Frans Gregersen

The data and design of the LANCHART study

In this introduction to the volume of papers from the Danish laboratory, both the design of the LANCHART study of language change in real time and the data collected according to the design are described. Starting from a delimitation of the problem field, we progress to a detailed description of the original eight studies making up the starting point for the centre as well as the seven repetitions that were carried out during 2005-2007. Explanations of the choices as to the selection of geographical sites as well as to speaker variables of age and class are given, and problems with the choices are mentioned. In the concluding section, the other papers of the volume are briefly presented.

Stepping into the same river twice: on the discourse context analysis in the LANCHART project

The question of comparability in sociolinguistic studies is both obviously methodologically crucial and rarely addressed. If not addressed at all in sociolinguistic investigations of language change in real time, the analyst will invariably run the risk of comparing inherently different pieces of data material. But the question is, whether it is at all possible to achieve comparability? In this paper we argue that methodological considerations of comparability are necessary ingredients in any study of change in real time, and we present the apparatus used to achieve comparability in the LANCHART study, viz. the so-called Discourse Context Analysis (DCA). The DCA is the basis for the phonetic analysis in the LANCHART study since it selects maximally comparable sections of passages for analysis. However, in this paper it is also shown to function as a fruitful analytic tool in its own right, illuminating changing interactional patterns in sociolinguistic interviews which are likely to reflect changes in how people interact with one another in society at large.

The long and short of (æ)-variation in Danish – a panel study of short (æ)-variants in Danish in real time

After a brief introduction on studies of real time change in general, we focus on the well-known variable of short (æ) in Danish. We study this variation in the speech of 43 speakers from Næstved and Copenhagen respectively. The 43 informants were recorded twice with an interval of around 20 years. They were at the time of the first recording between 25 and 40 years of age and may thus be classified as adults past the critical age for language change. The study shows that speakers do indeed change during their life span but that the changes are not predictable in the sense that some speakers show an increased use of the innovative variant, while others show a decrease. The consequences for the apparent time hypothesis as well as for the Labovian model of linguistic change are discussed.

A normative theory of humanistic knowledge

ZusammenfassungAusgehend von der Gegenüberstellung der Wissenschaftlichkeit der Naturwissenschaften und der Geisteswissenschaften wird argumentiert, daß Wissenschaftlichkeit nur auf der Basis einer Zusammenstellung wissenschaftstheoretischer, wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher und wissenschaftssoziologischer Kriterien definiert werden kann. Eine solche dreiteilige Definition wird skizziert, und es wird behauptet, daß dies gültig sowohl für die Naturwissenschaften als auch für die Geisteswissenschaften ist. Es folgt daraus, daß es im Prinzip keine Verschiedenheit zwischen der Wissenschaftlichkeit der einen Basiswissenschaft und der anderen gibt. Die Formulierung dreier normativer Kriterien für Wissenschaft als solche schließt den Artikel ab.

Sideways: five methodological studies of sociolinguistic interviews

Abstract Five interlocking case studies of variation in and between situations are reported. In all cases a sociolinguistic interview is contrasted with another speech event. The material is from the LANCHART panel study of variation in the Danish speech community in real time. Contrasting speech events are characterized using a genre classification and focusing in each case on the genre dispersion as a measure of how varied the speech event was. Two different phonetic variables are studied, the short (æ) and the (ɛŋ) variable. Four of the five case studies involve adults who also participated in interviews approximately 20 years later. For those informants, a comparison is made with the new recordings in order to evaluate claims of change in real time. Both auditory results and acoustic measurements are documented. The fifth case study concerns youngsters recorded in the new round of recordings (the S2), hence there is no newer recording to compare with. In all cases the older (æ) variable is sensitive to a change in situation whereas the newer (ɛŋ) variable only varies with situation for the young informants. In the final section, we discuss possible consequences for comparability and for the methodology of empirical (socio)linguistics.

Introduction to the special issue on variation in auxiliary selection

Abstract The paper introduces the research field of the special issue: the use of the two types of auxiliaries be and have for expressing past events, and contextualizes research in this field in general.

“PLUS THAT I BELIEVE IT IS AN INNOVATION....…” On the marginal construction with plus at as an initial conjunction in modern spoken Danish

This paper is about variation and how to make sense of it. It takes as its material a construction that has been treated as a new part of the system of Danish and Swedish, viz. the plus at ‘plus that’ construction. The corpus I have used to evaluate claims about this construction is the LANCHART corpus of spoken Danish from 1970 to 2010. The data from the LANCHART corpus show that the construction has a specific use (and function), that not very many informants use it and that those who do overwhelmingly use only one instance. Thus, the construction may safely be said to be marginal at least in the corpus data. The issue is how to theorize this. This is the theme of the final section.

How nice to be good at it: on the aesthetics of everyday language and the optimization of it in literature

Taking its point of departure in Roman Jakobsons famous closing statement on Linguistics and Poetics, the paper demonstrates that many of the issues that we confront in linguistically based literary analysis have to be confronted in the analysis of everyday spoken language as well: questions of genre and enunciation are common for both modes of language, whereas the simple scale of written literature makes certain differences obvious and certain types of intricate construction possible which are not often found to the same extent in spoken language. The examples are drawn from present day spoken Danish as wells from Ian McEwans On Chesil Beach and Sir Walter Scotts Guy Mannering.

Field work traditions: some notes based on the Copenhagen experience

Abstract Linguistics in this century has been dominated by the contrasting currents of empiricism and rationalism. The empiricist firmly believes in induction, refers to data as uncontroversially falsifying or corroborating preconceived notions of what languages are like and is devoted to working with a wide variety of linguistic data. The rationalist, on the other hand, is an ardent believer in deductive or abductive reasoning, in bold conjectures and meticulous testing which may lead to internal falsification of theories. As for data, they are much overrated, the rationalist holds, since all data are data for theories only. Finally, the rationalist is much more concerned with what language is than with what languages are like.

Language change in real time: evidence from the Danish laboratory: the work of the LANCHART Centre

This volume of the Acta Linguistica Hafniensia is the first volume to be published by Taylor & Francis in agreement with the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen. In this sense it is historical. This is...