Whereas the alternation between the s-genitive (the New Year's message) and the of-genitive (the message of the New Year) is well documented, our study offers a more accountable analysis of genitive variation by including noun-noun (NN)-genitives (the New Year message). We consider four different variable contexts (s versus of, NN versus of, NN versus s, and NN versus s versus of ), which we analyze using regression analysis. The dataset consists of 10,054 variable genitives drawn from the Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers. The material covers the period between 1650 and 2000, thus enabling us to track the evolution of variable genitive grammar in real time. We report that there is an overall drift toward the NN-genitive, which is preferred over other variants when constituent noun phrases are short, possessor constituents are inanimate, and possessum constituents are thematic. In addition to these substantive contributions, we showcase methods of dealing with a complex dataset covering nonbinary grammatical variation.

Lexical diversity, the amount of lexical variation shown by a particular concept, varies between concepts. For the concept drunk, for instance, nearly 3000 English expressions exist, including blitzed, intoxicated, and hammered. For the concept sober, however, a significantly smaller number of lexical items is available, like sober or abstinent. While earlier variation studies have revealed that meaning-related concept characteristics correlate with the amount of lexical variation, these studies were limited in scope, being restricted to one semantic field and to one dialect area, that of the Limburgish dialects of Dutch. In this paper, we investigate whether the impact of concept characteristics, viz. vagueness, lack of salience and proneness to affect, is manifest in a similar way in other dialects and other semantic fields. In particular, by extending the scope of the earlier studies to other carefully selected semantic fields, we investigate the generalizability of the impact of concept characteristics to the lexicon as a whole. The quantitative approach that we employ to measure concept characteristics and lexical diversity methodologically advances the study of linguistic variation. Theoretically, this paper contributes to the further development of Cognitive Sociolinguistics by showcasing how meaning can be a source of lexical diversity.

The use of loanwords is generally attributed to a social feature, like social prestige, and to semantic features, like the need to fill a lexical gap. However, few studies take into account variation in the use of loanwords within a speech community, and directly compare the frequency of loanwords from more than one source language. This paper contributes to research on lexical borrowing by comparing the distribution of loanwords from three different source languages in two large databases of dialect data. We take an onomasiological perspective, which allows us to gauge the frequency of borrowed lexical items vis-à-vis alternative expressions. Using Generalized Additive Mixed Modeling, we show that the usage of loanwords can only be explained by taking into account the interaction between semantics and geographical diffusion. Our analysis confirms that the patterns that occur almost exclusively reflect changes in socio-cultural history.

English has many words to refer to an adult man, e.g. man, guy, dude, and these are undergoing change in Ontario dialects. This paper analyzes the distribution of these and related forms using data collected in Ontario, Canada. In total, N = 6788 tokens for 17 communities were extracted and analyzed with a comparative sociolinguistics methodology for social and geographic factors. The results demonstrate a substantive language change in progress with two striking patterns. First, male speakers in Ontario were the leaders of this change in the past. However, as guy gained prominence across the 20th century, women started using it as frequently as men. Second, these developments are complicated by the complexity of the sociolinguistic landscape. There is a clear urban vs. peripheral division across Ontario communities that also involves both population size and distance from the large urban centre, Toronto. Further, social network type and other local influences are also important. In sum, variation in 3rd person singular male referents in Ontario dialects provides new insight into the co-occurrence and evolution of sociolinguistic factors in the process of language change.