LX 404 Language
Variation
Course Syllabus
Spring 1999, TR 9:30-11:00, CAS
530
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Week 1 |
Introductory matters. The linguistic sign. What would a perfect language be like? Semantic variation across languages: Whorf (1956). Whorf revisited: Pullum (1991). Recommended reading: Eco (1995), a fascinating and very readable study of artificial languages through history. Boas (1911). |
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Week 2 |
The (apparent) fuzziness of word meaning; how categorical is language? (Labov 1973). Categorical vs. gradient; invariant vs. variable. Language as behavior vs. language as knowledge; generative grammar; competence vs. performance; universals of language; degrees of grammaticalness. A classical discussion of these topics is found in Chomsky (1965: 1-30, 148-153). |
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Week 3 |
Phonological variation in its social aspect. The stratification of (r) in New York City department stores (Labov 1972b). The distribution of /r/ in English dialects and its implications for linguistic theory (lecture notes). The structured nature of variation. |
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Week 4 |
How can language variation be modeled as part of grammar? Phonological rules and rule ordering (lecture). The notion of "variable rules" (Fasold 1990) Ch. 8. Recommended reading: Labov (1972c). Labov (1969) and Cedergren and Sankoff (1974) are the foundational papers that started a research paradigm. Weinreich et al. (1968) (in part) gives a broader philosophical background. |
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Week 5 |
A case study: t/d- deletion in English (cos<t> - los<t> - toss<ed>). This is the most extensively studied variable rule in English. Reading: Guy (1991b). Additional discussion can be found in Wolfram (1969), Guy (1991a), Labov (1994) (in part) and especially Myers (1995). |
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Feb 16 |
***BU Monday - no class*** |
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Week 6 |
Well-formedness as optimality: Archangeli et al. (1997). English t/d- deletion revisited: Kiparsky (1993), Reynolds (1994) (in part). Variation in Finnish noun inflection (class notes). Background reading: Anttila (1997). |
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Week 7 |
Why and how does language change? Introduction to basic concepts: Hock (1986), Chs. 1, 3. Labov (1972a) on the social motivation of sound change on Martha's Vineyard. |
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Week 8 |
The role of sex/gender in language variation and change. Reading: TBA. Background reading; articles from Coates (1998) Language and gender: a reader (on reserve in Mugar). |
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Week of |
***BU Spring Break- no classes*** |
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Week 9 |
Syntactic variation. Readings: TBA. Possible readings include: Lavandera (197x) and the responses in Labov (1978) and Romaine (1984). |
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Week 10 |
Are sound changes exceptionless? Irregularity in historical change. Philadelphia and New York vowel shifts. Reading: extracts from Labov (1994). Recommended readings: Wang (1969) (a classic), Chen and Wang (1975). |
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Week 11 |
Analogy |
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Week 12 |
Why do some words "sound better" than others? Some preferred word shapes in English and Arabic. Pierrehumbert (1994), Berkley (1994). |
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Week 13 |
Do languages get better when they change? Does historical change serve some purpose? The functionalism debate. Reading: Labov (1994), Ch. 19. |
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Week 14 |
Stylistic variation. Reading: TBA. Recommended readings: Finegan and Biber (1993), Oostendorp (1997). |
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Week 15 |
Class presentations. |
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Week 16 |
Review. |
Bibliography Archangeli, Diana, Douglas
Pulleyblank, and D. Terence Langendoen. 1997.
Optimality Theory. Bickerton, Derek. 1971. Inherent
variability and variable rules. Foundations of
Language 7, 457-92. Boaz, Franz. 1911. On
grammatical categories. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Language
in Culture and Society, 121-123. New York, Harper
& Row. Cedergren, Henrietta J. and
David Sankoff. 1974. Variable rules: Performance as a
statistical reflection of competence. Language 50,
333-55. Chen, ?, and William S-Y. Wang.
1975. Xxx. Language 51, 255-81. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of
the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA, MIT
Press. Eco, Umberto. 1995. The Search
for the Perfect Language. Oxford, Blackwell. Fasold, Ralph. 1990. The
Sociolinguistics of Language. Introduction to
Sociolinguistics. Vol II. Oxford,
Blackwell. Finegan, Edward, and Douglas
Biber. 1993. Register and social dialect variation: An
integrated approach. 315-347. Guy, Gregory R. 1991a.
Contextual conditioning in variable lexical phonology.
Language Variation and Change 3,
223-239. Guy, Gregory R. 1991b.
Explanation in variable phonology. Language Variation
and Change 3, 1-22. Hock, Hans Heinrich, 1986.
Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin,
Mouton de Gruyter. Kiparsky, Paul. 1993. Variable
rules. Handout distributed at the Rutgers Optimality
Workshop (ROW1). Labov, WIlliam. 1969.
Contraction, deletion and inherent variability of the
English copula. Language 45, 715-62. Labov, William 1972a. The social
motivation of sound change. In William Labov (ed.),
Sociolinguistic Patterns, 1-42. Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, William, 1972b. The
social stratification of (r) in New York City department
stores. In William Labov (ed.), Sociolinguistic
Patterns, 43-69. Philadelphia, University of
Pennsylvania Press. Labov, WIlliam. 1972c. The study
of language in its social context. In William Labov
(ed.), Sociolinguistic Patterns, 183-259.
Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania
Press. Labov, William. 1973. The
boundaries of words and their meanings. Labov, William. 1978. Where does
the linguistic variable stop? A response to Beatrice
Lavandera. University of Pennsylvania Sociolinguistic
Working Paper 44. Labov, William. 1994.
Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors.
Oxford, Blackwell. Lavandera, Beatriz. 197X. Where
does the sociolinguistic variable stop? Language and
Society 7, 171-182. Myers, James. 1995. The
categorial and gradient phonology of variable t-deletion
in English. Ms., York University. Oostendorp, Marc van. 1997.
Style registers in conflict resolution. In Frans
Hinskens, Foeland van Hout, and Leo Wetzels (eds.),
Variation, Change and Phonological Theory.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins. Pullum, Geoffrey. 1991. The
great eskimo vocabulary hoax. In The Great Eskimo
Vocabulary Hoax and other irreverent essays on the study
of language. Chicago, The University of Chicago
Press. Reynolds, William Thomas. 1994.
Variation and Phonological Theory. Doctoral dissertation,
University of Pennsylvania. Romaine, Suzanne. 1984. On the
problem of syntactic variation and pragmatic meaning in
sociolinguistic theory. XXX XX, 409-437. Societas
Linguistica Europaea. Wang, William S-Y. 1969.
Competing changes as a cause of residue. Language 45,
9-25. Reprinted in Baldi, Philip and Ronald N. Werth,
eds., 1978. Readings in Historical Phonology.
University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State
University Press. Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov,
and Marvin I. Herzog. 1968. Empirical foundations for a
theory of language change. In W.P. Lehmann and Yakov
Malkiel (eds.), Directions for Historical Linguistics:
A Symposium, 95-195. Austin, University of Texas
Press. Whort, Benjamin Lee. 1956.
Science and Linguistics. In John B. Carroll (ed.),
Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of
Benjamin Lee Whorf, 207-219. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press. Wolfram, Walter A. 1969.
Sociolinguistic Aspects of Assimilation.
Arlington, VA, Center for Applied Linguistics.
Anttila, Arto. 1997.
Deriving variation from grammar. In Frans Hinskens,
Roeland van Hout, and Leo Wetzels (eds.), Variation,
Change and Phonological Theory, 35-68.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing
Company. Also: ROA-63 http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html.