As real-time language data becomes increasingly available for sociolinguistic research, a growing number of studies are benefitting from it in order to study language changes in progress, some of which even explicitly seek to scrutinize the APPARENT-TIME CONSTRUCT itself. Vanishingly few real-time studies, however, have focused specifically on stable sociolinguistic variables, leaving an important gap in our understanding of the Apparent-Time Construct's abilities to model real-time facts. In an effort to address this gap, the present study analyzes a presumably stable sociolinguistic variable -final /z/ devoicing -in extreme northwestern Indiana through real and apparent time. A series of VARBRUL analyses indicate that this variable is, indeed, stable throughout the 20 years of real time covered by the data and that its stability is successfully modeled in apparent time. Additionally, similarities in /z/ devoicing between this community and some other communities where it has also been studied are identified and discussed.

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In this article, the variable use of verbal -s with (especially, third-person) plural subjects is examined in extreme south-central Indiana. The patterns observed are compared to the same in several varieties of Appalachian English, and it is argued that the local language variety reflects the morphosyntactic stability of the linguistic system brought here by pioneer settlers from various Appalachian states some 200 years before. A very small pilot-study corpus of comparable data from the extreme northwestern corner of Indiana is called on to help refute a “universalist” explanation for the similarities found in southern Indiana and Appalachia. Finally, the conditions surrounding the transplantation of Appalachian English to Kentuckiana and to other places (i.e., the Ozarks, North Carolina's Outer Banks) are considered, and questions are raised about the degree of isolation believed to be necessary in the respective communities.

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In this paper, we examine five pronominal clitics in Vimeu Picard with a geminate-consonant allomorph. Assuming a doubly-linked (non-moraic) representation of geminates, we attribute the four different patterns observed to four different underlying structures serving as inputs to an OT constraint ranking. The 1sg and 2sg pronouns are singletons which are subject to gemination in one specific position, syllable structure permitting. The 3sg pronoun is a geminate which is subject to variable degemination or vowel epenthesis where there are insufficient syllable slots to accommodate it. The partitive/genitive is somewhere in between a singleton and a geminate (its UR is /n n /, where the superscript «n» represents a floating nasal; it may surface as [nn] or as [nε], depending upon where its floating nasal docks). Finally, the 3pl is neither a singleton nor a geminate underlyingly, but becomes a geminate by its first segment assimilating to its second.Key words: appendix, cross-syllabification, degemination, positional alignment, stressed lengthening, stochastic Optimality Theory, Sympathy Theory, variation, vowel epenthesis; Picard. * This research is supported by NSF grant number BCS-0091687 to the second author. We are grateful to the audiences at the 12th Annual Indiana University French & Italian Graduate Student Colloquium and the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 33), where earlier versions of this analysis were presented, and to an anonymous reviewer for their comments. The analysis has further benefited from discussions with Clancy Clements, Marie-Hélène Côté, Stuart Davis, Caitlin Dillon, Daniel Dinnsen, Heather Goad, Bruce Hayes, John McCarthy, Kathryn Tippetts, and Barbara Vance and from help with the data from Jean-Pierre Calais, Jehan Vasseur, and Jean-Luc Vigneux. Finally, we are indebted to the CatJL editors, Jesús Jiménez and MariaRosa Lloret, for their sizeable investment in proofreading our manuscript and correcting the mistakes, both big and small, in it. The normal disclaimers apply. In this paper, we consider four cases in particular: a) the 1sg and 2sg accusative/dative/reflexive pronouns, b) the 3sg accusative pronoun, c) the 3pl accusative pronoun, and d) the partitive/genitive pronoun. Representative examples, introducing the relevant allomorphy, are presented in (1)-(5). While the alternations of primary interest in this paper are between a geminate and a singleton consonant, as in (1)-(3), any analysis of this alternation must also take into account two other clitics that have a geminate allomorph: the 3pl accusative pronoun and the partitive/genitive pronoun. The 3pl pronoun in (4), unlike the singular pronouns in (1)-(3), consistently surfaces as a geminate (e.g., *si j'z érouos déquértchès would not be possible for (4b)). Finally, the partitive/genitive pronoun in (5) We describe the data more fully in the next section ( §2.2); there, we also address the representation of geminates that we assume in this paper ( §2.1). We present our analysis in §3. Finall...