Prosody and Sociolinguistic Variation in American Englishes

Though scholarly understandings of sociolinguistic variation have undergone a significant expansion in the last 70 years, variables in the realm of prosody remain severely underdescribed. It is necessary to examine variation at these levels both because of its perceptual salience and utility for speakers and listeners and because of what it can illuminate about cross-variety sociolinguistic differences. This article reviews some of the key methodologies that have been used to study prosody in phonological research and discusses the limited body of sociophonetic literature that has examined such variables. It concludes with a discussion of the future of sociophonetic studies in the twenty-first century and the importance of examining prosodic variables for a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of variation itself. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Varieties of involution monoids with extreme properties

A variety that contains continuum many subvarieties is said to be huge. A sufficient condition is established under which an involution monoid generates a variety that is huge by virtue of its lattice of subvarieties order-embedding the power set lattice of the positive integers. Based on this result, several examples of finite involution monoids with extreme varietal properties are exhibited. These examples—all first of their kinds—include the following: finite involution monoids that generate huge varieties but whose reduct monoids generate Cross varieties; two finite involution monoids sharing a common reduct monoid such that one generates a huge, non-finitely based variety while the other generates a Cross variety; and two finite involution monoids that generate Cross varieties, the join of which is huge.

Revisiting the ENL-ESL-EFL continuum: A multifactorial approach to grammatical aspect in spoken Englishes

This study focuses on the progressive vs. non-progressive alternation to revisit the debate on the ENL-ESL-EFL continuum (i.e. whether native (ENL) and nonnative (ESL/EFL) Englishes are dichotomous types of English or form a gradient continuum). While progressive marking is traditionally studied independently of its unmarked counterpart, we examine (i) how the grammatical contexts of both constructions systematically affect speakers’ constructional choices in ENL (American, British), ESL (Indian, Nigerian and Singaporean) and EFL (Finnish, French and Polish learner Englishes) and (ii) what light speakers’ varying constructional choices bring to the continuum debate. Methodologically, we use a clustering technique to group together individual varieties of English (i.e. to identify similarities and differences between those varieties) based on linguistic contextual features such as AKTIONSART, ANIMACY, SEMANTIC DOMAIN (of aspect-bearing lexical verb), TENSE, MODALITY and VOICE to assess the validity of the ENL-ESL-EFL classification for our data. Then, we conduct a logistic regression analysis (based on lemmas observed in both progressive and non-progressive constructions) to explore how grammatical contexts influence speakers’ constructional choices differently across English types. While, overall, our cluster analysis supports the ENL-ESL-EFL classification as a useful theoretical framework to explore cross-variety variation, the regression shows that, when we start digging into the specific linguistic contexts of (non-)progressive constructions, this classification does not systematically transpire in the data in a uniform manner. Ultimately, by including more than one statistical technique into their exploration of the continuum, scholars could avoid potential methodological biases.

The case for alveolar fricative rhotics with evidence from Nusu

Cross-linguistically, fricatives are the rarest types of rhotics, found in a few African and European languages (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996) and as allophones in some Romance languages (Jesus & Shadle 2005; Recasens 2002; Bradley 2006; Colantoni 2006). Acoustic data from Nusu, phonotactic reasoning, and a cognate comparison demonstrate the presence of alveolar fricative rhotics in Tibeto-Burman. The Nusu rhotic appears in syllable-initial position as the first or second consonant and can be realized as alveolar approximants [ɹ] or [ɹʲ], non-sibilant voiced and voiceless fricatives [ɹ̝, ɹ̥], as well as voiced sibilant [ʐ]. In other studies on Nusu, these fricative rhotics have sometimes been reported as retroflex voiced sibilants (Sun & Lu 1986; Fu 1991), but intra-speaker and cross-variety comparison point to classification as rhotics. Evidence from other Tibeto-Burman languages suggests that alveolar fricative rhotics are not limited to Nusu. Together these data challenge the tradition of generally interpreting alveolar fricatives as sibilants.

Counting and coding the past: Circumscribing the variable context in quantitative analyses of past inflection

Accurate circumscription of the variable context is crucial to any quantitative analysis of linguistic variation. Investigations of past inflection in African American Vernacular English and Caribbean English creoles thus generally include a more or less detailed section concerning the inclusion or exclusion of particular forms; the theoretical grounds on which these decisions are made, however, are not always spelled out. Consequently, there still does not seem to be agreement on what precisely constitutes the envelope of variation in such investigations—a fact that not only complicates data extraction and analysis but also hampers cross-variety comparisons. This article summarizes and evaluates previous definitions of the scope and relevant contexts of the variable (ed), providing internal (linguistic) argumentation supporting or contraindicating the inclusion or exclusion of particular tokens. My data stem from a larger study of past temporal reference in the urban variety of Bahamian Creole English (Hackert, Stephanie. [2004].Urban Bahamian Creole: System and variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins), an intermediate creole with close historical links with Gullah as well as relations with African American Vernacular English, Trinidadian Creole, and Barbadian.

“There’s bears back there”

This paper uses a multivariate analysis of variable agreement in existentials with plural reference in a corpus of Quebec English to determine the status of variable agreement as a vernacular universal. Excluding the frequent invariant form there’s from analysis, both structural and processing considerations are shown to operate. A separate multivariate analysis provides support for the hypothesis that there’s is a lexicalized form with its own set of constraints. Cross-variety comparison reveals little evidence of regional diversification and suggests instead that differences observed between studies reflect the distribution of data in each corpus. Similarities of language-internal constraints across studies provide support for variable agreement as a vernacular universal.