The empirical basis for this article is a series of studies of glottalization in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. These studies show that, while females lead in the use of glottal replacement, males prefer glottalization. This pattern is interpreted in terms of a preference of males for localized variants, whereas females lead in adopting supra-local…

Provides a framework to describe the variability between negative auxiliaries in predicative constructions based on a quantitative analysis of data collected on African American vernacular English. Results indicate that, with the possible exception of the negative present variation, the alternations all belong to one underlying system. (56…

The distribution of variants of the FACE and GOAT vowels in Tyneside English (TE) is assessed with reference to the age, sex, and social class of 32 adult TE speakers. Effects of phonological context and speaking style are also examined. Patterns in the data are suggestive of dialect leveling, whereby localized speech variants become recessive and…

Offers evidence that contradicts the idea of a relatively homogeneous North American dialect area in which vowel systems remain fairly stable. The article examines back vowel fronting in Canadian English and its relationship to the shift affecting the front lax vowels, as well as to the general principles of vowel chain shifting. (29 references)…

Focuses on factors governing the choice of relative markers in restrictive relative clauses with relativized subjects from the 16th century to the present, using spoken and written data and including non-standard and regional varieties. The study addresses claims by Romaine (1982) that the "wh"-strategy has not affected spoken English,…

Examines the distribution of clause types in ancient Greek during the Homeric (pre-800 B.C.) and Hellenistic (ca. 100 A.D.) periods, as well as an intermediate period (ca. 450 B.C.), delineating the evolution from a subject-object-verb (SOV) to a subject-verb-object (SVO) structure. (49 references) (MDM)

Describes a morphosyntactic feature of the Xining dialect that is unique among all Chinese dialects: that is, the use of a preposition to express ablative nominal relationships. (Author/VWL)

Uses interview and telephone survey data to demonstrate that the merger of the vowels in words such as "cot" and "caught," traditionally considered a defining characteristics of the speech of western Pennsylvania, is well established in the mining towns of eastern Pennsylvania. Notes that the data indicate that the merger arose…

Investigates Japanese as it is spoken in Tokyo within the variationist framework, focusing on the variable (ng). Quantitative analysis was made of the data obtained from sociolinguistic interviews. Findings confirm the existence of inherent variation and orderly heterogeneity. (17 references) (Author/CK)

Discusses "end-weight," long, complex phrases that tend to come at the end of clauses. Corpus data on heavy noun phrase shift, the dative alternation, and particle movement indicate that there are several structural measures of weight highly correlated with constituent ordering. (38 references) (Author/CK)

Provides evidence from a small northern U.S. city for Canadian raising, a Canadian phenomenon that heightens the onset of diphthongs in /ai/ and /au/ relative to the low central onset in neighboring dialects. Findings suggest that the Canadian diphthong varieties may not be conforming to the U.S. norm, but instead that the two varieties are…

Analyzes the rightward movement of noun and prepositional phrases in the Early Old English poem "Beowulf." Evidence is provided for heavy noun phrase shift, with a characteristic major intonational boundary between the main verb and the postponed noun phrase, and preposition phrase extraposition, where the intonational boundary was much…

Using the case of a vernacular variety spoken on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, this article demonstrates how linguistic-systemic principles such as remorphologization, psycholinguistic principles of perceptual saliency, and sociolinguistic processes of symbolic identity converge to account for the development of leveling in this community.…

Using data from Derry/Londonderry English, the impact of social factors on language variation is examined. Finds that where language change is occurring, ethnicity has an effect on the adoption of innovations. Changes originating in the (predominantly Protestant) east of Northern Ireland tend to be adopted primarily by Protestants, whereas…

Deals with divergence on the lexical, phonological, and morphological levels in three dialects that were the same until the mid-20th century (Maaseiks in Belgium, Susters in the Netherlands, and Waldfeuchts in Germany) and that have changed under the influence of three different standard languages (Belgian Dutch, Netherlandic Dutch, and Standard…