Cover not available
Article published In:
The locus of linguistic variation
Edited by Constantine Lignos, Laurel MacKenzie and Meredith Tamminga
[Linguistic Variation 16:2] 2016
► pp. 247–266

Constant effects and the independence of variants in controlled judgment data*

This article proposes that Kroch’s (1989) Constant Rate Hypothesis – the generalization that contextual effects tend to be stable in processes of diachronic variation in production data – be extended to synchronic variation in controlled judgment data. Two recent, large-sample judgment experiments are discussed suggesting that shared contextual effects across speakers in acceptability judgments can be used to infer a single abstract source for patterns of variation across superficially different contexts. At the same time, the results suggest that not all sets of variants – or “ways of saying the same thing” (Labov 1972: 271) – are linguistic variables of this formally defined type.

Keywords: change, competing grammar, particle verb, variable, variant, constant rate hypothesis, syntax, ditransitive
Published online: 27 January 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.16.2.04had
References
Anagnostopoulou, Elena
2003 The syntax of ditransitives: Evidence from clitics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2005 Holmberg’s generalization and cyclic linearization. Remarks on Fox and Pesetsky. Theoretical Linguistics 31(1–2). 95–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ball, Catherine N
1994 Relative pronouns in it-clefts: The last seven centuries. Language Variation and Change 6(02). 179–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barr, Dale J., Roger Levy, Christoph Scheepers & Harry J. Tily
2013 Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68(3). 255–278. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker
2015 Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Science 67(1). 1–48.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight Le Merton
1971 The phrasal verb in English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan & Marilyn Ford
2010 Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English. Language 86(1). 168–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn
2011 The sociolinguistic variant as a carrier of social meaning. Language Variation and Change 22(3). 423–441. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cukor-Avila, Patricia
2002 She say, she go, she be like: Verbs of quotation over time in African American Vernacular English. American Speech 77(1). 3–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dehé, Nicole
2002 Particle verbs in English: Syntax, information structure and intonation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Den Dikken, Marcel
1995 Particles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2010 On the functional structure of locative and directional PPs. In Guglielmo Cinque & Luigi Rizzi (eds.), Mapping spatial PPs, 74–126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drummond, Alex
2013 Ibex Farm, [URL].
Durham, Mercedes, Bill Haddican, Eytan Zweig, Daniel Ezra Johnson, Zipporah Baker, David Cockeram, Esther Danks & Louise Tyler
2011 Constant linguistic effects in the diffusion of be like. Journal of English Linguistics 40(4). 316–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Elenbaas, Maatje Barbara
2007 The synchronic and diachronic syntax of the English verb-particle combination, vol. 1491. LOT.Google Scholar
Engels, Eva & Sten Vikner
2013 Object shift and remnant VP-topicalisation: Danish and Swedish verb particles and let-causatives. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 36(2). 219–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fox, Danny & David Pesetsky
2005 Cyclic linearization of syntactic structure. Theoretical Linguistics 31(1–2). 1–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fruehwald, Josef, Jonathan Gress-Wright & Joel Wallenberg
2009 Phonological rule change: The constant rate effect. In Proceedings of NELS, vol. 401.
Gries, Stefan T
2001 A multifactorial analysis of syntactic variation: Particle movement revisited. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 8(1). 33–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory
1980 Variation in the group and the individual: The case of final stop deletion. In William Labov (ed.), Locating language in time and space, 1–36. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
2007 The scope of generalization in phonology. Talk given at Workshp on Variation, Gradience and Frequency in Phonology, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Haddican, Bill & Anders Holmberg
2012 Object movement symmetries in British English dialects: Experimental evidence for a mixed case/locality approach. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 15(3). 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Four kinds of object symmetry. In Ludmila Veselovská & Markéta Janebová (eds.), Complex visibles out there. Proceedings of the olomouc linguistics colloquium 2014. Language use and linguistic structure, Palacký University.Google Scholar
Haddican, Bill & Daniel Ezra Johnson
2012 Effects on the particle verb alternation across English dialects. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18(2). 5.Google Scholar
2014 Focus effects on particle placement in English and the left periphery of PP. Proceedings of NELS 43 (2).Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A
2004 Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmberg, Anders
1986 Word order and syntactic features. Stockholm University dissertation.Google Scholar
Holmberg, Anders & Christer Platzack
1995 The role of inflection in Scandinavian syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, Arthur, Peter Trudgill & Dominic Watt
2005 English accents and dialects: An introduction to social and regional varieties of English in the British Isles. London: Hodder Arnold.Google Scholar
Johnson, Kyle
1991 Object positions. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 9(4). 577–636. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kallel, Amel
2007 The loss of negative concord in Standard English: Internal factors. Language Variation and Change 19(1). 27–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kayne, Richard
1985 Principles of particle constructions. In Jacqueline. Guéron, Hans-Georg Obenauer, & Jean-Yves Pollock (eds.), Grammatical representation, 101–140. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Foris.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S
1998 Overt vs. covert movements. Syntax 1(2). 128–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kroch, Anthony
1989 Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1(3). 199–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1994 Morphosyntactic variation. In Katharine Beals (ed.), Papers from the 30th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society: Parasession on variation and linguistic theory. 180–201. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony & Cathy Small
1978 Grammatical ideology and its effect on speech. In David Sankoff (ed.), Linguistic variation: Models and methods, 45–55. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1972 Sociolinguistic patterns. University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lohse, Barbara, John A Hawkins & Thomas Wasow
2004 Domain minimization in the English verb-particle constructions. Language 80(2). 238–261. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Melnick, Robin, T. Florian Jaeger & Thomas Wasow
2011 Speakers employ fine-grained probabilistic knowledge. Talk given at LSA Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA.Google Scholar
Pintzuk, Susan
1999 Phrase structures in competition: Variation and change in Old English word order. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Richards, Marc
2004 Object shift and scrambling in North and West Germanic: A case study in symmetrical syntax. University of Cambridge dissertation.Google Scholar
Richards, Norvin
1997 What moves where when in which language? MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Santorini, Beatrice
1993 The rate of phrase structure change in the history of Yiddish. Language Variation and Change 5(3). 257–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sells, Peter
2001 Structure, alignment and optimality in Swedish. CSLI.Google Scholar
Svenonius, Peter
1996 The optionality of particle shift. Working papers in Scandinavian syntax 571. 47–75.Google Scholar
2010 Spatial P in English. In Guglielmo Cinque & Luigi Rizzi (eds.), Mapping spatial PPs, 127–160. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tortora, Christina & Marcel den Dikken
2010 Subject agreement variation: Support for the configurational approach. Lingua 120(5). 1089–1108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

GARDNER, MATT HUNT, DEREK DENIS, MARISA BROOK & SALI A. TAGLIAMONTE
2021. Be like and the Constant Rate Effect: from the bottom to the top of the S-curve. English Language and Linguistics 25:2 ► pp. 281 ff. DOI logo
Haddican, Bill, Cecelia Cutler, Michael Newman & Christina Tortora
2022. Cross-Speaker Covariation across Six Vocalic Changes in New York City English. American Speech 97:4 ► pp. 512 ff. DOI logo
Haddican, Bill & Anders Holmberg
2019. Object symmetry effects in Germanic. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 37:1 ► pp. 91 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Naomi & Laurel Mackenzie
2023. Social role effects on English particle verb variation fail to replicate. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 68:2 ► pp. 329 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.