for pointing to some crucial theoretical misconceptions in the previous literature. His/her comments are very much appreciated.

In the study of past be, most researchers have assumed a two variant distinction for negative forms (i.e., wasn't and weren't). In Warren County, North Carolina, evidence suggests a three variant distinction (i.e., wasn't, weren't, and wont). Throughout the history of sociolinguistic investigation, two types of variants have been noted: a sociolinguistic variant and a linguistic variant. In Warren County, wont functions as both types, as demonstrated through acoustic, morphophonological, and sociolinguistic evidence. Through the analysis of negative past be, guidelines are suggested for determining a particular form as a separate linguistic and sociolinguistic variant.

In analyzing not-negation variation in English it becomes clear that specific strategies are used for prosodic emphasis and reduction of not in different social situations, and that contraction strategies vary independently of prosodic reduction. This article focuses on the factors influencing contraction strategies that are clearly dialect related and attempts to tease out those factors that are related to register and speaker stance. First, we review background information critical to an adequate analysis of not-negation and not-contraction. We then describe the corpora chosen for the present study, the research methods employed in the analysis, and the results of the analysis. The variable under analysis is the choice between uncontracted and not-contracted forms and between not-contracted and Aux-contracted forms in well-formed declarative sentences, for verbs which permit both. We end with some suggestions for corpus composition that will enable meaningful comparisons between social situations and between speakers, or characters, within one corpus. As researchers we can assure that future corpora will permit increasingly inclusive and interesting comparative studies; we close with some suggestions for those who wish to carry out studies.

Few acoustic studies of the intervocalic consonant lenition in central Italian dialects (a process known as Gorgia Toscana) have been undertaken. This study examines speech data from Florentine Italian in order to describe the process of Gorgia Toscana quantitatively and to assess the roles of physiological, perceptual, phonological, and social factors in the process. Results of acoustic and statistical analysis indicate gradient and variable output, with certain patterns occurring in the variation. The observations that emerge from the data cannot all be accounted for if Gorgia Toscana is characterized as a purely phonetic, phonological, or socially driven process of sound change. Rather, different aspects of the process are attributed to different motivators: gradience and velar preference to articulator movements, resistance of nonvelar lenition to perceptual constraints, targeting of a natural class and categorical weakening to abstract featural representations, and intersubject variation in velar lenition to external social factors.

Brazilian Portuguese has a vowel harmony rule which consists of the optional raising of the pretonic e and o vowels to i and u, respectively, if there is a high vowel in the following syllable. This is an old rule, the origin of which can be traced back to the Latin of the 4th century a.d. Because the rule is subject to multiple conditioning by both linguistic and social factors, it can be treated as a variable rule.

Variable agreement in Brazilian Portuguese is subject to social stigma. It was brought to the general public's attention in 2011 in a heated nationwide sociolinguistic debate triggered by TV Globo, the principal network. In order to isolate objective factors underlying this debate, we examine the variable education in a trend study of Rio de Janeiro speech. Relying on logistic model relative weights and their corresponding ranges, we use polarization to designate the magnitude of these ranges. Polarization of the education variable in 1980 was moderate, whereas in 2000, polarization becomes extreme in an increasingly uneven social distribution of standard marked forms. The increased effect of education is also reflected in a comparison with the statistical effect of mass media: in 1980, media contact had a stronger effect than education did, whereas in 2000, education exhibits a stronger effect. The results reveal objective correlates to speakers' subjective reactions, suggesting that public discussion of linguistic prejudice would be useful to the community, which can profit from results of sociolinguistic research in a humanistic and emancipatory way, as foreseen by Sankoff (1988a).

This article interrogates the line taken in studies of Northern Ireland English that Catholic/Protestant ethnicity is sociolinguistically irrelevant. Using data from Derry/Londonderry English, gathered with the objective of answering the question of whether ethnicity matters in sociolinguistic terms, it examines the relative importance of a set of social factors for language variation. The strength of these factors (ethnicity, class, sex, and age) varies, but where change is occurring, ethnicity has an effect on the adoption of innovations. In particular, changes originating in the (predominantly Protestant) east of Northern Ireland tend to be adopted primarily by Protestants, whereas Catholics tend to be more conservative. This fits well with a general pattern of diffusion of change suggested by a reading of the sociolinguistic literature from the region.

This paper examines individual differences in constraints on linguistic variation in light of Labov's (2007) proposal that adult change (diffusion) disrupts systems of constraints and Tamminga, MacKenzie, and Embick's (2016) typology of constraints. It is shown that, in pooling data from multiple speakers, some of the complexity in structured community variation may be overlooked. Data on rhoticity from speakers of Bristol English are compared to 34 previous studies of rhoticity in varieties of English around the world. Constraints found to be consistent across varieties are also found to be consistent across speakers of Bristol English, whereas those that differ between varieties also differ between individuals, implying that only those which differ are truly part of the grammar, and that these are indeed disrupted by diffusion.

This article examines three representations of South African Indian English in print: The Adventures of Applesammy and Naidoo (1946) by Ray Rich; The Lahnee's Pleasure (c. 1972) by Ronnie Govender; and The Wedding (2001) by Imraan Coovadia. The use of dialect is a defining feature of all three texts. I show that the tools provided by variation theory are particularly useful in the analysis of literature that uses direct speech to portray characters and types. In particular, the principles of variation theory can be used to: (a) reveal the nature of stereotyping in the first text (a parody), which relies on the suppression of variation, and the generalization of linguistic and social characteristics; (b) evaluate the fidelity of a “realist” dialect representation of the community in the second text (a play); and (c) help characterize the nonrealist, nonstereotyping, imaginative use of language in the third text (a post-modern novel).An early version of the research for this article was presented at the IAWE (International Association of World Englishes) Conference, Potchefstroom University, 2001; at seminars at the University of Cape Town and University of Pennsylvania in 2002; and at NWAVE (New Ways of Analysing Variation in English and Other Languages), Stanford University, 2002. A revised and expanded version was presented at ASNEL (Association for the Study of New English Literatures), Magdeburg, 2003. I thank participants at these conferences and three anonymous LVC referees for feedback and comments, Malcah Yaeger-Dror for discussions of her related research, and Sarah and Clare Johnson for the graphics. I am especially grateful to the University of Cape Town's Research Committee for a grant that supported this research.

Increasingly globalized communication networks in the modern world may influence traditional patterns of linguistic change: in contrast to an orderly sequential pathway of change, more recently a number of “mega trends” have been identified, which accelerate simultaneously in time and space. The rise of obviously within the cohort of adverbs of evidentiality—naturally, evidently, clearly, and of course—may be one such trend. To examine this possibility, we conduct a large-scale sociolinguistic analysis of c12,000 adverbs of evidentiality across over thirty communities in the UK and Canada. The results reveal parallel development across time and space: obviously advances rapidly among individuals born in the 1960s in both countries. The rise of obviously illustrates key attributes that are beginning to emerge from other rapidly innovating features: “off the shelf” changes that (1) are easily borrowed, (2) receptive to global trends, but (3) exhibit parallel patterns as the change progresses.

The present study analyzes the speech of a radio presenter in a local station in Murcia and compares it to the audience's linguistic behavior as shown in the phone calls received during the program. We also analyze the data obtained in an interview with the radio presenter. Our results, which show a radical divergence between the presenter's speech and that of his audience, are contrasted with both Audience Design and Speaker Design theoretical tenets, using the explicit knowledge of the presenter's attitudes and opinions to contrast theory and fact. We conclude that neither model offers a completely satisfactory explanation of the patterns found. Finally, we reflect on the need to consider not only performance, but also the script (in the form of a professional voice used following a particular linguistic policy based on sociolinguistic norms and attitudes to language) that condition the individual linguistic behavior, thus suggesting the need to consider community-specific factors in the explanation of stylistic variation.We are very grateful for Peter Trudgill, David Britain, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Dennis Preston, Dagmar Scheu, Rafael Monroy, and José Jiménez-Cano for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Traditional eastern New England (ENE) dialect features are rapidly receding in many parts of northern New England. Because this ENE shift involves seven different phonological features, it provides a prime opportunity to explore different rates of change across multiple linguistic variables at the same time in the same social setting. The present study is the first acoustic sociophonetic investigation of central New Hampshire, and it is based on new field data from 51 adult speakers. Results show that young generations are discarding many traditional ENE pronunciations in favor of leveled, nonregional forms, yet the changes are affecting some variables more quickly than others. Many distinctive traditional ENE variants (nonrhotic speech, intrusive-r, fronted father, “broad-a” in bath) are quickly receding, while others (fronted start and hoarse/horse distinction) are somewhat more conservative, being “overshadowed” by the presence of (r) as a variable within the same syllable. We frame our apparent-time analysis in terms of Sankoff's (2013a) notion of “age vectors” and Labov's (2012) “outward orientation” of the language faculty, illustrating how different generations are juggling multiple age vectors within the same overall shift, and how one variable can overshadow another variable within the same syllable.