The no man’s land between syntax and variationist sociolinguistics: The case of idiolectal variability

Cornips, L.

doi:10.1515/9783110346855-007

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Thus, it is untenable to picture ‘grammar’ as merely a transparent representation of inner mental events, since language is one of the most important media through which social acts are accomplished (cf. Cornips ). Thus, the norms developed by (groups of) speakers may influence structure, etc.…”

Section: What a (Socio)linguistic Theory Should Address: Putting The mentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of Labov's contribution to general linguistic theory

Cornips

Gregersen

2016

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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The paper first discusses the influence of Labov on certain recent Chomskyan developments, starting from an identification of two radically different readings of the relationship between Labovian variationist sociolinguistics and the dominant theoretical paradigm of the latter half of the 20th century which is Chomskyan theoretical linguistics, i.e. as either a supplement or an alternative. Variation at the level of closely related languages, at the level of the language community, and at the level of the individual, have all been treated by Chomskyans under various headings, thus giving evidence that empirical results stemming from variationist sociolinguistics cannot be ignored. However, the treatment has not led to an integration of variation into Chomskyan theory, nor could it. In the final section we outline what a Labovian materialist alternative to Chomskyan idealism could be. We argue that this calls for a broader definition of sociolinguistics than just variationism and poses demands for both internal integration, viz. of linguistic disciplines, and external integration of the language sciences with evolutionary psychology, anthropology and social history.

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Section: What a (Socio)linguistic Theory Should Address: Putting The mentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of Labov's contribution to general linguistic theory

Cornips

Gregersen

2016

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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“…Für das Norwegische finden Opsahl und Nistov (2010) ähnliche nichtkanonische Abweichungen von V2 in Matrix-Aussagesätzen mehr als drei Mal so häufig in Peer-Group-Gesprächen wie in Interviews, bei neun Sprecher/inne/n (unterschiedlichen sprachlichen Hintergrunds) waren sie ausschließlich auf Peer-Group-Unterhaltungen beschränkt, und bereits Aarsaether (2010) stellt fest, dass auch hier das Repertoire der Sprecher/innen neben dem urbanen Dialekt standardsprachliche Kompetenzen im Norwegischen umfasst. Für das Niederländische weist Cornips (2008Cornips ( , 2015 ähnliche Differenzierungen beim kanonischen vs. nichtkanonischen Artikelgebrauch durch mehrsprachige Jugendliche nach (vgl. auch Nortier und Dorleijn 2008); zum Dänischen liefert Quist (2005Quist ( , 2010 Befunde zum weiteren Repertoire, zum Englischen etwa Hewitt (1992).…”

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„Ich geh Kino“ oder „… ins Kino“?

Wiese¹,

Pohle²

2016

Zeitschrift Für Sprachwissenschaft

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This paper analyses usage restrictions on such noncanonical local expressions as Ich geh Kino 'I go cinema' compared to canonical full PPs with DP complement (… ins Kino 'to the cinema'). In public discourse, bare local NPs have become emblematic for Kiezdeutsch, a new way of speaking from multiethnic urban Germany, although they also appear in informal language elsewhere. We present results from two studies investigating the use of noncanonical versus canonical options.Study 1 targets grammatical restrictions, based on a corpus of peer group conversations among adolescents. We show that noncanonical variants have the form of bare NPs with or without preposition and appear in both multilingual and monolingual speech communities, following the same syntactic and semantic patterns. While there is a quantitative advantage for the multilingual group, noncanonical variants generally constitute only a minority compared to canonical full PP [DP].Study 2 targets usage restrictions across communicative situations, based on a corpus of elicited productions by adolescents from a multilingual urban neighbourhood. Comparisons show significantly more noncanonical local expressions in informal, peer-group situations than in formal ones for both spoken and written modes.Taken together, results indicate a selective, grammatically restricted and register-bound choice of noncanonical local expressions.

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“…In my opinion, intraspeaker variation is the most challenging kind of variation to examine in order to enhance theoretical models. After sixty years of powerful theory development about the internal organization of grammar, the idealized monolingual speaker-hearer environment should be left aside and, instead, generative insights should be tested in the realm of language use where this internal organization has its most complex output (Cornips 2015).…”

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An interview on linguistic variation with Leonie Cornips

Cornips

2015

isogloss

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. She is a researcher in variationist linguistics and has extensively worked on the morphosyntactic variation in new varieties of Dutch, but also on bilingualism, bilingual acquisition and idiolects. Her work includes a wide range of morphosyntactic topics as gender, aspectual markers, argument structure and verbal clusters. Her most recent research projects deal with vocabulary acquisition by young bidialectal children and their cognitive developments and the construction of social and local identities through language practices in the Dutch province of Limburg.From your perspective, what are the relevant levels of abstractness to approach the Faculty of Language? The standard ones (namely "language", "dialect" and "idiolect")? Others? I'm working within the variationist sociolinguistics paradigm. According to Labov (2010), "the central dogma of sociolinguistics (is) that the community is conceptually and analytically prior to the individual. This means that in linguistic analysis, the behavior of an individual can be understood only through the study of the social groups of which he or she is a member. Following the approach outlined in Weinreich et al. 1968, language is seen as an abstract pattern located in the speech community and exterior to the individual. (…) The human language faculty, an evolutionary development rooted in human physiology, is then viewed as the capacity to perceive, reproduce and employ this pattern." In my research, the level of abstractness concerns idiolects and, in particular, syntactic variation located within the idiolect. But the phenomenon of intra-individual variation is always examined in relation to other individuals or groups the speaker identifies with, etc. What are the main advantages / reasons to study linguistic variation?First of all, we cannot study anything else than variation since variation is the essential property of language and it is the Faculty of Language (i.e. the linguistic system, understood as abstract processes and representations) that brings about variation. It is no longer controversial to claim that properties of individual grammars differ. To cite Kayne (1996:xv-xvi): "(…) there must be many more varieties of English than is

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The no man’s land between syntax and variationist sociolinguistics: The case of idiolectal variability

Cited by 6 publications

References 20 publications

The impact of Labov's contribution to general linguistic theory

The impact of Labov's contribution to general linguistic theory

„Ich geh Kino“ oder „… ins Kino“?

An interview on linguistic variation with Leonie Cornips

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