Chapter 3
Optionality in the syntax of Germanic traditional dialects
On (at least) two types of intra-individual variation
While micro-variation, i.e. variation between dialects or among speakers, has been established and proven in recent years as a research discipline in its own right in (also theoretically informed) linguistics, variation within a speaker that cannot be attributed to sociolinguistic variables has, so far, hardly been studied. We call this form of variation – the occurrence of two different structural options for one function – ‘optionality’. We focus on optionality in syntax and identify at least two different types of optionality: while context or co-text plays a role in the first type, neither constraint seems to be relevant to the choice of one option or the other in the second type.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Non-true optionality (Level 2)
- 2.1Apparent optionality
- 2.2Evidence of apparent optionality
- 2.3Interim summary
- 2.4False optionality
- 2.5Evidence of false optionality
- 2.6Discussion and interim summary
- 3.True optionality
- 3.1Evidence of true optionality
- 3.2The simple negation/negative spread alternation from a diachronic perspective
- 4.Summary
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
References
References (61)
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