Distributional Foundations for a Theory of Language Change

Kretzschmar, William A.; Tamasi, Susan

doi:10.1111/j.1467-971x.2003.00307.x

Cited by 22 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The full distribution of variants resembles the asymptotic hyperbolic (or A-curve) distribution discussed by Kretzschmar and Tamasi (2002) as being common to dialect data: a small set of the variants in the data set accounts for most usage, while the majority has relatively limited distributions. The average variant is used in about 20 percent of all localities, but 29 variants (about 15 percent of the total) are used in 50 percent or more of all localities, while 73 (about 36 percent) are used in 5 percent or fewer.…”

Section: Variant-based Approach: Distribution and Correlationsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Phonetic Variation in the Traditional English Dialects

Shackleton

2007

Journal of English Linguistics

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This study explores the linguistic application of bipartite spectral graph partitioning, a graphtheoretic technique that simultaneously identifies clusters of similar localities as well as clusters of features characteristic of those localities. We compare the results using this approach to previously published results on the same dataset using cluster and principal component analysis (Shackleton, 2007). While the results of the spectral partitioning method and Shackleton's approach overlap to a broad extent, the analyses offer complementary insights into the data. The traditional cluster analysis detects some clusters which are not identified by the spectral partitioning analysis, while the reverse also occurs. Similarly, the principal component analysis and the spectral partitioning analysis detect many overlapping, but also some different linguistic variants. The main benefit of the bipartite spectral graph partitioning method over the alternative approaches remains its ability to simultaneously identify sensible geographical clusters of localities with their corresponding linguistic features.

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Section: Variant-based Approach: Distribution and Correlationsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Phonetic Variation in the Traditional English Dialects

Shackleton

2007

Journal of English Linguistics

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“…or he was fi red vs. they fi red him ). Kretzschmar and Tamasi ( 2003 ) and Shackleton ( 2005 ) showed that languages as species or populations of idiolects have long-lasting memories in preserving variation, including variants that have very low statistical frequencies. This is an indication that, despite populationwide trends, learners will acquire the variants produced the most around them, even if these variants fall in the minority at the communal language level.…”

Section: Language Acquisition As a Construction Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sla and the Emergence of Creoles

Mufwene

2010

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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Although the emergence of creoles presupposes naturalistic SLA, current SLA scholarship does not shed much light on the development of creoles with regard to the population-internal mechanisms that produce normalization and autonomization from the creoles’ lexifiers. This is largely due to the fact that research on SLA is focused on individuals rather than on communities of speakers producing their own separate norms, whereas genetic creolistics deals precisely with this particular aspect of language change and speciation. It is not enough to prove that transfer from the first to the second language is possible and can evolve into substrate influence on the emergent vernaculars—transfer is not ineluctable and varies from one learner to another. Additionally, how and why particular features of some speakers spread to a whole population (or to parts thereof), whereas others do not, must be accounted for. Consistent with colonial socioeconomic history, the gradual emergence of creoles suggests a complex evolution that cannot be accounted for with simplistic invocations of either interlanguage or relexification. This article presents limitations in the cross-pollination that has been expected from genetic creolistics and research on SLA.

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“…However, while novel variants can emerge and be initially selected as a result of endogenous, languageinternal, processes, the mechanisms behind their spread and large-scale adoption, or the lack of thereof, are inherently social 1 Social motivations underlying the selection process have been interpreted in terms of prestige (overt vs. covert prestige, Labov, 1972a) and group solidarity (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, 1985;Milroy, 1992). 2 Many have questioned whether logistic regression is the appropriate mathematical model (Niyogi and Berwick, 1997;Denison, 2002;Kretzschmar and Tamasi, 2003), while others have used it with different types of empirical data (Kroch, 1989;Labov, 1994:65;Chambers, 2004 for a review). 3 Ayres-Bennett (2004) documents innovations by wealthy 17th century women, depicted in Moliè re's comedy: Les Pre´cieuses Ridicules.…”

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confidence: 98%