Infinitival constructions (ICs) have received considerable attention from syntacticians and typologists, but less so from variationist linguistics. Based on new data from a comprehensive dialect survey, this study investigates the variation and change of ICs in Austrian dialects. The results reveal clear geographical patterns for different IC variants in Austria. Regarding linguistic factors, several constraints are identified, most importantly with respect to the IC’s syntactical function and governing element (e.g., phase verbs). Moreover, an apparent-time analysis shows that one variant (zum + infinitive) has been grammaticalized and spread at the expense of all other variants, presumably due to both dialect leveling and dialect-standard advergence.

This article investigates speakers’ attitudes towards the use of anglicisms in Quebec French, particularly verbs. The common practice in Quebec French is to morphologically integrate these anglicisms into the French language (e.g., il m'a ghosté). However, in recent years, some French-speaking Quebecers have been using the unintegrated forms (e.g., il m'a ghost). This change of practice for the use of English-origin verbs is a linguistic innovation that is emerging from young French speakers in the Montreal area (M-E Bouchard 2023a). To investigate attitudes towards the use of anglicisms (integrated and non-integrated forms), 675 French-speaking Quebecers were asked the following open-ended question: Do you have anything to say about the use of anglicisms in Quebec French? The current study consists of a qualitative analysis of the participants’ answers to this specific question. This study has found evidence of linguistic hierarchies between the use of anglicisms that are morphologically integrated and those that are not. The anglicisms that are not morphologically integrated into the French language are perceived by many participants as incorrect and as challenging communication and understanding between users and non-users of the unintegrated forms. Participants associate the use of the unintegrated forms with young people.

This article explores intraspeaker malleability in the realisation of the first-person possessive in the North-East of England ([maɪ], versus [mi] and [ma]). The analysis relies on a combination of a trend sample and a novel dynamic panel corpus that covers the entire adult lifespan. While [mi] has been around at least since the 1970s on Tyneside, [ma] appears to have made its way into the system during the 1980s and 1990s. The panel data add intraspeaker information to this ongoing change, revealing a turnover in the proportional usage of possessive variants between two recordings that are on average ten years apart. Regression modelling provides differentiated information about intraspeaker changes across the lifespan, suggesting that, with only a few exceptions, intraspeaker grammars are stable across the lifespan. The analysis supports recent panel research that has argued for the importance of considering the socio-demographic trajectory of the individual: while speakers who are part of the ‘marché scolaire’ (Bourdieu & Boltanski 1975: 7) orient towards the standard, speakers working as professional carers (e.g. nurses) tend to retain high rates of the reduced variants across their lifespans to do local identity work and establish better interpersonal relations with their clients.

Languages vary in the way they encode motion. Following Talmy, languages can be divided into verb-framed (VF, henceforth) or satellite-framed (SF, henceforth), based on how they encode path of motion. However, this difference is not always clear-cut. Italian, for instance, is typically considered a VF language but has also been shown to display a hybrid pattern. Since variation has typically been considered a prerequisite for language change, we investigated whether variation in encoding Italian motion events could indicate incipient language change. We simulated the chain of language change adopting an apparent-time approach and investigated whether the impact of semantic properties (the manner verb’s association with directional motion) on the interpretation and productions of SF Italian constructions was affected by participants’ age. We found that, although this semantic property affects both the interpretation and production of SF constructions, younger participants more readily accepted SF constructions than older participants; this age difference, however, was not significant in the production task. We suggest that these findings might speak for incipient language change, which starts from comprehension and subsequently gradually influences production.

The language of heritage speakers is characterized by variability and structural innovations compared to the baseline grammar of first-generation immigrants. Although many factors contribute to these differences, this study considers structural priming with structures that do not exist in the majority language as a potential mechanism for language change. The linguistic focus is accusative clitic doubling, which exists in some Spanish varieties, but which is unacceptable in others. Our research examined how flexible heritage speakers’ grammars are compared to baseline speakers, and to what extent heritage speakers adopt structures attested in the diachronic development and in other varieties of their heritage language. In two studies, we tested the acceptability of accusative clitic doubling and primed accusative clitic doubling in oral production. Results showed that heritage speakers of Spanish are somewhat accepting of innovative structures and more sensitive to structural priming compared to baseline speakers, who are generally not.

It has been suggested that the parents of heritage speakers (2nd generation immigrants), who are the main source of input to them, may exhibit first-language (L1) attrition in their language, thereby directly transmitting different structural properties or “errors” to the heritage speakers. Given the state of current knowledge of inconsistent input in L1 acquisition, age of acquisition effects in bilingualism, and how long it takes children to master different properties of their native language, it is highly unlikely that immigrant parents are directly transmitting patterns of language attrition to their heritage language children. The argument advanced in this article is that if the patterns evident in heritage speakers and first-generation immigrants are related, reverse transmission may be at play instead, when the heritage speakers might be influencing the language of the parents rather than the other way around. Theoretical and empirical evidence for this proposal may explain the emergence of the variety of Spanish spoken in the United States.

Local orientation has been shown to influence speakers’ participation in local dialect norms and ongoing sound changes since the beginning of modern sociolinguistics (e.g., Labov, 1963). I argue here that local orientation is best understood as an orientation to the ideological imagined place, rather than to the actual physical hometown itself. Analysis of the effect of orientation to the imagined Philadelphia shows that speakers’ personal orientation impacts their adoption of an ongoing change. This change is best understood when orientation is considered alongside a major structural influence on young speakers—secondary school attendance—using a bipartite network analysis. The sound change under investigation, a change in the conditioning of a split in /æ/, is highly abstract and complex, making it an unlikely candidate for overt or intentional identity work. Nevertheless, a regression analysis finds strong effects of both structural influences and personal orientation on speakers’ advancement in this abstract change.

This article presents structural and interactional aspects of Strong Finals, a prosodic feature characterised by lengthening, increased volume, and non-falling intonation on word-final syllables. Interactionally, Strong Finals support five types of action: listing, projecting a description, stating conditions, asking questions, and announcing reported speech. In general, Strong Finals project that there is more to come, and this ‘more’ may in some cases be provided by either participant. Strong Finals are often found in multi-speaker settings, where they assist speakers in taking the floor or changing the topic. The article’s descriptions are based on recordings of natural spoken interaction in linguistically diverse areas in Aarhus, Denmark. Here, a new urban dialect has developed like other urban dialects that have been described in Copenhagen and other North Germanic cities. Strong Finals are a local phenomenon, however, and are not found in the Copenhagen studies.

This article investigates the evolution of bare nouns, used without a determiner, through the history of the French language. The loss of bare nouns is charted through calibrated corpora of non-fictional prose texts from the same genres and region, ranging from the 12th to the 19th century. The change is first completed with nouns in subject function, significantly advances with direct objects, and progresses with obliques. The extensive quantitative documentation demonstrates that the change is impacted by the syntactic function of the noun, along the Accessibility Hierarchy. The speculation is examined that the more accessible functions encourage expression of (definite) determiners, thus explaining the pattern of change.