Taming the Vernacular: Some Repercussions for the Study of Syntatic Variation and Spoken Grammar
Year: 1999
Type: article
Abstract: Tlze pczper-di.scussesti1.o ar-ea.sqfresearclz thar arLJ usually Ir-eated separately: the ana-sis c?f s~ntrrctic inriariorz, arzd tlie anahsis of tlze grarrittiar of spoken English.Var-iationist ana&si.\Iza.s,focu.sedrt1or.rorz pllorieric~ crrzd plronologicv~l irwiarion rhan on .u\'ntcicticirariation, pcrrrly becausr pl?onological inriahles tend to occur more frequetir& tlzarz syntactic variables.Tlris itz turñ, rogetlzer lcitlr flie ,ftrcr rlirlt i,ariable synractic ,forms usual-have specijic pragrn~rric.,functions itz coni~erstrriori, rnmns thar .syrztcrctici3ariables do nor ~dsirall~ distirzguish social groups in tlze same I t q .rlzar pl~or~ological i3ariable.sdo.Neverrheless, anal\sitig tlze social distribution (?fa i~crriable .synracrict~orl.structioncan tlzrolil liglzr on rhe tiat~oe uf its pragrimtic ,jii~~criotz.arzd sornerir~zes llelps rrs ro discover rnore about tlze social aspects oj'language use.T1li.s i., ill~r.,rr~lredIzere ititlz rhe e.\-ample qf subject-ilerb concor~l in ropicintroducing .S ~~M C I I I I .~S itl spoketr Etzglislz, crnd iiitlz a briej'di.scussior1 of lonr wh-claus~s in spoken Et~glislz.Tlle pope, also argues, Izou'ei,er, that borll [email protected] the atialysis qf spokerz grlumtzar 1zai.e bern c!ffecred by our suscepribilih to,fotu.\on,jeatures tlzat lzave betome salient ro us as a result of tlze processes of statzdc~rdisariorl of a language.so that features that are urzuflecr~d by r/ze.seprocesses are qfren oi1erlook~~c1.Tlzis is illustrated by considering rhe tinrlrre of the inriablrs that are c'orzventiorzallj' trnal\s~d in social dialectology, such as rhe curretzr arzalysis of dialecr lei~elling itz tlzree Etiglislz roiiltzs.(Keywords: syntactic variation:
Source: Hispana
Author: Jenny Cheshire
Institution: Queen Mary University of London
Language: Spanish
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1551974969