Linguistics 1028A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Great Vowel Shift, Sociolect, Subculture

• School: Western University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: Linguistics 1028A/B
• Professor: Stephanie Kelly

Document Summary

Ling 1028 lecture 2: language in social contexts. Variant linguistic feature produced in more than one way. Variation may often depend on linguistic factors for that variant. Analyses of rules or constraints are probabilistic (more or less likely to apply: e. g. Which th- sound is more or less likely to apply: results using computer programs to measure all possible facts might show: [d] word initially in this and that. Variationist work also concerns social factors: age, gender, ses etc, similar to sociolect (last lecture) 10,000 sentences with adjectives were coded for: Type of adj. (physical property, human characteristic) ** the adjective is in an attribute position. Understanding non-standard as compared to standard varieties involves sociological information which can influence variation in a structured way: social factors: speakers age, sex, or degree of education. Researchers are primarily interest in an analysis of inter-speaker variation. In theory, any speaker-characteristic could have linguistic consequences.