Variability

In the last chapter, we looked at code-switching and saw that sometimes it was not plausible to account for variation as an alternation between two distinct codes. Sometimes we find instead a rapid and seemingly random fluctuation between linguistic forms. Let us make this problem concrete, so we can visualize what such variation is like. Consider words ending in the suffix ‘-ing’, such as ‘hunting’ or ‘working’. Very widely within the English-speaking world, people pronounce such items as either working or workin'. Sometimes the suffix is pronounced as ‘-ing’; sometimes as ‘-in’. Although from the point of view of the written word, this looks like ‘dropping the g’, that is not what happens. Phonetically neither form of the suffix contains [g]; the contrast is between whether the final nasal is pronounced at the back, [iŋ], or the front, [in], of the mouth.

To imagine the variability here, let the /in/ form be represented by 1 and the /iŋ/ form by 0. Now imagine utterances by three speakers on a given occasion where there are ten opportunities of pronouncing words which have the ‘-ing’ suffix.