Language Change and Variation: (52 Current Issues in Linguistic Theory)

The study of language variation in social context continues to hold the attention of a large number of linguists. This research is promoted by the annual colloquia on New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English' (NWAVE). This volume is a selection of revised papers from the NWAVE XI, held at Georgetown University. It deals with a number of items, some of which have often been discussed, others that have been less emphasized. The first group of articles in the volume center on a frequent theme: speech communities as the essential setting for understanding variation in language. Earlier work in linguistic variation dealt for the most part with phonological variation and change. Syntactic and morphological change and variation in syntax are also discussed. A selection on the role of variation in understanding first language acquisition comprises three papers. Articles in the last section of the volume concern theoretical controversy and methodological advances.

Table of Contents:
1. Variation in speech communities; 2. The exact description of a speech community: Short a in Philadelphia (by Labov, William), p1; 3. Patterned symmetry of shifting and lengthened vowels in the Montreal French Vernacular (MFV) (by Yaeger-Dror, Malcah), p59; 4. New results on Montreal French /r/ (by Tousignant, Cl.), p85; 5. Is urban influence VARB-able? (by Pitts, Ann H.), p95; 6. Montreal French: Language, class and ideology (by Sankoff, David), p107; 7. Social determinants of the use of English in Sweden (by Ljung, H.), p119; 8. Syntactic and morphological change; 9. Function and grammar in the history of English: Periphrastic do (by Kroch, Anthony S.), p133; 10. The English gerund: Syntactic change and discourse function (by Houston, A.), p173; 11. Morphological productivity word frequency, and the Oxford English Dictionary (by Anshen, F.), p197; 12. Syntactic variation; 13. Syntactization in language development: Clause status variation (by Wald, B.), p203; 14. Choosing between that and it (by Montgomery, Michael), p241; 15. Inside and outside relative clauses: Pronominal redundancy in Portuguese (by Tarallo, Fernando), p255; 16. Variation in language development; 17. Addressing new questions about Black children's language (by Stockman, Ida J.), p275; 18. Structural variability in phonological development: Final nasals in Vernacular Black English (by Wolfram, Walt), p301; 19. The development of syntactic complexity in narrative, informative and argumentative discourse (by Dubuisson, L.), p333; 20. Controversies and methods in the study of linguistic variation; 21. Some problems in defining syntactic variables: The case of WH questions in Montreal French (by Lefebvre, Claire), p351; 22. A closer look at some so-called variable processes (by Ford, Alan), p367; 23. Some approaches to syntactic variation (by Jacobson, S.), p381; 24. A versatile program for the analysis of sociolinguistic data (by Rousseau, P.), p395; 25. The care and handling of a mega-corpus: The Ottawa-Hull French project (by Poplack, Shana), p411