27.606, Review: Cog Sci; Historical Ling; Socioling: Torres Cacoullos, Dion, Lapierre (2014)

Mon Feb 1 21:09:18 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-606. Mon Feb 01 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.606, Review: Cog Sci; Historical Ling; Socioling: Torres Cacoullos, Dion, Lapierre (2014)

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Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2016 16:08:58
From: Chiara Meluzzi [chiara.meluzzi at yahoo.it]
Subject: Linguistic Variation

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-4575.html

EDITOR: Rena  Torres Cacoullos
EDITOR: Nathalie  Dion
EDITOR: André  Lapierre
TITLE: Linguistic Variation
SUBTITLE: Confronting Fact and Theory
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Chiara Meluzzi, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The book “Linguistic variation: confronting fact and theory”, edited by Rena
Torres Cacoullos, Nathalie Dion and André Lapierre, collects various
contributions from scholars working on language variation and change. The
editors dedicated the book to Shana Poplack, and every author refers to her
activity in Sociolinguistics through the years. The book consists of an
introduction, and twenty chapters divided into five sections, each one
consisting of five contributions addressing a specific topic. 

In the introduction the editors add an evocative sentence “toward a science of
grammar and a Critical Sociolinguistics”: this represents a summary of the
main aim of the book, but it is also a strong statement on the theoretical
direction of research in the field of language variation and change after more
than 45 years from the first Labovian works. The editors also trace a short
profile of Shana Poplack’s activity in both researching and teaching,
especially during her years at the University of Ottawa.

The first section (The Variationist Comparative Method: Gauging Grammatical
Relationships) addresses one of the points already evoked in the introduction,
that is the founding of a science of grammar. James A. Walker (Contrasting
Patterns of Agreement in Three Communities) focuses on the empirical
comparison of competitive models of grammatical variation (see also Walker
2007), in particular where it concerns plural morphology. The data are taken
from three corpora (i.e., Quebec English Corpus, the Bequia Corpus, and
Contact in the City Corpus), and show a different distribution in the use of
plural markers, with a hierarchy of conditioning related to different factor
groups (see also Poplack & Tagliamonte 1999). Stephen Levey (A Comparative
Variationist Perspective on Relative Clauses in Child and Adult Speech)
analyzes  children’s acquisition of relative clauses from a usage-based
perspective (see Diesel 2004): he shows that strategies for marking
restrictive relative clauses are acquired very well in later childhood too.
Gunel Tottie (Uh and Uhm in British and American English: Are They Words?
Evidence from Co-occurrence with Pauses) addresses the complex topic of
discourse particles, basing her analysis on the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken
American English (SBC), but also comparing her findings with other English
varieties and dialects collected in other corpora (e.g., the London-Lund
Corpus of English, see Kendall 2013). In her conclusions, Tottie does not
support the treatment of these linguistic items as interjections or words, but
as pragmatic markers, similar to forms like “I mean”, “well”, or “you know”.
Finally, John E. Rickford and Robin Melnick (A Variationist Approach to
Subject-Aux Question Inversion in Bajan and Other Caribbean Creole Englishes,
AAVE, and Appalachian) also adopt an inter-dialect perspective, by discussing
syntactic variation in Barbadian Creole English (Bajan). In their analysis,
they highlight how three factors significantly influence variation in
Subject-Aux inversion, namely question type, subject length, and auxiliary
type.

The second section (Identifying and Tracking Language Change) opens to
diachrony and to languages other than English. Sandra Clarke (The Continuing
Story of Verbal –s: Revisiting the Northern Subject Rule as a Diagnostic of
Historical Relationship) traces the evolution of English non-standard
present-tense verbal –s from Old English to Contemporary Regional Variety. She
shows how this evolution is not a straight one in both time and space, by
suggesting that Newfoundland English is highly conservative as  is
demonstrated by the maintenance of present-tense –s in all subject types in
its vernacular regional roots. Frans Gregersen (Phonetic Variation across
Centuries: On the Possible Reappearance of a Case of Stable Variation in
Copenhagen Danish) addresses the ENG variable (i.e., the raising of central
[ɛ] before the velar nasal [ŋ]) in Copenhagen Danish. The authors compares
apparent-time and real-time evidences, thus offering an important reflection
on a methodological and theoretical debate within the variationist framework.
Mary A. Kato (Focus and WH-Questions in Brazilian Portuguese) follows a
cartographic approach (see Rizzi 1997) in analyzing WH-Questions in Portuguese
as they emerge from written corpora collecting data from 14th century to the
present. The analysis shows that in Brazilian Portuguese the so-called FOCUS
head is a syncretic category, which checks both WH and focalized expressions.
Finally, Joan Bybee and Rena Torres Cacoullos (Grammaticalization and
Variation of WILL and SHALL in Shakespeare’s Comedies) focus on modal
categories in order to highlight new patterns of variation. In particular, the
analysis emphasizes how the two future modals WILL and SHALL in Shakespeare’s
comedies are tied to both earlier lexical meaning and “a converging trajectory
toward the purer future use for marking predictions” (p. 143), with intention
as an intermediate stage in this development.

The third section (Language Ideology, Prescription, and Community Norms)
discusses the notions of standard language, language attitudes, and linguistic
bias. Anthony Julius Naro and Maria Marta Pereira Scherre (Drifting Toward the
Standard Language: A Panel Study of Number Concord in Brazilian Portuguese)
discusses the use of overt plural marking in third-person subject/verb number
concord (S/VC) and in noun phrase number concord (NPC) in spoken Portuguese in
Rio de Janeiro. By analyzing variation in individual speakers in real time
diachrony (1980-2000), the authors point out that in S/VC variation linguistic
and cognitive forces co-occur with social factors (e.g., education); on the
other hand, social factors intensify their importance in NPC variation (p.
160). Raymond Mougeon and Katherine Rehner (The Neglected Topic of Variation
in Teacher Classroom Speech: Investigating JE VAIS/JE VAS/M’AS in Ontario
French-Medium High School) focus on sociolinguistic analysis of teachers’
language variation in classrooms. The three variants under analysis (i.e., JE
VAIS, JE VAS, M’AS) are differently marked in Ontario and Quebec French, and
they reflect different social factors that may be used to predict variation.
For instance, the two scholars argue that M’AS is the preferred variant when
teachers want to express emotions, whereas JE VAIS is favored during teaching
and organizing the work of the classroom. Katherine A. Collins and Richard
Clément (Words We Use: Linguistic Bias and Prejudice) reflect on the ubiquity
of linguistic bias, and its function in belief maintenance, thus including
both prejudices and stereotypes. In particular, the authors point out how
group membership plays the major role in impression formation, regardless of
the level of linguistic abstraction (p. 189). Finally, Gerard Van Herk and
Becky Childs (Active Retirees: The Persistence of Obsolescent Features) focus
on language change, and on the preservation of outgoing variants. The authors
claim that this preservation is, in fact, dependent on the rarity of the old
variants itself, as has been observed in many studies on language variation
and change in different areas of the world (e.g., the maintenance of
non-standard present tense verb forms with –s in many English varieties, see
Poplack & Tagliamonte 1991).

The fourth section (Evaluating the Effects of Language Contact on the Ground)
opens to language acquisition and/or sociolinguistic variation in L2/LS
contexts. In this respect, Gillian Sankoff, Henrietta J. Cedergren, Pierette
Thibault, and Hélène Blondeau (Going through (L) in L2: Anglophone Montrealers
Revisited) analyze the (L)-deletion among both French determiners and clitics
in the speech of five young Anglophone Montrealers (i.e., English-French
bilinguals). In their conclusions, the authors stress the importance of
prosody as a crucial factor for explaining (L)-deletion in bilingual subjects.
On a similar topic, Carmen Silva-Corvalán (Variable Patterns in
Spanish-English Acquisition from Birth: Subject Pronouns beyond the Age of
Three) observes the acquisition of Spanish and English pronominal systems in
her two bilingual grandsons from 3;0 to 6;0 years old. The study points out
how even non-balanced bilinguals show the acquisition of subjects in both a
non-null subject (English) and a null-subject language (Spanish), and that
they gain perfect control of the semantic and discourse-pragmatic factors
related to personal pronoun use (p. 237). Pieter Muysken (Déjà Voodoo or New
Trials Ahead? Re-Evaluating the Mixing Typology Model) presents an interesting
theoretical (re-)consideration of language contact study and, in particular,
of his code-mixing typology (see also Muysken 2000), by remarking the main
distinction between alternation and insertion, and the presence of different
bounds in different bilinguals communities. Finally, Peter Auer and Christian
Schwarz (Dialect-to-Standard Advergence: The Relevance of Compound Borrowing)
highlight how borrowing and code-switching work in Alemannic-speaking
southwest Germany. The statistical analysis of complex and simplex words shows
that borrowed words from standard language to dialect are often complex words,
and especially compounds. Moreover, this kind of borrowing plays an important
role in the process of dialect-to-standard advergence.

The fifth and final part of the book (Fresh Perspectives on Classic Problems)
opens with the contribution of the “father” of sociolinguistics, William Labov
(The Beginnings of the Southern Shift). Labov analyzes the two-stage model of
dialect divergence as applied to the vowel shift in the south of England and
in the colonial dialects of English. The author tries to establish when this
shift started, and in the case of South America it is possible that the first
stage took place near 1865, when Confederate veterans emigrated to Brazil
after the Civil War. Sali A. Tagliamonte (A Comparative Sociolinguistic
Analysis of the Dative Alternation) observed language variation in vernacular
spoken data collected in the United Kingdom and Canada between 1997 and 2010.
Her study focuses on dative alternation, which is influenced by many
linguistic (e.g., animacy, definiteness, type of subject) and social factors
(e.g., sex and level of education). Ricardo Otheguy (Variationists
Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Theory in the Context of Pronominal
Perseveration) argues against the view of sociolinguistic competence in
generativist terms, thus following a famous brilliant polemic started by Guy
(2005). Finally, David Sankoff, Nathalie Dion, Alex Brandts, Mayer Alvo, Sonia
Balasch, and Jackie Adams (Comparing Variables in Different Corpora with
Context-Based Model-Free Variant Probabilities) address a still problematic
theoretical and methodological point in sociolinguistic research, i.e., the
design of acollection of corpora of spontaneous speech, and the selection of
tokens for analysis. The major problem to be considered is the differences in
corpora constructions, which led to differences in the influence exerted by
one social factor on a linguistic phenomenon from corpus to corpus (e.g., see
Travis 2007 on subject expression in New Mexican and Colombian Spanish). The
authors, thus, propose a new statistical method based only on the comparison
of corresponding contexts in the corpora to be compared.

The book is closed by the biographies of the contributors.

EVALUATION

The book is very rich in both contents and theoretical approaches, which are
presented and discussed by the authors of the single chapters. It is important
to highlight how the different methodologies and perspectives proposed
perfectly reflect the very complex topic of language variation and change.
Another important addition is the importance given to both theoretical
discussion and methodological considerations, two points variously addressed
in almost every chapter. It is noteworthy how many authors adhere to the
corpus linguistic theoretical perspective, and to quantitative methods.
Moreover, the editors have managed to include contributions from different
authors, both confirmed leaders of the field (e.g., Labov, Auer, Sankoff,
Bybee, Muysken, Tagliamonte), and young scholars: this testifies to the
interest in this field and the emergence of a new generation of researchers,
who add fresh perspectives on the path drawn by the experts. 

This considered, it is very difficult to find negative remarks on this
extremely precise work of editing and collection of contributions, which
admirably covers  the vast field of research on language variation and change.
However, it may be pointed out that the book lacks a final conclusion written
by the editors, with a summary of the main topics addressed by the
contributors, and a perspective on the future of variationist research.

Nevertheless, this book remains an excellent compendium of the different
theories, methodologies, and data which are covered by the broad label of
variationist research. In this sense, the book represents a useful manual for
young scholars who want  to open their perspectives on language variation and
change. For this reason, it is the perfect way to pay homage to Shana
Poplack’s work in this discipline. 

REFERENCES

Diesel, Holger. 2004. The acquisition of complex sentences. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Guy, Gregory R. 2005. Grammar and usage: a variationist response. Language 81.
561-563.

Kendall, T.S. 2013. Speech rate, pause, and sociolinguistic variation: studies
in corpus sociophonetics. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Muysken, Pieter. 2000. Bilingual speech: a typology of code-mixing. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte. 1991. There’s no tense like the present:
Verbal –s inflection in early Black English. In G. Bailey, N. Maynor & P.
Cukor-Avila (eds). The emergence of Black English: Text and commentary.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 275-324.

Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte. 1999. The grammaticalization of ‘going to’
in (African American) English. Language Variation and Change 11. 315-342.

Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In: L. Haegeman
(ed.). Elements of grammar: Handbook of generative syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
281-337.

Travis, Catherine E. 2007. Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish:
Priming in narrative and conversation. Language, Variation and Change 19.
101-135.

Walker, James A. 2007. “There’s bears back there”: Plural existentials and
vernacular universals in (Quebec) English. English World-Wide 28(2). 147-166.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Chiara Meluzzi has completed her PhD in Linguistics at University of Pavia and
Free University of Bozen in January 2014. Her dissertation presented a
sociophonetic analysis of dental affricates /ts dz/ realized by Italian
speakers in Bozen (South Tyrol, Italy); her data were collected in the CITABOL
corpus. She is now working on a research project at the Free University of
Bozen aiming to create a corpus of historical sociolinguistics and
multilingualism as emerging from Bozen archives. Her main research interests
include language variation and change (and, in particular, sociophonetics),
applied linguistics, and pragmatics.

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