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.
Table of Contents:
Foreword
Peter Trudgill
Introduction
Socio-grammatical variation and change: Theoretical and methodological implications
Karen V. Beaman, Isabelle Buchstaller, Sue Fox, and James A. Walker
Section 1: CONCEPTUALISING SOCIAL MEANING
Chapter 1.1
Historical and ideological dimensions of grammatical variation and change
Lesley Milroy
Chapter 1.2
Towards an integrated model of perception: Linguistic architecture and the dynamics of sociolinguistic cognition
Erez Levon, Isabelle Buchstaller and Adam Mearns
Chapter 1.3
Migration, class, and prestige in grammatical change in London
Devyani Sharma
Chapter 1.4
The role of syntax in the study of sociolinguistic meaning: Evidence from an analysis of right dislocation
Emma Moore
Section 2: Combining the Social AND THE GRAMMATICAL
Chapter 2.1
What happened to those relatives from East Anglia?: a multilocality analysis of dialect levelling in the relative marker system
David Britain
Chapter 2.2
Relativiser selection in a super-diverse city
Miriam Meyerhoff, Alexandra Birchfield, Elaine Ballard, Catherine Watson and Helen Charters
Chapter 2.3
Swabian relatives: variation in the use of the wo-relativiser
Karen V. Beaman
Chapter 2.4
Modeling Socio-Grammatical Variation: Plural Existentials in Toronto English
James A. Walker
Section 3: Formal Approaches to Syntactic Variation
Chapter 3.1
A sociogrammatical analysis of linguistic gaps and transitional forms
Sjef Barbiers
Chapter 3.2
Variation and Change in the Particle Verb Alternation Across English Dialects
Bill Haddican, Daniel Johnson, Joel Wallenberg and Anders Holmberg
Chapter 3.3
Explaining Variability in Negative Concord: A Socio-syntactic Analysis
David Adger and Jennifer Smith
Section 4: LANGUAGE CONTACT AND Multi-eTHNOLECTS
Chapter 4.1
Tracing the origins of an urban youth vernacular: founder effects, frequency and culture in the emergence of Multicultural London English
Paul Kerswill and Eivind Torgersen
Chapter 4.2
Syntactic variation in prepositional phrases of Cité-Duits, a miners’ multi-ethnolect (and other varieties of Dutch and German)
Peter Auer and Leonie Cornips
Chapter 4.3
When Contact Does Not Matter: The Robust Nature of Vernacular Universals
Daniel Schreier
Chapter 4.4
From Killycomain to Melbourne: Historical Contact and the Feature Pool
Karen P. Corrigan
Section 5: Discourse and Pragmatic Variation
Chapter 5.1
That beyond convention: The interface of syntax, social structure and discourse
Sali A. Tagliamonte and Alexandra D’Arcy
Chapter 5.2
Sociolinguistic variation in the marking of new information: The case of indefinite this
Stephen Levey, Carmen Klein and Yasmine Abou Taha
Chapter 5.3
Tagging monologic narratives of personal experience: utterance-final tags and the construction of adolescent masculinity
Heike Pichler
