Functionally Equivalent Variants in a Non-standard Variety and Their Implications for Universal Grammar: A Spontaneous Speech Corpus

Abstract

Findings from the field of experimental linguistics have shown that a native speaker may judge a variant that is part of her grammar as unacceptable, but still use it productively in spontaneous speech. The process of eliciting acceptability judgments from speakers of non-standard languages is sometimes clouded by factors akin to prescriptive notions of grammatical correctness. It has been argued that standardization enhances the ability to make clear-cut judgments, while non-standardization may result to grammatical hybridity, often manifested in the form of functionally equivalent variants in the repertoire of a single speaker. Recognizing the importance of working with corpora of spontaneous speech, this work investigates patterns of variation in the spontaneous production of five neurotypical, adult speakers of a non-standard variety in terms of three variants, each targeting one level of linguistic analysis: syntax, morphology, and phonology. The results reveal the existence of functionally equivalent variants across speakers and levels of analysis. We first discuss these findings in relation to the notions of competing, mixed, and fused grammars, and then we flesh out the implications that different values of the same variant carry for parametric approaches to Universal Grammar. We observe that intraspeaker realizations of different values of the same variant within the same syntactic environment are incompatible with the ‘triggering-a-single-value’ approach of parametric models, but we argue that they are compatible with the concept of Universal Grammar itself. Since the analysis of these variants is ultimately a way of investigating the status of Universal Grammar primitives, we conclude that claims about the alleged unfalsifiability of (the contents of) Universal Grammar are unfounded.

Imperfect Acquisition of a Related Variety? Residual Clefting and What It Reveals about (Gradient) Bilectalism

“…7 It would then seem that proclisis is seeping into Cypriot Greek grammar (or that competing grammars are at work). This is, however, clearly not the case with focus raising; by contrast, the Cypriot syntactic focusing strategy appears to be used in lieu of focus raising even in production which is (or attempts to be) standard-like [as is also indicated by examples such as (7), (11), and (12) Leivada et al (2017) present comparable data, with exceptional clitic placement reaching 17% in their spontaneous speech corpus (which however contained data from five participants). On the whole, both studies present data that may plausibly be taken to attest to the partial reshuffling of the syntax of cliticization in Cypriot Greek.…”

Eliciting Big Data From Small, Young, or Non-standard Languages: 10 Experimental Challenges

“…The linguist will of course explain that the nature of the task is to gain insights into the speakers’ native variety and not into what the grammar books define the rules in the standard, but this brings on a second problem: Quite often there is an objective difficulty in conveying this idea and, therefore, in obtaining the relevant data. This difficulty derives from the fact that dialect speakers are aware of the differences that exist between their non-standard repertoires and what is deemed as correct in the standard variety (Henry, 2005; Leivada et al, 2017b). One of the challenges that the linguist thus faces when eliciting introspective judgments from speakers of non-standard varieties is that when these people are asked to use language in order to talk about (their) language, their linguistic behavior may shift toward the standard (Labov, 1996).…”

“…In relation to uniformity, some small and/or young languages may be affected by lack of standardization and codification due to their recent emergence, absence of official status, and other sociological factors. Standardization enhances uniformity (Henry, 2005; Leivada et al, 2017b), hence a trend study with monolingual speakers of standard English, French, or Italian may be targeting a more uniform population than a trend study with speakers of Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, where great differences can be observed both across and within age cohorts (Sandler et al, 2005). Again, the linguistic landscape might differ considerably even across languages and communities that look alike on a number of factors.…”