Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation

Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation
Author: Tanya Karoli Christensen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2022-01-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108492843

New perspectives on how and why syntax varies between and within speakers, focusing on explaining theoretical backgrounds and methods.

Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation

Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation
Author: Tanya Karoli Christensen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2022-01-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108676855

What explains variation in human language? How are linguistic and social factors related? How do we examine possible semantic differences between variants? These questions and many more are explored in this volume, which examines syntactic variables in a range of languages. It brings together a team of internationally acclaimed authors to provide perspectives on how and why syntax varies between and within speakers, focusing on explaining theoretical backgrounds and methods. The analyses presented are based on a range of languages, making it possible to address the questions from a cross-linguistic perspective. All chapters demonstrate rigorous quantitative analyses, which expose the conditioning factors in language change as well as offering important insights into community and individual grammars. It is essential reading for researchers and students with an interest in language variation and change, and the theoretical framework and methods applied in the study of how and why syntax varies.

Comparative Variation Analysis

Comparative Variation Analysis
Author: Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2023-08-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108491561

Variation studies is an increasingly popular area in linguistics, becoming embedded in curriculum design, conferences, and research. However, the field is at risk of fragmenting into different research communities with different foci. This pioneering book addresses this by establishing a canon of state-of-the-art quantitative methods to analyze grammatical variation from a comparative perspective. It explains how to use these methods to investigate large datasets in a responsible fashion, providing a blueprint for applying techniques from corpus linguistic, variationist, and dialectometric traditions in novel ways. It specifically explores the scope and limits of syntactic variability in a global language such as English, and investigates three grammatical alternations in nine varieties of English, exploring what we can learn about the grammatical choices that people make based on both observational and experimental data. Comprehensive yet accessible, it will be of interest to academic researchers and students of sociolinguistic, corpus linguistics, and World Englishes.

Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation

Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
Author: Lauren Hall-Lew
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2021-08-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108471625

The only book offering an overview of third-wave variation research and theory, which is an approach centered on social meaning.

Meaning, Identity, and Interaction

Meaning, Identity, and Interaction
Author: Heather Burnett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2023-06-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108841643

Drawing on cutting-edge research, this book shows how tools from formal semantics can be used to formalize theories from sociolinguistics.

New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research

New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research
Author: Nuria Yáñez‐Bouza
Publisher: Channel View Publications
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2024-04-16
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1800416164

This book investigates the connections between evaluative judgements on language and the larger social, cultural, and political issues that shed light on the practice of prescriptivism. The chapters cover three main areas: language, which represents the traditional roots of the study of linguistic norms in authoritative (historical) manuals and judgemental attitudes to language usage; literary and scripted texts, which illustrates the enregisterment of the values of linguistic prescriptivism as a social and cultural phenomenon; and speech communities, which reflects the growth in scope of the field to consider geographical contexts beyond mainstream British and American English to include varieties of English and other languages worldwide. The book also discusses recent theoretical and methodological advances in the study of prescriptivism.

Advancing Socio-grammatical Variation and Change

Advancing Socio-grammatical Variation and Change
Author: Karen V. Beaman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2020-08-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000092704

This groundbreaking collection showcases Jenny Cheshire’s influential work in bringing greater attention to quantitative analysis of socio-grammatical variation and builds upon her contributions with new lines of inquiry pushing sociolinguistic research forward. Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, the volume is structured in six parts with a particular focus on syntactic, morpho-syntactic, and discourse-pragmatic variation and change, each section turning a lens on a different aspect of socio-grammatical variation. The first sections of the volume focus on the role of structure, its relevance for sociolinguistic production and perception and the impact of social structure on formal structure. Two sections look at the interface of variationist research with other aspects of linguistic research, including generative syntax and discourse-pragmatic features. The final sections consider the importance of integrating broader external factors in socio-grammatical variation, exploring the impact of interactional pressures in the sociolinguistic environment and the role of multi-ethnic contact varieties. Taken together, this volume demonstrates the critical role of socio-grammatical variation in our understanding of language change as a holistic process.

Syntax and Variation

Syntax and Variation
Author: Leonie Elise Alexandra Cornips
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2005
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027247797

As such, it offers novel approaches to three key areas of current linguistic debate, viz. (1) Methodological practices, (2) Theoretical applications and (3) Modularity."--BOOK JACKET.

Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation

Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation
Author: Sali Tagliamonte
Publisher:
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2006
Genre: Language and languages
ISBN: 9780511556890

The first comprehensive 'how to' guide to the formal analysis of sociolinguistic variation (how language varies in social context). Practical and informal, it shows in a step-by-step fashion how the analysis is carried out, leading the reader through every stage of a sociolinguistic research project. Contains checklists, tips, and exercises.

Theoretical Approaches to Linguistic Variation

Theoretical Approaches to Linguistic Variation
Author: Ermenegildo Bidese
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2016-12-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902726631X

The contributions of this book deal with the issue of language variation. They all share the assumption that within the language faculty the variation space is hierarchically constrained and that minimal changes in the set of property values defining each language give rise to diverse outputs within the same system. Nevertheless, the triggers for language variation can be different and located at various levels of the language faculty. The novelty of the volume lies in exploring different loci of language variation by including wide-ranging empirical perspectives that cover different levels of analysis (syntax, phonology and prosody) and deal with different kinds of data, mostly from Romance and Germanic languages, from dialects, idiolects, language acquisition, language attrition and creolization, analyzed from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives. The volume is divided in three parts. The first part is dedicated to synchronic variation in phonology and syntax; the second part deals with diachronic variation and language change, and the third part investigates the role of contact, attrition and acquisition in giving rise to language change and language variation in bilingual settings. This volume is a useful tool for linguistics of diverse theoretical persuasions working on theoretical and comparative linguistics and to anyone interested in language variation, language change, dialectology, language acquisition and typology.