Cognitive, Social, and Individual Constraints on Linguistic Variation

Cognitive, Social, and Individual Constraints on Linguistic Variation PDF Author: Jeroen Claes
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110524155
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The present volume tries to answer the question: What constrains morphosyntactic variation? By analyzing the variable agreement of presentational haber (‘there to be’) in Caribbean Spanish with advanced statistical tools and theoretical constructs of Cognitive Sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and variationist sociolinguistics, it proposes an innovative theoretical model of the constraints that govern morphosyntactic variation.

Cognitive, Social, and Individual Constraints on Linguistic Variation

Cognitive, Social, and Individual Constraints on Linguistic Variation PDF Author: Jeroen Claes
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110524155
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The present volume tries to answer the question: What constrains morphosyntactic variation? By analyzing the variable agreement of presentational haber (‘there to be’) in Caribbean Spanish with advanced statistical tools and theoretical constructs of Cognitive Sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and variationist sociolinguistics, it proposes an innovative theoretical model of the constraints that govern morphosyntactic variation.

Current Research in Puerto Rican Linguistics

Current Research in Puerto Rican Linguistics PDF Author: Melvin Gonzalez-Rivera
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351869051
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Current Research in Puerto Rican Linguistics is an edited collection of original contributions which explores the idiosyncratic grammatical properties of Puerto Rican Spanish. The book focuses on the structural aspects of linguistics, analysed with a variety of frameworks and methodological approaches, in order to presents the latest advances in the field of Puerto Rican and Caribbean linguistics. Current Research in Puerto Rican Linguistics brings together articles from researchers proposing new, challenging, and ground-breaking analyses on the nature of Spanish in Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican Spanish in the United States.

Constructing Us

Constructing Us PDF Author: Miguel A. Aijón Oliva
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110643448
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Developments in the analysis of linguistic variation show the need for a theoretical model whereby variants are viewed as cognitively-based communicative choices. In this book, the analysis of the first and second grammatical persons in Spanish media discourse illustrates an approach to linguistic structure and usage as motivated by the need to create meaning at all semiotic levels. Rather than mere sets of deictic forms, persons constitute arrays of functional strategies used by speakers to develop certain representations of themselves and others. The degree of salience attributed to some participant through grammatical configuration – including features like person, way of formulation and syntactic function – strongly conditions the discursive role of that participant, as well as the communicative situation at large. Methodologically, the demonstration conjugates the analysis of quantitative usage patterns with that of specific instances of choice, in order to elucidate the stylistic potential of syntactic forms in media contexts. Understanding variation as the construction of meaning is essential to the scientific advancement of linguistics as an inherently social and cognitive discipline.

The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish

The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish PDF Author: Manuel Díaz-Campos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042957584X
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish provides an up-to-date overview of the latest research examining sociolinguistic approaches to analyzing variation in Spanish. Divided into three sections, the book includes the most current research conducted in Spanish variationist sociolinguistics. This comprehensive volume covers phonological, morphosyntactic, social, and lexical variation in Spanish. Each section is further divided into subsections focusing on specific areas of language variation, highlighting the most salient and current developments in each subfield of Hispanic sociolinguistics. As such, this Handbook delves further into the details of topics relating to variation and change in Spanish than previous publications, with a focus on the symbolic sociolinguistic value of specific phenomena in the field. Encouraging readers to think critically about language variation, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers seeking to explore lesser-known areas of Hispanic sociolinguistics. The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish will be a welcome addition to specialists and students in the fields of linguistics, Hispanic linguistics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology.

Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings

Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings PDF Author: Bertus van Rooy
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027246963
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings explores an innovative proposal: that linguistic similarities identified in different forms of contact-influenced varieties of language use (including translation, native and non-native varieties of English, and language use of bilinguals more generally) can be accounted for in a coherent framework grounded in the notion of ‘constrained communication’. These varieties have hitherto been studied in independent scholarly traditions, especially translation studies and world Englishes, leaving the potential underlying unity underexplored, both conceptually and empirically. The chapters collected in this volume aim to develop such a unified perspective by drawing on corpus data across a range of languages and language varieties, with a focus on written language, a neglected data source in research on multilingual contact settings. The findings point to shared general characteristics across individual contact settings, which result from (probabilistically conditioned) manifestations of the same deeper regularities – constraints – present in diverse language-contact settings.

Comparative Variation Analysis

Comparative Variation Analysis PDF Author: Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108491561
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Variation studies is an increasingly popular area in linguistics, becoming embedded in curriculum design, conferences, and research. However, the field is at risk of fragmenting into different research communities with different foci. This pioneering book addresses this by establishing a canon of state-of-the-art quantitative methods to analyze grammatical variation from a comparative perspective. It explains how to use these methods to investigate large datasets in a responsible fashion, providing a blueprint for applying techniques from corpus linguistic, variationist, and dialectometric traditions in novel ways. It specifically explores the scope and limits of syntactic variability in a global language such as English, and investigates three grammatical alternations in nine varieties of English, exploring what we can learn about the grammatical choices that people make based on both observational and experimental data. Comprehensive yet accessible, it will be of interest to academic researchers and students of sociolinguistic, corpus linguistics, and World Englishes.

Studies in Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Grammaticalization, Refunctionalization and Beyond

Studies in Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Grammaticalization, Refunctionalization and Beyond PDF Author: Dorien Nieuwenhuijsen
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3039215760
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
The present volume examines the usefulness of a particular set of concepts and processes of change studying their applicability to a range of linguistic changes in Spanish and Latin that cannot be easily or can only be partially accounted for within the framework of grammaticalization. Rather than challenging the insights of grammaticalization theory, the different contributions to this monograph demonstrate that exaptation, capitalization, refunctionalization and adfunctionalization, as well as changes motivated by rhetorical guidelines, constitute interesting and valuable notions that allow for a better understanding of specific language changes in Spanish and, by extension, of language change in general.

Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Acquisition across the Lifespan

Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Acquisition across the Lifespan PDF Author: Anna Ghimenton
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027259755
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
This volume provides a broad coverage of the intersection of sociolinguistic variation and language acquisition. Favoured by the current scientific context where interdisciplinarity is particularly encouraged, the chapters bring to light the complementarity between the social and cognitive approaches to language acquisition. The book integrates sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic issues by bringing together scholars who have been developing conceptions of language acquisition across the lifespan that take into account language-internal and cross-linguistic variation in contexts of both first and second language acquisition as well as of first and second dialect acquisition. The volume brings together theoretical and empirical research and provides an excellent basis for scholars and students wanting to delve into the social and cognitive dimensions of both the production and perception of sociolinguistic variation. The book enables the reader to understand, on the one hand, how variation is acquired in childhood or at a later stage and, on the other, how perception and production feed into one another, thus building up our understanding of the social meanings underpinning language variation.

Experience, Variation and Generalization

Experience, Variation and Generalization PDF Author: Inbal Arnon
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027234779
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Are all children exposed to the same linguistic input, and do they follow the same route in acquisition? The answer is no: The language that children hear differs even within a social class or cultural setting, as do the paths individual children take. The linguistic signal itself is also variable, both within and across speakers - the same sound is different across words; the same speech act can be realized with different constructions. The challenge here is to explain, given their diversity of experience, how children arrive at similar generalizations about their first language. This volume brings together studies of phonology, morphology, and syntax in development, to present a new perspective on how experience and variation shape children's linguistic generalizations. The papers deal with variation in forms, learning processes, and speaker features, and assess the impact of variation on the mechanisms and outcomes of language learning.

Intra-individual Variation in Language

Intra-individual Variation in Language PDF Author: Alexander Werth
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110743124
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This volume offers several empirical, methodological, and theoretical approaches to the study of observable variation within individuals on various linguistic levels. With a focus on German varieties, the chapters provide answers on the following questions (inter alia): Which linguistic and extra-linguistic factors explain intra-individual variation? Is there observable intra-individual variation that cannot be explained by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors? Can group-level results be generalised to individual language usage and vice versa? Is intra-individual variation indicative of actual patterns of language change? How can intra-individual variation be examined in historical data? Consequently, the various theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches in this volume offer a better understanding of the meaning of intra-individual variation for patterns of language development, language variation and change. The inter- and transdisciplinary nature of the volume is an exciting new frontier, and the results of the studies in this book provide a wealth of new findings as well as challenges to some of the existing findings and assumptions regarding the nature of intra-individual variation.