The rise of the periphrastic future (PF) at the expense of the inflected future (IF) is an established historical trend in Québécois French over at least the past 150 years. Previous research has also found higher rates of PF among younger speakers, many displaying categorical use in affirmative contexts. Because an apparent time interpretation of the synchronic data fits the historical record, we expected concomitant speaker stability across the lifespan. On the contrary, our panel study of 60 Montréal speakers (1971–1984) reveals age grading in a retrograde direction. As they aged, two-thirds of the speakers we studied increased their frequency of IF, an effect heightened for members of higher socioprofessional groups. Though not sufficiently robust to stem the historical tide, increased IF use by older speakers may retard the change somewhat, providing continuing IF input to child L1 acquisition. Rather than vitiating an apparent time interpretation, these results indicate that the rate of change may be slightly overestimated if age grading acts in a retrograde direction.

This paper examines the status of the low back caught-cot merger in Upstate New York. Most of this region is subject to the Northern Cities Shift (NCS) and therefore, according to Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006), ostensibly “resists” the spread of this merger. It is found that the phonology of this region is indeed trending toward the merger in apparent time, in terms of both phonetic distance between the two phonemes and speakers' explicit judgments. It is argued that the fronting of the cot vowel in the NCS region is not sufficient to withstand the spread of the merger because fronting a low vowel is a “reversible” sound change (Labov, 2010). It is further argued that the expansion of a merger to new communities may take place indirectly, through launching a sound change in the direction of merger rather than causing merger to take place immediately in the new community.

Although formulated by Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog in 1968, the actuation problem has remained an unsolved problem in understanding sound change: if sound change is conceived as the accumulation of coarticulation, and coarticulation is widespread, how can some speech communities resist phonetic pressure to change? We present data from American English s-retraction that suggest a partial solution. S-retraction is the phenomenon in which /s/ is realized as an [ʃ]-like sound, especially when it occurs in an /stɹ/ cluster (‘street’ pronounced more like [ʃtɹit] than like [stɹit]). The speech of English speakers judged not to exhibit s-retraction shows a large coarticulatory bias in the direction of retraction. Further, there is also substantial interspeaker variation in the extent of this bias. We propose that this interspeaker variation, coupled with the coarticulatory bias, facilitates the initiation of sound change. In this account, sound change begins when a listener accidentally interprets an extreme case of a phonetic effect as an articulatory target and then adjusts her own speech in response. This adoption of a new target requires phonetic variation that predates the change. Thus, sound change is predicted to be biased toward phonetic effects that exhibit interspeaker variability, and if sound change requires an accident that is rare, then sound change itself is correctly predicted to be rare as well.

This article reports the findings of parallel studies of variable subject presence in two closely related sign language varieties, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The studies expand upon research in American Sign Language (ASL) (Wulf, Dudis, Bayley, & Lucas, 2002) that found subject pronouns with noninflecting verbs to be more frequently unexpressed than expressed. The ASL study reported that null subject use correlates with both social and linguistic factors, the strongest of which is referential congruence with an antecedent in a preceding clause. Findings from the Auslan and NZSL studies also indicated that chains of reference play a stronger role in subject presence than either morphological factors (e.g., verb type), or social factors of age, gender, ethnicity, and language background. Overall results are consistent with the view that this feature of syntactic variation may be better accounted for in terms of information structure than sociolinguistic effects.

This study examines the retention of a non-native dialect feature by British Asians in London. We examine the use of one Punjabi feature (t-retroflexion) and one British feature (t-glottaling) across three groups: first-generation non-native immigrants and two age groups of second-generation British Asians. Cognitively oriented models predict that non-native features will either be innately blocked (Chambers, 2002) or reallocated by native generations. A socially oriented model allows for more gradual change. Contrary to the cognitive view, the older second generation neither blocks nor clearly reallocates use of t-retroflexion; they closely mirror the first generation's non-native use. However, they simultaneously control nativelike t-glottaling, reflecting a robust bidialectal ability. It is the younger second generation who exhibit focused reallocation in the form and function of t-retroflexion. This 20-year lag corresponds to major changes in demographics and race relations in the community over 5 decades. The study shows that acquisition of the local dialect and retention of exogenous features should be seen as independently constrained rather than as mutually exclusive.