Variable properties in language : their nature and acquisition / David W. Lightfoot and Jonathan Havenhill, editors.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Re-thinking variable properties in language : introduction / David W. Lightfoot and Jonathan Havenhill -- Contrastive feature hierarchies in phonology : variation and universality / B. Elan Dresher -- Scope variation in contrastive hierarchies of morphosyntactic features / Elizabeth Cowper and Daniel Currie Hall -- Allophonic systems as a variable within individual speakers / Betsy Sneller -- A label theoretic explanation of the resultative parameter / Daniel Milway -- Adverbial?-s: so awks but so natural! / Norbert Corver -- The acquisition of English article alternations : variation, competition, and the default / Marjorie Pak -- Verb second word order in Norwegian heritage language : syntax and pragmatics / Marit Westergaard and Terje Lohndal -- Acquisition of morphosyntax : a pattern learning approach / Heidi Getz -- How to be faithful to the input in a situation of language contact / Alicia Avellana, Luca Brandani, Hannah Forsythe, and Cristina Schmitt -- Variation and mental representation / Gregory Guy -- Variation and competing i-languages in Creole genesis : a synchronic and diachronic view / Marlyse Baptista -- Transmission revisited / Gillian Sankoff -- The value of small communities in a big data world : investigating Smith Island English in real and apparent time / Natalie Schilling -- All zeros are not equal in African American English / Lisa Green.

This edited volume, based on papers presented at the 2017 Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics (GURT), approaches the study of language variation from a variety of angles. Language variation research asks broad questions such as, "why are languages' grammatical structures different from one another?" as well as more specific word-level questions such as, "why are words that are pronounced differently still recognized to be the same words?" Too often, research on variation has been siloed based on the particular question- sociolinguists do not talk to historical linguists, who do not talk to phoneticians, and so on. This book seeks to bring discussions from different subfields of linguistics together to explore language variation in a broader sense and acknowledge the complexity and interwoven nature of variation itself.

Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on May 01, 2019).

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