In Newfoundland French the verb does not agree in number with a plural subject in one particular construction–subject relative clauses–but rather displays default singular marking. Agreement is made with the subject relative pronoun, which does not have a morphological feature for number associated with it. This absence of a number feature results in a form consistently spelled out as homophonous with the third-person singular. Gender agreement transmitted in subject relatives containing a predicate adjective is evidence that number marking is at issue, not agreement in general. An exception to this pattern is the (variable) marking of plural agreement in the il y en a construction, explained in terms that are independent from the analysis of the default singular. Newfoundland French agreement is then compared with data from other French varieties, and the approach taken in this study is compared with those of other studies of grammatical variation.

Although the order of major sentence constituents at all stages of Ancient Greek is quite free, the distribution of clause types is not random over time, but changes from predominantly verb-final to predominantly verb-medial, suggesting a change in progress. Using the paradigm of Kroch (1989), in which it is assumed that syntactic change involves competition between grammatical systems, two models are constructed, one for the verb-final grammar of the Homeric period (pre-800 B.C.) and one for the verb-medial grammar of the Hellenistic Koiné (c. 100 A.D.). The language of an intermediate stage (Herodotus, c. 450 B.C.) is shown to pattern in part like Homer and in part like the Koiné. More strikingly, the ratio of verb-final to verb-medial structure that best fits the distribution of clause types found in Herodotus is extremely close to an independent measure of this ratio obtained from the distribution of weak pronouns and clitics.

This article describes results from a subjective reaction test of Japanese speakers' attitudes toward keigo ‘polite language’. Hypotheses regarding attitudes toward “correct” language were for the most part verified, whereas attitudes toward “incorrect” forms were decidedly mixed. These results provide a first step in ascertaining attitudes toward a set of forms that are said to be in a state of flux in contemporary Japan. Also impinging on interpretation of the data are questions of descriptive terminology and culture. Such issues provide additional insight into the controversy within sociolinguistics over quantitative description and normative explanation.

Since the 15th century, negative infinitives in French have undergone a change from ne V pas to ne pas V. This change takes place at different times, depending on the nature of the verb. Lexical verbs undergo the change between 1550 and 1750, modals (pouvoir, vouloir, devoir) essentially change between 1650 and 1900, and auxiliaries have been changing at a slow pace since 1650. We explore the idea that, for main verbs, the change in word order reflects a change in the position of pas, while the change in the position of modals and auxiliaries results from the fact that these verbs start assuming a position lower in the structure. Our analysis of the historically different evolution of each type of verb is based on their lexical properties and their distinct affinities with abstract Tense.

In this article, we develop analytical techniques to determine borrowability – that is, the ease with which a lexical item or a category of lexical items can be borrowed. The analysis is based on two assumptions: (1) the distribution of items in both the host and donor language should be taken into account to explain why certain items are, and others are not, borrowed; (2) the borrowability of a lexical category may result from a set of (underlying) operative factors or constraints. Our analysis is applied to Spanish borrowings in Bolivian Quechua on the basis of a set of bilingual texts.

This article focuses on a change affecting Spanish in contact with English in the United States: namely, simplification and loss of Subjunctive (Sub) mood morphology. Conversational data from 17 Mexican-American bilinguals living in the eastern section of Los Angeles are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The speakers represent three different immigrant groups, according to length of family stay in the United States. The variation between Indicative (Ind) and Sub usage attested in the Spanish-speaking world results from the continuing modifications which have affected the distribution of Ind and Sub forms through the diachronic development of Spanish: previously obligatory contexts for the use of Sub are now categorically Ind or allow both Sub and Ind to different degrees across social and geographic parameters. In the Spanish of Los Angeles, the internal tendencies toward a reduction of the obligatory use of the Sub are strengthened, as may be expected in a situation of language contact in which obligatory contexts for the use of a form are more resistant to change than those that allow a selection between two or more forms with closely related meanings.

It has often been claimed that it-cleft complements differ syntactically from restrictive relative clauses. Alleged differences in the distribution and relative frequency of wh-forms in the two clause types are generally offered to support this view, but such claims have not been empirically verified. In this study, we examine synchronic and diachronic data for clefts and relative clauses and show that the major claims are unsupported. The diachronic data further show that cleft complements and restrictive relative clauses have changed together over time and at the same rate. On the constant rate hypothesis, the evidence supports the position that the two clause types are not syntactically distinct.

Studies of concord variation in English have found subject-verb concord to be particularly low in existential sentences such as There's bridges. Noting that these sentences are unusual because the subject NP is postverbal and is generally indefinite, we hypothesized that the unusual concord variation pattern was a result of structural differences associated with the restriction on the type of determiners preceding the postverbal NP. Using variationist methodology, we analyzed natural speech data from 31 speakers of standard Canadian English and found an overwhelming preference for singular agreement in existentials. Contrary to our predictions, this was not linked to a determiner-based structural distinction, but rather to the form of the copula (i.e., full or clitic) and the speaker's level of education. Our findings have implications for those theoretical studies of existentials that assume concord, because the effect of education suggests that this assumption reflects the bias of the higher educational level of the researchers.

Although the process of analogical leveling seems relatively straightforward and its directionality readily predictable, the existence of cross-dialectal leveling alternatives suggests that the processes that actuate and embed analogical leveling can actually be quite complex. Using the case of a vernacular variety spoken on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, we demonstrate how linguistic-systemic principles such as remorphologization, psycholinguistic principles of perceptual saliency, and sociolinguistic processes of symbolic identity converge to account for the development and maintenance of leveling to weren't (I/you/(s)he/we/ you/they weren't here) in this post-insular island community.

This article investigates the sociolinguistic variable of apical palatalization in Cairene Arabic. First, I discuss its linguistic features and then its sociolinguistic distribution. The significance of palatalization as a sociolinguistic variable is its status as a stylistic resource of Cairene Arabic. Depending on the complex interaction of a number of factors, some Egyptians use features of Classical Arabic while speaking in Egyptian Arabic for stylistic purposes. Palatalization, on the other hand, is an example of a stylistic resource that belongs to Cairene Arabic proper. The roles of gender and social class in the distribution of palatalization are explored in some detail. As in a number of other speech communities, women in Cairo seem to have been the innovators of this sound change.

This study examines the well-known process of consonant cluster reduction in the English of residents of a San Antonio, Texas, barrio. The study compares Tejano patterns of /-t, d/ deletion with the pan-English pattern summarized by Labov (1989). Results of VARBRUL analysis show that /-t, d/ deletion in Tejano English is constrained by many of the same factors as in other English dialects, including Los Angeles Chicano English. Results also suggest, however, a complex pattern of convergence and divergence. Younger Tejanos are converging toward other dialects of English with respect to the effect of the morphological class on cluster simplification. Yet there is some evidence that they are diverging from other dialects with respect to the effect of syllable stress. On this latter dimension, younger Tejanos replicate the pattern found by Santa Ana (1991) among Los Angeles Chicanos. Finally, the study compares /-t, d/ deletion in Tejano/Chicano English in San Antonio and Los Angeles and shows that, despite many similarities, Mexican American varieties exhibit regional as well as generational differences.

This article is a quantitative diachronic study of the object markers ba˘ and jiāng in Chinese. Traditionally, it has been claimed (Chao, 1968; Li & Thompson, 1981; Lü, 1955; Wang, 1943–44; among others) that ba˘ and Ji¯ng have undergone the same process of grammaticalization and have acquired the same function over time, so that they have become interchangeable. The present article challenges this view and provides evidence showing that, in the texts where both are used, each has its own distinctive functions. In the early stage of their grammaticalization, the major difference between them is the direction of motion relative to the agent: ba˘ tends to express motion toward the agent, whereas Jiāng tends to express motion away from the agent. Later, when both ba˘ and Jiāng become object markers, ba˘ is more likely to be used in informal texts, whereas Jiāng is more likely to be used in formal texts. I argue that it is this difference that led to the disappearance of Jiāng in written texts of modern times.

Spanish grammarians used to say that the demonstrative adverbs aquí ‘here’ and acá ‘here’ can alternate in some contexts. They attempt to explain the alternation by appealing to one of two hypotheses, which can be identified as the movement-to-a-goal hypothesis and the delimitation hypothesis. The former states that acá is associated with movement directed to a goal, whereas aquí is associated with all other possibilities. The latter states that the place denoted by aquí is less limited and defined than the place denoted by acá The present article evaluates both hypotheses in a corpus of Venezuelan Spanish. The evaluation takes into account the kind of place denoted by aquí and acá (goal of movement, source of movement, place of transit, and location) and also the prepositions and verbs used when the adverbs denote the goal of movement. The results of the quantitative analysis prove the validity of the delimitation hypothesis.

Glottalization and glottal replacement (particularly of /t/ in British English) have traditionally been assumed to be variants characteristic of male, lower-class speakers. Both phenomena have been heavily stigmatized, but are spreading rapidly. Recent studies in various parts of the British Isles (including Tyneside) have suggested that glottal replacement of /t/ is led by middle-class and/or female speakers. A fuller understanding of the nature of this linguistic change depends on treating glottalization of /p, t, k/ (a more localized Tyneside feature) and glottal replacement as independent phenomena, rather than as points on a lenition scale corresponding to a social continuum (e.g., casual to careful style). The studies of Tyneside glottalization reported here show that, while females lead in the use of glottal replacement, males prefer glottalization. This pattern is interpreted in terms of a preference of males for localized variants, whereas females lead in adopting supra-local norms.

For quantitative sociolinguists, one of the goals of investigating variability in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is to understand better the nature of the grammar. Specifically, researchers have been interested in whether the variation observed in AAVE is inherent to a single system or the result of interaction between two separate systems of AAVE and Standard English (SE). Variability in negation is an area of the AAVE grammar that has received minimal attention, but one that may offer some interesting insights into the nature of the system or systems at work. This article provides a framework to describe the variability between negative auxiliaries in predicative constructions based on a quantitative analysis of data collected in Columbus, Ohio. Five variables are investigated in this study. One involves interaction between third-person singular inflection and non-inflection in present do-support constructions (NEG pres). A second involves variation between ain't and don't with the predicates got or gotta (NEG GOT(ta)). And the other three involve interaction between ain't and negative auxiliaries in present copular (NEG COP), present perfect (NEG perf), and past do-support (NEG past) constructions. The results of this study show that, with the possible exception of the (NEG pres) variation, these alternations all appear to belong to one underlying system.