Linguistic Variation Confronting Fact and Theory [Hardcover]

Linguistic Variation: Confronting Fact and Theoryhonors Shana Poplack in bringing together contributions from leading scholars in language variation and change. The book demonstrates how variationist methodology can be applied to the study of linguistic structures and processes. It introduces readers to variation theory, while also providing an overview of current debates on the linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural factors involved in linguistic patterning. With its coverage of a diverse range of language varieties and linguistic problems, this book offers new quantitative analyses of actual language production and processing from both top experts and emerging scholars, and presents students and practitioners with theoretical frameworks to meaningfully engage in accountable research practice.

Introduction: Towards a science of grammar and a critical sociolinguistics  Nathalie Dion, Andr? Lapierre, and Rena Torres Cacoullos  Part I. The Variationist Comparative Method: Gauging Grammatical Relationships  1. Contrasting patterns of agreement in three communities  James A.Walker  2. A comparative variationist perspective on relative clauses in child and adult speech  Stephen Levey  3. Uh andum in British and American English:Are they words? Evidence from co-occurrence with pauses  Gunnel Tottie  4. A variationist approach to subject-aux question inversion in Bajan and other Caribbean creole Englishes, AAVE and Appalachian  John R. Rickford and Robin Melnick  Part II. Identifying and Tracking Language Change  5. The continuing story of verbal -s: Revisiting the Northern Subject Rule as a diagnostic of historical relationship  Sandra Clarke&lÔ