Linguistic research on adverbs has taken many forms: typological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. However, little work has been conducted on adverbs using the tools of quantitative sociolinguistics, and most of that work has focused solely on morphological variation of the -ly suffix. This work addresses the lacuna by examining two adverb phenomena using quantitative variationist methodology. Data come from two large, socially stratified, sociolinguistic corpora of vernacular English. The two corpora contain data collected in Ontario, Canada and in Northern England, and are comprised of the speech of over 150 speakers across all age groups. In the first case study, I examine a claim in usage guides (e.g., Swan 2001) that North American English widely permits pre-auxiliary adverbs in canonical, declarative sentences, while British English prohibits them unless accompanied by contrastive stress. As I show, the varietal differences in speech are not only minimal and unrelated to stress, but instead are highly circumscribed. In addition, I demonstrate that the positioning of adverbs observed here must involve post-syntactic processes. The second case study examines variability in the discourse adverb "actually" and several related adverbials (e.g., "really" and "in fact") and examines the path of grammaticalization (Traugott & Dasher 2002) in the two communities. I demonstrate that Canadians, regardless of sex or education level, prefer the more grammaticalized forms of "actually"; in the UK, the more grammaticalized use is less common, though some young men are leading a shift to the more grammaticalized pattern.

Linguistic research on adverbs has taken many forms: typological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. However, little work has been conducted on adverbs using the tools of quantitative sociolinguistics, and most of that work has focused solely on morphological variation of the -ly suffix. This work addresses the lacuna by examining two adverb phenomena using quantitative variationist methodology. Data come from two large, socially stratified, sociolinguistic corpora of vernacular English. The two corpora contain data collected in Ontario, Canada and in Northern England, and are comprised of the speech of over 150 speakers across all age groups. In the first case study, I examine a claim in usage guides (e.g., Swan 2001) that North American English widely permits pre-auxiliary adverbs in canonical, declarative sentences, while British English prohibits them unless accompanied by contrastive stress. As I show, the varietal differences in speech are not only minimal and unrelated to stress, but instead are highly circumscribed. In addition, I demonstrate that the positioning of adverbs observed here must involve post-syntactic processes. The second case study examines variability in the discourse adverb "actually" and several related adverbials (e.g., "really" and "in fact") and examines the path of grammaticalization (Traugott & Dasher 2002) in the two communities. I demonstrate that Canadians, regardless of sex or education level, prefer the more grammaticalized forms of "actually"; in the UK, the more grammaticalized use is less common, though some young men are leading a shift to the more grammaticalized pattern.

This study investigates some aspects of grammatical variation in vernacular Jordanian Arabic (JA), namely word order variation and pro(noun)-drop variation. Much previous research on word order and subject expression in Arabic has been hampered by the use of eclectic methodologies (Bakir 1980; Eid 1983; El-Yasin 1985; Fassi Fehri 1993; Aoun & Li 1993; Brustad 2000). Conspicuously rare in contemporary studies of syntactic variation in Arabic are systematic analyses of spontaneous speech data (Edwards 2010: 94; but see e.g., Owens, Dodsworth & Rockwood 2009; Owens, Dodsworth & Kohn 2013). The dearth of quantitative studies of word order variation, as well as pro-drop variation, in colloquial Arabic provides the primary motivation for the present investigation. Drawing on the framework of variationist sociolinguistics (Labov 1972), I conduct an accountable analysis of word order variation, as well as pro-drop variation in a corpus of vernacular Jordanian Arabic recorded in the Irbid metropolitan area in 2014. The corpus is based on over 30 hours of digitized recordings obtained from 30 speakers stratified by age, sex, education, as well as urban/rural origin. I exploit these spontaneous speech data to: (i) assess the frequency of different word order and pro-drop variants in vernacular JA; (ii) ascertain which social and linguistic factors constrain the selection of major word order and pro-drop variants; and (iii) determine whether the apparent time component incorporated into the research design reveals any evidence of change in progress. Distributional and multivariate analyses of 4500 tokens (2049 for word order and 2422 for pro-drop) coded for the aforementioned social factors, in addition to an array of linguistic factors hypothesized to constrain variant choice (e.g., morphloexical class of subject, grammatical person and number, type of clause and transitivity) confirm that word order variation, as well as pro-drop variation, are subject to multiple constraints (Holes 1995; Owens et al. 2013). A first important finding concerns the quantitative preponderance of SV(O) word order in vernacular JA, which competes with less frequent VS(O). Another important finding is that null subject pronouns are the norm in vernacular JA. Statistical analyses of the linguistic factors conditioning the observed variability reveal that transitivity and definite subject pronouns are key predictors of SV(O) word order choice, while switch reference and person and number of subject are key predictors of overt subject pronouns, as determined by the relative magnitude of these effects. Particularly compelling is the social embedding of the variation in the case of word order variation. Age- and sex-differentiations in the data (Labov 1990), in addition to urban-rural split, reveal statistically significant differences, offering provisional indications that alternation between SV(O) and VS(O) word orders is implicated in ongoing change. Younger speakers, women and urban-origin speakers lead in the use of SV(O). The results foreground the utility of empirically accountable analyses of spontaneous speech in elucidating key issues relating to syntactic variation in modern varieties of spoken Arabic. The results generated by this approach reveal new findings not previously available from the intuited, elicited or written material on which much previous work on Arabic has been based.

This project explores the social meaning potential of creaky voice using a third wave variationist approach in order to uncover what motivates speakers to deploy this vocal quality. Intraspeaker variation in the use of creak is quantitatively and qualitatively examined in case studies of one male and one female individual who come from a similar social group. In recordings from a range of casual settings, both the male and female speaker are found to use creak at similar rates, for similar purposes. However, creak is found to vary across social settings: the greater the speakers’ self-reported intimacy with their interlocutors, the lower the frequency of creak. This suggests that creaky voice is used for interactional functions, and is conditioned by conversational context. Qualitative discourse analysis of instances of creak further reveals that it has a high frequency of cooccurrence with linguistic features used for epistemic stancetaking. I suggest that creak is an interactional resource available for taking an authoritative position in interaction, especially in situations where speakers feel less intimately connected to their interlocutors. / Graduate / 2017-08-02 / 0290 / 0291 / nchildebrand@gmail.com

This dissertation is an investigation of the use, change, and status of the distinctive local dialect in rural Valdres, Norway. The Norwegian sociolinguistic situation has long been recognized as complicated by a protracted history of language planning and standardization, in which two competing written norms of Norwegian, called Bokmål and Nynorsk, are symbolically and ideologically associated with urban and rural identities, respectively. In addition, while Norwegians can choose from two written norms, no recognized standard exists for spoken Norwegian, and citizens are officially encouraged to use their native, local dialects. The present study approaches this situation through a case study of language use in Valdres today.In the summer of 2005, the distinctive dialect of the rural Valdres valley was voted "Norway's most popular dialect" on one of the country's most listened-to national radio programs, an event that both reflects and has contributed to a recent revaluation of the local dialect. Yet the results of previous dialectological research in Valdres have clearly pointed to long-term convergence toward what locals call "city language" -- the speech of nearby urban Oslo. While evidence of this decades-long trend is not contradicted by the findings of this dissertation research, the present study suggests that there may be more than one direction of dialect change in Valdres today. Despite ongoing changes in dialect morpho-lexis and phonology in the direction of urban regional speech, there is also a large number of relatively resistant dialect features in contemporary Valdresmål, and, even more importantly, evidence of a re-expansion of the dialect among younger speakers, which appears to align with forms found in written Nynorsk, the alternative "rural" norm. The simultaneous sociolinguistic trends of dialect convergence, non-convergence, and divergence in the contemporary Valdres dialect vis-a-vis urban regional norms thus provide an interesting and complicated case of language variation and change.This dissertation combines methods from linguistic and cultural anthropology, ethnographic sociolinguistics, and acoustic phonetics to provide an illuminating analysis of the local relationships between standard and non-standard varieties, between written and spoken forms, and between contemporary language use and historically-rooted language ideologies.

À is the prototypical preposition used before city names in French, yet there are reports that, since the mid-20th century, sur also appears in this context in vernacular varieties of European French. To date, research on the choice between à and sur has focused on semantic and pragmatic differences between the two, and has relied on made-up examples, small participant usage surveys, or empirical datasets that were not systematically analyzed. Moreover, the influence of social factors has received only scant attention. This thesis addresses these shortcomings by providing a quantitative, variationist and longitudinal account of à/sur alternations. It asks the following question: Which factors (linguistic and social) can account for prepositional variation before city names in Hexagonal French? The data was drawn from two publicly available corpora of spoken Hexagonal French, representing three locales: the Parisian city-centre, a group of suburban cities surrounding Paris, and the midsize provincial city of Orléans. The speakers (N = 151) were born between 1878 and 1994, providing a mixture of real- and apparent-time perspectives on variation. Following variationist methods, the analysis considers all contexts where à/sur variation is possible (N = 2542) and seeks to elucidate the variable grammar. Results indicate important differences between the three areas under study, both in terms of social patterns and in terms of linguistic constraints. In Paris, the use of sur is restricted to a few speakers and a few linguistic contexts, and is overall very infrequent. In the suburbs and Orléans, sur is more widely attested across speakers and contexts, but it remains a minority variant which seems to be on the decline, especially in the suburbs. Further, in Orléans, the variable grammar is less linguistically constrained, suggesting a trajectory of geographic diffusion. Overall, the quantitative findings support some of the semantic and pragmatic hypotheses proposed in earlier work while shedding light on how geographic, social and linguistic factors combine to explain a phenomenon of variation that has never been studied using variationist methods before. / Graduate / 2022-07-19

The subject of this thesis is the French language in the Franco-Belgian borderland. More specifically, it investigates language, linguistic perceptions and language attitudes in the French-speaking part of Belgium which borders France. The study takes a variationist approach and is grounded in sociolinguistic theory, but it also draws on theories and methodologies from elsewhere in the social sciences. Two questions are at the heart of this study: how do people speak French in the Belgian borderland and why do they speak that way? To answer the research questions, speech and questionnaire data were gathered from 39 informants living in the borderland city of Tournai and its surrounding area. With this data, a variety of analyses were performed. Sociophonetic investigations were carried out on two phonological variables, namely the vocalic oppositions /e/-/ɛ/ and /o/-/ɔ/, draw-a-map task perceptual data were analysed through a ‘visual methods’ lens, and attitudinal data were also examined. Social variation in linguistic behaviour, perceptions and language attitudes was also analysed. The notions of ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘spatiality’ were accorded considerable importance: the interactions between language and ‘space’ as the factors of ‘mobility’, ‘media consumption’, ‘sense of place’ and ‘regional belonging’ were also examined. The findings include that French in the Belgian borderland is more similar to that in France than to elsewhere in Francophone Belgium and that this is due to a number of factors. Moreover, the French in the borderland appears to be converging on that in France, although some differences persist. It was also found that spatial factors interact with both linguistic and social ones. Finally, it was concluded that whilst there is no longer a physical barrier at the national border, it persists to an extent as a psychological one, and this has ramifications for borderlanders’ behaviour: be it linguistic or otherwise.

This thesis is an articulatory investigation into phonological variation and change in English /l/-darkening. Although syllable-based accounts of /l/-darkening state that light [l] occurs in onsets (e.g. `leap') and a dark variant in codas (e.g. `peel'), numerous works linking phonology with other subfields of linguistics have shown that this simplified distinction cannot fully account for the variation found. Firstly, /l/-darkening is sensitive to morphosyntactic structure, as shown through overapplication of the process in certain morphosyntactically defined positions: e.g. word-finally in phrases such as `heal it', or stem-finally before a suffix in words such as `healing'. In addition, analyses of /l/-darkening from several phonetic studies have led to some arguing against an allophonic distinction altogether, stating that the difference between light and dark variants is merely two extremes of one continuum. Not only does this interpretation challenge the traditional categorisation of /l/-darkening but, given the clear sensitivity to morphosyntactic boundaries that /l/-darkening displays, it also raises questions for a modular architecture of the grammar if phonetics can be morphologically conditioned. This dissertation is an empirical analysis of /l/-darkening, presenting data from nine varieties of English. Given the difficulty in measuring liquid consonants reliably, ultrasound tongue imaging is used to provide a thorough account of the prime articulatory correlations of darkening processes. The present study provides hitherto absent instrumental evidence confirming the varying degrees of morphosyntactic sensitivity across different dialects. I demonstrate that, rather than being contradictory or chaotic, variation to morphosyntactic boundaries cross-dialectally makes complete sense under an analysis that pays due consideration to the diachronic evolution of phonological processes. Moreover, my data show that the majority of speakers display both categorical allophony of light and dark variants, and gradient phonetic effects coexisting in the same grammar. Therefore, an adequate account of English /l/-darkening presupposes both a theory of the morphosyntax-phonology interface, and the phonetics-phonology interface. I interpret these results by assuming the modular architecture of the life cycle of phonological processes, whereby a phonological rule starts its life as a phonetically driven gradient process, over time stabilising into a phonological process at the phrase level, and advancing through the grammar. Not only does the life cycle make predictions about application at different levels of the grammar, it also predicts that stabilised phonological rules do not replace the phonetic processes from which they emerged, but typically coexist with them. Moreover, the obvious intimate link between /l/-darkening and /l/-vocalisation can be explained in terms of the life cycle, in the way of lenition trajectories. The results here show that, as predicted, the more recent stage of the lenition trajectory is harsher in terms of its phonetic effect, as well as less advanced in the grammar, applying at a lower level than darkening when the two co-occur in the same variety. I conclude by arguing that the proposed analysis demonstrates that a full understanding of /l/-darkening in English requires an approach that considers variation under phonetic, phonological and morphosyntactic terms. The wide range of dialectal diversity, for which this thesis provides only a small subset, shows a great deal of orderliness when paying due consideration to the diachronic evolution of variable phonological processes.

Submitted by Sílvia Maria Brandão null (brandao_sii@hotmail.com) on 2018-03-22T17:15:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO_VF_BRANDÃO.pdf: 2475134 bytes, checksum: b516ed430064cf3fc47348a33bd41e3c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Maria Rodrigues null (milena@fclar.unesp.br) on 2018-03-22T18:20:47Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 brandao_sm_me_arafcl.pdf: 2475134 bytes, checksum: b516ed430064cf3fc47348a33bd41e3c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-22T18:20:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 brandao_sm_me_arafcl.pdf: 2475134 bytes, checksum: b516ed430064cf3fc47348a33bd41e3c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-01-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Esta pesquisa apresenta, com base nos pressupostos teórico-metodológicos da Sociolinguística variacionista (WEINREICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 2006 [1968]; LABOV, 2008 [1972], 1994, 2001, 2010), um estudo descritivo-interpretativo acerca das diferentes formas verbais que se realizam em construções condicionais encabeçadas pela conjunção se, em dados de fala produzidos por falantes do interior paulista e presentes no projeto ALIP - “Amostra Linguística do Interior Paulista” (GONÇALVES, s.d.). Parte-se do pressuposto de que, dentro de um conjunto de condicionais em que formas verbais se alternam, há formas em variação que podem ser delimitadas por meio de paráfrases, a fim de se testar se o pressuposto se mantém o mesmo (STALNAKER, 1978; 2002). Este trabalho propicia a identificação de formas verbais que estão em um mesmo domínio funcional, o que constiui variação. Trabalhando com o conceito de empregabilidade (HYMES, 1972), a análise variacionista é feita com três combinações modo-temporais, quais sejam as mais empregadas nas orações potenciais (GIVÓN, 1982): (i) futuro do subjuntivo + presente do indicativo (Se José tiver dinheiro, compra uma ilha); (ii) futuro do subjuntivo + futuro do indicativo perifrástico (Se José tiver dinheiro, vai comprar uma ilha) e (iii) presente do indicativo + presente do indicativo (Se José tem dinheiro, compra uma ilha). Para as análises estatísticas, utilizou-se a plataforma R (CORE TEAM, 2017). A literatura apresenta, geralmente, formas de subjuntivo associadas ao valor de dúvida, menor asserção e menos realidade do enunciado, enquanto as de indicativo estariam mais próximas da realidade e imprimiriam maior asserção por parte do falante, mais realidade, mais certeza. Os resultados a que se chegou, entretanto, mostram uma explicação distinta dessa. Analisando modalidade da condicional, temporalidade, definitude do sujeito, tipo textual, sexo/gênero do informante, idade e escolaridade, viu-se, principalmente, uma forte correlação, por um lado, entre presente do indicativo e atemporalidade e sujeito genérico, bem como, por outro, temporalidade e sujeito definido associados a combinações com futuro, sobretudo o futuro do subjuntivo. A idade dos falantes também se mostrou fator atuante sobre as combinações, na medida em que aponta para uma possível mudança em curso. / This research presents, based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions of the variationalist sociolinguistics (WEINREICH, LABOV, HERZOG, 2006 [1968], LABOV, 2008 [1972], 1994, 2001, 2010), a descriptive-interpretative study on the different verbal forms which are carried out in conditional constructions headed by the conjunction, in speech data produced by speakers from the interior of São Paulo and present in the ALIP project - "Linguistic Sample of the Paulista Interior" (GONÇALVES, sd). It is assumed that within a set of conditionals in which verbal forms alternate, there are varying forms that can be delimited by paraphrases in order to test whether the assumption remains the same (STALNAKER, 1978; 2002). The analysis shows which verbal forms are in the same functional domain, constituting variation. Working with the concept of being used (HYMES, 1972), the variationist analysis is done with three modetime combinations, which are the most used in potential sentences (GIVON, 1982): (i) present + present (if José has money, he buys an island); (ii) present + future (If Jose has money, he will buy an island) and (iii) present + present (If José has money, he buys an island). For the statistical analysis, we used the R platform (CORE TEAM, 2017). Literature usually presents forms of subjunctive associated with the value of doubt, less assertion and less reality of the utterance, while the ones of indicative would be closer to reality and would impart more assertion on the part of the speaker, more reality, more certainty. The results, however, show a distinct explanation for this. Analyzing conditional modality, temporality, definiteness of suject, textual type, sex / gender of the informant, age and education, we observed a strong correlation, on the one hand, between the present tense and timelessness and generic subject and, on the other, temporality and definiteness suject associated with combinations with future, especially the future of the subjunctive. The age of the speakers was also an active factor on the combinations, in that it points to a possible change in course.

Submitted by Ricardo Cedraz Duque Moliterno (ricardo.moliterno@uefs.br) on 2016-04-12T23:52:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 EXPRESS?O DO FUTURO VERBAL NA ESCRITA ESCOLAR DE IRAR? - BA.pdf: 862877 bytes, checksum: 69a7a8273f3d6a0cbc5ba146504ce42d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-12T23:52:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 EXPRESS?O DO FUTURO VERBAL NA ESCRITA ESCOLAR DE IRAR? - BA.pdf: 862877 bytes, checksum: 69a7a8273f3d6a0cbc5ba146504ce42d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-16 / Funda??o de Amparo ? Pesquisa do Estado da Bahia - FAPEB / The verbal future tense in Portuguese is a variable phenomenon currently expressed by the verb forms: the simple future tense, the periphrasis with go + infinitive, the indicative present tense, and the gerundive future form. Among them, the simple future tense is the standard way, and the periphrastic future form is considered by grammarians like a colloquial form of the language. Several studies (GIBBON, 2000; OLIVEIRA, 2006; BRAGAN?A, 2008; SILVA, 2010; TESCH 2011; SANTOS, 2012) have attested to this variable phenomenon throughout history of the Portuguese language and point to the implementation of the periphrastic way of to go + infinitive as a possible replacement of the simple future tense. According to these studies, this change is almost complete in speech and is already invading writing. With this information about the uses of the verbal future tense in Portuguese, in this study, we analyzed data of high school students from public and private schools in the city of Irar?-Ba, within a variational and functionalist perspective, with a synchronic study, in order to observe the presence of the periphrastic future form in school texts, considering the process of grammaticalization. The results of the verbal future tense in school writing of the first, second and third classes of high school, with the control of various groups of linguistic and sociolinguistic, factors, showed that the variant that more customarily occurs in spoken language (the periphrastic future form) is also present in written language. The results show that the phenomenon under study is motivated by factors such as type of school, verbal paradigm, residential area, syntactic status of verb, verb conjugation, thematic role of the subject, semantic nature of the verb, type of subject and type of verb. It was evident through the review that there is an ongoing change process towards the simple future form, more used in texts written by speakers said "cults", be replaced by the periphrastic future form, commonly founded in speech, suffering less normative pressures. / O futuro verbal na l?ngua portuguesa ? um fen?meno vari?vel que, atualmente, ? expresso pelas formas verbais: futuro simples, per?frase com ir + infinitivo, presente do indicativo e futuro gerundivo. Dentre elas, o futuro simples ? a forma padr?o, enquanto o futuro perifr?stico ? considerado pelos gram?ticos uma forma coloquial da l?ngua. V?rios estudos (GIBBON, 2000; OLIVEIRA, 2006; BRAGAN?A, 2008; SILVA, 2010; TESCH 2011; SANTOS, 2012) t?m atestado esse fen?meno vari?vel ao longo da hist?ria da l?ngua portuguesa e apontam para a implementa??o da forma perifr?stica com ir + infinitivo como poss?vel substituta da forma de futuro simples. Segundo tais estudos, esta mudan?a est? quase conclu?da na fala e j? est? invadindo a escrita. De posse dessas informa??es acerca dos usos do futuro verbal na l?ngua portuguesa, neste estudo, faz-se uma an?lise de reda??es de alunos de Ensino M?dio de escolas p?blicas e particulares na cidade de Irar?-Ba, dentro de uma perspectiva variacionista e funcionalista, a partir de um estudo sincr?nico, com o intuito de observar a presen?a do futuro perifr?stico em reda??es escolares, considerando o seu processo da gramaticaliza??o. Os resultados encontrados sobre o futuro verbal nas reda??es escolares das turmas de primeiro, segundo e terceiro anos do Ensino M?dio, a partir do controle de v?rios grupos de fatores lingu?sticos e sociolingu?sticos, demonstraram que a variante que ocorre mais costumeiramente na l?ngua falada (futuro perifr?stico) tamb?m se faz presente na l?ngua escrita. Os resultados revelam que o fen?meno em estudo ? motivado por fatores como tipo de escola, paradigma verbal, zona residencial, estatuto sint?tico do verbo, conjuga??o verbal, papel tem?tico do sujeito, natureza sem?ntica do verbo, tipo de sujeito e tipo de verbo. Ficou evidente, atrav?s da an?lise realizada, que h? um processo de mudan?a em curso no sentido de a forma de futuro simples, mais usada em textos escritos por falantes ditos ?cultos?, ser substitu?da pela forma perifr?stica, comumente encontrada na fala, que sofre menos press?es normativas.