Chapter published in:
Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Acquisition across the Lifespan
Edited by Anna Ghimenton, Aurélie Nardy and Jean-Pierre Chevrot
[Studies in Language Variation 26] 2021
► pp. 11–20

Chapter 1
Child language acquisition and sociolinguistic variation

| University of Glasgow
The majority of studies conducted on first language acquisition concentrates on the acquisition of standard varieties, where deterministic, or invariant, forms are the focus of research. At the same time, research in sociolinguistics has shown that language is full of variable forms which are governed by a series of interacting social and linguistic constraints on variant choice. Such variation is interesting from the perspective of acquisition because of the apparent challenge it presents to a young child: learning a language is alreadyhighly complexbut what happens when variation is added to the mix? The initial chapters in this volume focus on the analysis of variation in the speech of young children in a number of different languages worldwide and across different contexts of use in both production and perception. In doing so, they provide an excellent contribution to questions surrounding the acquisition of vernacular norms in the initial stages of acquisition and in later life.
Keywords: variation, acquisition, sociolinguistic
Published online: 16 August 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.26.01smi
References
Adger, David & Jennifer Smith
2010 Variation in agreement: A lexical feature-based approach. Lingua Volume 120 (5).1109–1134. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Buson, Laurence
2009 Variation stylistique entre 5 et 11 ans et réseaux de socialisation scolaire: usages, représentations, acquisition et prise en compte éducative. Grenoble: Université Stendhal Ph.D. dissertation.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger
1973 A first language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, Jack K.
2003 Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chevrot, Jean-Pierre, Laurence Beaud & Renata Varga
2000 Developmental data on a French sociolinguistic variable: Post-consonantal word-final /R/. Language Variation and Change 12. 295–319. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chevrot, Jean-Pierre & Paul Foulkes
2013 Introduction: Language acquisition and sociolinguistic variation. Linguistics 51 (2). 251–254. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V.
2016 First Language Acquisition (3rd edn.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cornips, Leonie
2017 Child acquisition of sociolinguistic variation: adults, children and (regional) standard Dutch two-verb clusters in one community. In Gunther De Vogelaer & Matthias Katerbow (eds.). Acquiring sociolinguistic variation 91–116. London: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Vogelaer, Gunther, Jean-Pierre Chevrot, Matthias Katerbow & Aurelie Nardy
2017 Bridging the gap between language acquisition and sociolinguistics: Introduction to an interdisciplinary topic. In Gunther De Vogelaer & Matthias Katerbow (eds.). Acquiring Sociolinguistic Variation 1–41. London, John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Díaz-Campos, Manuel
2005 The emergence of adult-like command of sociolinguistic variables: A study of consonant weakening in Spanish-speaking children. In David Eddington (ed.), Studies in the Acquisition of the Hispanic Languages: Papers from the 6th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages, 56–65. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
Foulkes, Paul, Gerard J. Docherty & Dominic Watt
2001 The emergence of structured variation. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 7 (3). 67–84.Google Scholar
2005 Phonological variation in child-directed speech. Language 81 (1). 77–206. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H.
2006 Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences. Text and Talk 26 (4–5). 515–543. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Green, Lisa J.
2011 Language and the African American Child. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grunwell, Pamela
1981 The nature of phonological disability in children. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Henry, Alison
2016 Acquiring Language from Variable Input: Subject-verb agreement and negative concord in Belfast English. Linguistic Variation. 16 (1). 131–150. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hudson Kam, Carla L.
2015 The impact of conditioning variables on the acquisition of variation in adult and child learners. Language 91. 906–37. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul
1996 Children, adolescents, and language change. Language Variation and Change 8 (2). 177–202. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul & Ann Williams
2000 Creating a new town koine: children and language change in Milton Keynes. Language in Society 29. 65–115. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kushartanti, Bernadette
2014 The acquisition of stylistic variation by Jakarta Indonesian children. Utrecht, LOT.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1964 Stages in the acquisition of Standard English. In Roger Shuy, Alva Davis & Robert Hogan (eds.), Social Dialects and Language Learning, 77–104. Champaign: National Council of Teachers of English.Google Scholar
1989 The child as linguistic historian. Language Variation and Change 1. 85–97. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2001 Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2007 Transmission and diffusion. Language 83 (2). 344–387. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, Janet Lee
1992 The development of sociolinguistic phonological variation patterns for (ing) in young children. Doctoral dissertation, University of New Mexico.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis. R. & Gregory C. Robinson
2005 Dialect Perception and Attitudes to Variation. In Martin J. Ball (ed.), Clinical Sociolinguistics 133–149. Malden/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reid, Euan
1978 Social and stylistic variation in the speech of children: Some evidence from Edinburgh. In Peter Trudgill (ed.), Sociolinguistic Patterns in British English 158–71. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer & J. Michael Terry
2009 Operationalizing style: Quantifying style shift in the speech of African American adolescents. American Speech 84 (4). 367–90. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Julie
1994 Acquisition of variable rules: (-t,d) deletion and (ing) production in preschool children. Ph.D. diss., Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
2002 Child language variation. In Jack Chambers, Natalie Schilling-Estes, & Peter Trudgill (eds.) Handbook of Language Variation & Change, 333–48. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2005 Acquisition of sociolinguistic variation. In Martin J. Ball (ed.), Clinical Sociolinguistics, 153–164. Oxford: Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Julie & William Labov
1995 Learning to talk Philadelphian: Acquisition of short a by preschool children. Language Variation and Change 7 (1). 101–112. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne
1984 The language of children and adolescents. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Marilyn S.
1974 The magic boxes: Pre-school children’s attitudes toward black and standard English. Florida F. L. Reporter 210. 55–93.Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer, Mercedes Durham & Liane Fortune
2007 “Mam, ma troosers is fa’in doon!”: Community, caregiver and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish dialect. Language Variation and Change 19 (1). 63–99. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 Universal and dialect-specific pathways of acquisition: Caregivers, children, and t/d deletion. Language Variation and Change 21 (1). 69–95.Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer, Mercedes Durham & Hazel Richards
2013 The social and linguistic in the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation. Linguistics 51 (2). 258–324.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., Mercedes Durham & Jennifer Smith
2014 Grammaticalization at an early stage: future be going to in conservative British dialects. English Language and Linguistics 18(01). 75–108. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena & James A. Walker
2009 The present of the English future: grammatical variation and collocations in discourse. Language 85. 321–54. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Youssef, Valerie
1991 Variation as a feature of language acquisition in the Trinidad context. Language Variation and Change 3. 75–101. CrossrefGoogle Scholar