Describes a study showing how a linguistic pattern of alternation affecting an entire speech community is realized in individual idiolects; an example representative of colloquial Helsinki speech is used. Results support observations already presented by Labov, according to which linguistic change is linguistically structured to a very high…

Attempts a preliminary typological study of sub-languages constituting one national language. Three types of sub-languages are distinguished: natural language, language of science, and informational language. They are compared to the three levels of language analysis, speech, norm and system. (RM)