This work compares the morphosyntactic properties of expressive suffixes in four European languages: Russian, German, Spanish and Greek. It shows that although these suffixes share the same expressive meaning, they differ significantly in their syntactic structure, namely in the manner and place of attachment in the syntactic tree. Thus, the Russian and Spanish expressive suffixes that refer to the size of a referent (or size suffixes) are syntactic modifiers, while the German size suffixes are syntactic heads. And in Greek, the two most productive expressive suffixes -ak and -ul have homophonous counterparts that possess contrasting syntactic properties: syntactic heads vs. syntactic modifiers. This shows that across languages as well as within single languages, such as Greek, there is no 1:1 correspondence between the meaning and the structure of expressive forms. These findings are further supported by two novel case studies of the homophonous suffixes -its (in Greek) and -ic (in Russian).

This chapter surveys the literature on variation in general and on grammatical variables (a.k.a. "alternations'') in particular. Next, we review well-known grammatical variables/alternations in English as well as previous comparative investigations of grammatical alternations in English. Last but not least, we discuss in detail previous variationist work on the three alternations subject to study in this book: the genitive alternation, the dative alternation, and the particle placement alternation.

Chapter 4 of Discourse Syntax (Variation in the Middle) introduces students to syntactic patterns that lead to sentences with non-canonical subjects or variation in the way the verb’s arguments are realized, including the object position. After discussing principles of canonical argument realization, including facts from language acquisition and insights from psycholinguistics, the chapter discusses the passive construction, including in preposition stranding contexts, and the verb-particle construction (also known as “phrasal verbs”), in the context of establishing topics, arranging given and new information, and shifting complex material to the end of the sentence (Principle of End-Weight). Woven into these explanations are data from current research in the text-linguistic and variationist approach and attestations from freely available corpora.

Chapter 8 of Discourse Syntax (Discourse Markers) deals with elements within discourse which do not belong to the core clause but are either placed at the sentence periphery or within it as insertions. The chapter shows that discourse markers mainly serve the needs of spoken, interactive discourse, and that they are placed in variable sentence positions and also occur as characteristic discourse marker sequences. Discussing the use of discourse markers in different text types, the chapter highlights that discourse markers have a bracketing and an interactive function in spoken discourse, but that there is also some text-linguistic variation, such as a use in scripted discourse or in online writing to mark a certain informality. The issue of syntactic variation is covered by a discussion of the positioning of the discourse marker then. The chapter also touches upon the development and use of “actually” as a discourse marker, the rise and grammaticalization of discourse markers as parentheticals, and their role in language proficiency.

Chapter 2 of Discourse Syntax (Concepts, Data, and Methods) further clarifies the need for studying patterns of syntactic use and variation in English with emphasis on the surrounding text (co-text), which is itself embedded in a specific discourse situation (context). It also differentiates between sentences and utterances and introduces the notion of “register” as a grouping of linguistic patterns arising from the discourse situation and distinguishes between a text-linguistic (focus on text) and a variationist perspective (focus on a syntactic variable) in studying syntactic variation, as well as methods of data collection, including guidance on working with corpora, corpus searches, data cleaning, and data interpretation, as well as research design in line with these two approaches.

Chapter 5 of Discourse Syntax (Special Endings) deals with two constructions that place sentence elements in the final, end-focus position. Discussing the extraposition of subject clauses (it-extraposition) and the cleft construction (it-clefting), the chapter shows that both constructions serve the distribution of given before new information in the sentence and the placement of complex material at the end of the sentence (Principle of End-Weight). It also shows that alternative constructions (non-extraposition) as well as discourse types and registers play a role in how these non-canonical constructions are used and that there are differences between speech and writing as well as other discourse types and modes. The chapter also discusses the presentation and visualization of quantitative corpus-linguistic evidence and presents strategies for dealing with absolute, normalized, and proportional frequencies gained from natural language corpora.

Chapter 6 of Discourse Syntax (Connectives) deals with connectives as one aspect of grammatical cohesion and the grammar of discourse. It introduces the various syntactic elements that function as discourse connectives (coordinators, connective adjuncts), contrasts the overt and the covert expression of additive conjunction, and then turns to other semantic and pragmatic types of discourse relations (causative, adversative, temporal). The discussion of the occurrence of sentence-initial “and” as it is used to connect sentences in texts focuses on spoken discourse and narration. Turning to the other semantic classes of conjunction, the chapter describes characteristic uses of connectives within the academic register. The chapter also explains how to deal with frequencies of occurrence gathered from large-size corpora, elaborating on the need for normalized rates of occurrence rather than absolute frequencies and on how to adjust individual frequencies for their density.

Chapter 1 of Discourse Syntax introduces the concept of discourse syntax and connects this topic to what students likely already know from a basic introduction to English syntax, like parts of speech, basic principles of canonical word order in English and basic patterns of grammatical variation, such as syntactic movement. It emphasizes that patterns of variation are systematic and often rooted in the surrounding discourse. The chapter also introduces corpora of English, such as the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and the notion of reference grammars.

Chapter 7 of Discourse Syntax (Pronouns and Ellipsis) deals with pronouns and ellipsis as another area of grammatical cohesion and of the grammar of discourse. It introduces reference and coreference and the different classes of pronouns. The discussion is based on the distinction between endophoric and exophoric reference, co-referential ties and chains of reference as well as the interpretation of pronouns as expressing extended reference. The chapter also discusses principles of pronoun interpretation and the concept of givenness from a psycholinguistic viewpoint. Givenness is explained with reference to the concepts of accessibility and recoverability, which are also shown to be relevant as conditions of elliptical reference and, in particular, the use of subject ellipsis in discourse. The chapter presents corpus data about the use of pronouns and ellipsis in texts and corresponding patterns of text-linguistic variation, such as interactive and oral language use as well as usage in types of written language (literary and electronic discourse, informal writing).

Chapter 3 of Discourse Syntax (Non-Canonical Beginnings) introduces students to sentences with non-canonical beginnings, which we define as the non-canonical placement of a core element of the clause to the left of the subject. Students learn to differentiate between topicalization, left-dislocation, and sentence-initial adjuncts, as well as different types of inversion, including locative inversion, and are introduced to how these syntactic patterns are used to structure the discourse – establishing topics, packaging information, providing signposts – and under which discourse conditions they occur. Woven into these explanations are data from current research in the text-linguistic and variationist approach and attestations from freely available corpora.

This chapter argues that it will make results of variationist studies more relevant for linguistic theory if internal predictors assumed to constrain syntactic variation are operationalized in a way that explicitly relates them to semantic or – more broadly – functional hypotheses. We use word order in Danish adverbial subordinate clauses as a case study for how a hypothesized semantic difference between variants can be operationalized. This word order alternation concerns the relative placement of sentential adverbials and finite verbs in subclauses. While the variable is structurally well defined (Adverb < Verb vs. Verb > Adverb), it challenges classic theoretical and methodological ass+L13umptions in variationist studies by entailing a semantic difference, since the two word orders convey subtly different meanings when used in subclauses. For this study, we operationalize a set of linguistic predictors related to the two most prevalent meaning hypotheses given in the literature, the assertivity and the foregrounding hypothesis. Mixed-effect models and random forest analyses are used to examine the effects and strength of intra- and extralinguistic (social) predictors. Geographical differences related to social stratification indicate an ongoing standardization process emanating from the capital of Copenhagen. The import of our findings related to linguistic theory is discussed.

This chapter is an enquiry into whether we can predict whether a particular instance of variation at the syntactic level may reflect social stratification or not (Labov 1966, 1972, 1994). Therefore, a range of syntactic variables in Dutch has been examined that may reveal social correlations in the spontaneous speech of 67 speakers who were born, grew up, and still live in one particular locality. Most of the syntactic variables consist of variants associated with the local dialect and (codified) standard Dutch. The syntactic variables examined differ in frequency of occurrence, synonymy/functional equivalence, abstract properties, and presumably noticeability. The fact that the social stratification of various syntactic variables can be investigated by following the same speakers within one speech style, i.e. the sociolinguistic interview,L12 offers a unique opportunity to carefully discriminate the effects of similar socio-demographic factors on different types of syntactic variables. The overall result is that social stratification of syntactic variation can be predicted where syntax maps onto discourse. The outcome is dependent on the extent of duration of language contact situations, and interactions in which particular linguistic variables have become socially meaningful depending on the individual and the wider societal, political and ideological context.

In this chapter we investigate the role of socio-psychological motivations in accounts of grammatical change. Laboratory and corpus evidence is presented to substantiate the impact of dynamic prestige meanings (associated with non-posh media cool) on the diffusion of the object pronoun hun 'them' as a subject in Netherlandic Dutch. In a speaker evaluation experiment, 185 listener-judges rated speech stimuli with standard and non-standard pronouns on pictures which were the best instantiations, according to a preceding norming task, of the evaluation dimensions old prestige (superiority), new prestige (dynamism), and disapproval. While subject-hun was found to be significantly less superior than the standard pronoun, it was perceived to be no less dynamic. The impact of this dynamic prestige meaning was further investigated on the basis of a dataset of tweets. Regression analysis demonstrated that the preference for hun could be adequately predicted on the basis of production proxies of hun’s social meaning. Taken together, all the available data suggest that the social meaning of hun is a pivotal determinant of its diffusion, viz. its use as a consciously deployed 'stylizer', but also the internal conditioning of its non-conscious use as a pronoun alternative.