Devyani Sharma

Cognitive and social forces in dialect shift: Gradual change in London Asian speech

This study examines the retention of a non-native dialect feature by British Asians in London. We examine the use of one Punjabi feature ( t -retroflexion) and one British feature ( t -glottaling) across three groups: first-generation non-native immigrants and two age groups of second-generation British Asians. Cognitively oriented models predict that non-native features will either be innately blocked (Chambers, 2002) or reallocated by native generations. A socially oriented model allows for more gradual change. Contrary to the cognitive view, the older second generation neither blocks nor clearly reallocates use of t -retroflexion; they closely mirror the first generations non-native use. However, they simultaneously control nativelike t -glottaling, reflecting a robust bidialectal ability. It is the younger second generation who exhibit focused reallocation in the form and function of t -retroflexion. This 20-year lag corresponds to major changes in demographics and race relations in the community over 5 decades. The study shows that acquisition of the local dialect and retention of exogenous features should be seen as independently constrained rather than as mutually exclusive.

Language Transfer and Discourse Universals in Indian English Article Use

Stable nonnative varieties of English acquired and used in the absence of native English input can diverge systematically from native varieties over time ( Cheshire, 1991 ; Kachru, 1983 ; Platt, Weber, & Ho, 1984 ). Focusing on Indian English article use, this study asks the following question: If divergence is indeed occurring, do new features derive primarily from first language (L1) transfer or from universal principles? Natural conversational speech is assessed in relation to four hypotheses relating to L1 transfer and language universals, and a multivariate regression analysis evaluates the relative strength of each factor. The new article system is not found to be identical to the L1 article system. Although L1 transfer appears to be operative when an overt form (the specific indefinite article) exists in the L1, when a gap occurs in the L1 (no definite article), speakers do not completely omit the definite article in their second language English. Using Princes ( 1981 ) taxonomy of assumed familiarity, it is shown that the absence of a L1 model for definite articles permits the intervention of universally available discourse knowledge, such that speakers apply an economical, disambiguating principle to the use of overt articles, reserving them mainly for new (less given or inferable) information and omitting them in more redundant contexts. I am indebted to John Rickford, Elizabeth Traugott, Arnold Zwicky, Ishtla Singh, and the SSLA editors and anonymous reviewers for much helpful feedback. I also received valuable comments from audiences at the LSA, Atlanta (January 2003) and at UC Davis and UC San Diego (February 2003).

Typological variation in the ergative morphology of Indo-Aryan languages

Abstract While New Indo-Aryan languages are a common example of morphological ergativity, the range of variation in ergative marking and agreement among these languages has not been examined in detail. The goals of this article are twofold. We first present a typology of ergative marking and agreement in Indo-Aryan languages, demonstrating that a progressive loss of ergative marking has occurred to varying degrees in different systems. This process is manifested in two distinct strategies of markedness reduction: loss of overt subject marking in the nominal domain and loss of marked agreement in the verbal domain. Using the framework of Optimality Theory, we account for the typology in terms of universal subhierarchies of markedness. Extending the analysis to dialect variation in one language, Marathi, we show that the dialect typology parallels the crosslinguistic typology, but only within the range permitted by changes already present in the parent language (Old Marathi). Furthermore, the dialect typology includes additional hybrid case-agreement systems predicted by our analysis.

Typology in variation: A probabilistic approach to 'be' and 'n't' in the Survey of English Dialects

Variation within grammars is a reflection of variation between grammars. Subject agreement and synthetic negation for the verb be show extraordinary local variation in the Survey of English Dialects (Orton et al., 1962–71). Extracting partial grammars of individuals, we confirm leveling patterns across person, number, and negation (Ihalainen, 1991; Cheshire, Edwards & Whittle, 1993; Cheshire, 1996). We find that individual variation bears striking structural resemblances to invariant dialect paradigms, and also reflects typologically observed markedness properties (Aissen, 1999). In the framework of Stochastic Optimality Theory (Boersma & Hayes, 2001), variable outputs of individual speakers are expected to be constrained by the same typological and markedness generalizations found crosslinguistically. The stochastic evaluation of candidate outputs in individual grammars reranks individual constraints by perturbing their ranking values, with the potential for stable variation between two near-identical rankings. The stochastic learning mechanism is sensitive to variable frequencies encountered in the linguistic environment, whether in geographical or social space. In addition to relating individual and group dialectal variation to typological variation (Kortmann, 1999; Anderwald, 2003), the findings suggest that an individual grammar is sensitively tuned to frequencies in the linguistic environment, leading to isolated loci of variability in the grammar rather than complete alternations of paradigms. A characteristic of linguistic variation that has emerged in distinct fields of enquiry is that variation within a single grammar bears a close resemblance to variation across grammars. Sociolinguistic studies, for instance, have long observed that ‘variation within the speech of a single speaker derives from the variation which exists between speakers’ (Bell, 1984: 151). In the present study, individual patterns of variation in subject–verb agreement with affirmative and negative be extracted from the Survey of English Dialects ( SED , Orton et al., 1962–71) show striking structural resemblances to patterns of interdialectal, or categorical, variation.

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound in testicular trauma: role in directing exploration, debridement and organ salvage

We describe the use of contrast-enhanced ultrasound as an additional imaging technique during an ultrasound examination of a traumatised testis, allowing for confident testicular preserving surgery to be performed.

Lectal Focusing in Interaction: A New Methodology for the Study of Style Variation

A long-standing challenge in quantitative sociolinguistic analysis is identifying fine speaker meanings in interaction while retaining the ability to draw wider group comparisons. To bridge these goals, we propose a methodology for quantitative discourse analysis. In data from the Punjabi community in London, we initially find comparable group rates of use of an ethnolinguistic variable by older and younger British Asian (second-generation) men. We develop a new metric to assess whether these groups are in fact indexing similar ethnic and class meanings. Our measure of lectal focusing in interaction (LFI) tracks how much an individual shifts toward one or another style during a single interaction, focusing on Standard British English, Vernacular London English, and Indian English. Older British Asian men exhibit a high degree of LFI, shifting dramatically at times to achieve subtly strategic, interactionally tuned ends. Younger British Asian men show lower rates of LFI, particularly in their use of ethnic variants. Despite the continued use of similar forms, the LFI analysis identifies changes in indexical potential and a shift from marker toward indicator-like usage. We account for this through major changes in the social practices and political climate over recent decades in the community. The LFI measure thus brings interactional analysis to bear on the causes and rates of language change.

The pluperfect in native and non-native English: A comparative corpus study

One of the challenges in characterizing non-native varieties of English is accounting for variant uses of ostensibly standard English forms. The present corpus study examines both quantitative and qualitative aspects of pluperfect use in Indian English (IndE), British English (BrE), and American English (AmE). IndE is found to differ from native usage by associating had + V- ed with present perfect and preterite meanings. Licensing of pluperfect contexts by time adverbials is also found to be significantly lower in IndE. AmE shows the lowest overall use of the pluperfect and the highest use of disambiguating adverbials. Thus, AmE and IndE show distinct patterns of divergence from BrE. Variation within IndE exhibits a tendency for greater non-nativeness in regional (vs. national) press and in bureaucratic (vs. press) registers, suggesting a multidimensional distribution of IndE nonstandardness in India. These nonstandard uses are shown to convey new pragmatic meanings deriving from ambiguity in the native system and reinforcement from substrate languages. Finally, these changes are evaluated in relation to the broader tense–modality–aspect system of IndE as well as those of other non-native Englishes which exhibit similar characteristics.

Style dominance: Attention, audience, and the ‘real me’

Social constructivist approaches to style have moved away from the cognitive asymmetry that underpinned Labovs original attention-to-speech model, namely that a first-learned vernacular often has cognitive primacy. This study explores the interplay of cognitive and interactional effects in style variation. It reports on three related dynamics of style variation in one individual—Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-American media personality. First, we see Zakarias robust English bidialectalism with American and Indian audiences. This strong audience effect is complicated by the second finding, which points to asymmetric style dominance in Zakarias first-learned Indian style, which he subtly defaults to regardless of audience when his attention is diverted by such tasks as quickly counter-arguing or inserting parenthetical information. The third part of the study relates style dominance to agency: In a reflexive intra-personal process of biographical indexicality , speakers such as Zakaria may exploit their personal style biography and use their dominant variety to perform no-nonsense ‘real me’ stances in interaction. (Audience, attention, style variation, indexicality, repertoire, processing, bidialectalism, second dialect acquisition, speech rate) *

Scalar effects of social networks on language variation

The role of social networks in language variation has been studied using a wide range of metrics. This study critically examines the effect of different dimensions of networks on different aspects of language variation. Three dimensions of personal network (ethnicity, nationality, diversity) are evaluated in relation to three levels of language structure (phonetic form, accent range, language choice) over three generations of British Asians. The results indicate a scaling of network influences. The two metrics relating to qualities of an individuals ties are more historically and culturally specific, whereas the network metric that relates to the structure of an individuals social world appears to exert a more general effect on accent repertoires across generations. This two-tier typology—network qualities (more culturally contingent) and network structures (more general)—facilitates an integrated understanding of previous studies and a more structured methodology for studying the effect of social networks on language.

What's in a grammar?: Modeling dominance and optimization in contact

Muyskens article is a timely call for us to seek deeper regularities in the bewildering diversity of language contact outcomes. His model provocatively suggests that most such outcomes can be subsumed under four speaker optimization strategies. I consider two aspects of the proposal here: the formalization in Optimality Theory (OT) and the reduction of contact outcomes to four basic strategies.