Variable properties in language : their nature and acquisition /
David W. Lightfoot and Jonathan Havenhill, editors.
- Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, (c)2019.
- 1 online resource (viii, 216 pages).
- Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics series .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Re-thinking variable properties in language : introduction / Contrastive feature hierarchies in phonology : variation and universality / Scope variation in contrastive hierarchies of morphosyntactic features / Allophonic systems as a variable within individual speakers / A label theoretic explanation of the resultative parameter / Adverbial?-s: so awks but so natural! / The acquisition of English article alternations : variation, competition, and the default / Verb second word order in Norwegian heritage language : syntax and pragmatics / Acquisition of morphosyntax : a pattern learning approach / How to be faithful to the input in a situation of language contact / Variation and mental representation / Variation and competing i-languages in Creole genesis : a synchronic and diachronic view / Transmission revisited / The value of small communities in a big data world : investigating Smith Island English in real and apparent time / All zeros are not equal in African American English / David W. Lightfoot and Jonathan Havenhill -- B. Elan Dresher -- Elizabeth Cowper and Daniel Currie Hall -- Betsy Sneller -- Daniel Milway -- Norbert Corver -- Marjorie Pak -- Marit Westergaard and Terje Lohndal -- Heidi Getz -- Alicia Avellana, Luca Brandani, Hannah Forsythe, and Cristina Schmitt -- Gregory Guy -- Marlyse Baptista -- Gillian Sankoff -- Natalie Schilling -- Lisa Green.
This edited volume, based on papers presented at the 2017 Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics (GURT), approaches the study of language variation from a variety of angles. Language variation research asks broad questions such as, "why are languages' grammatical structures different from one another?" as well as more specific word-level questions such as, "why are words that are pronounced differently still recognized to be the same words?" Too often, research on variation has been siloed based on the particular question- sociolinguists do not talk to historical linguists, who do not talk to phoneticians, and so on. This book seeks to bring discussions from different subfields of linguistics together to explore language variation in a broader sense and acknowledge the complexity and interwoven nature of variation itself.