1. Prepared by: Alaa Kamal Othman Submitted to: Dr. Walid Amer
Linguistic Variation
Prepared by: Alaa Kamal Othman
Acad. No. :
Submitted to: Dr. Walid Amer

2. Table content: The linguistic variable Types of linguistic variables
Variation in New York, Norwich, Detroit
Indicators, markers , and stereotypes.

3. Linguistic variable:
A linguistic item which has identifiable variants, which are the different forms which can be used in an environment.

4. Types of linguistic variables:
*Consonant variables/
Phonological variables:
1- (ng)>/ŋ/ or /n/ in “singing, playing, …”
2- (r)>/r/ or /Ø/ in “farm, far,…”
3- (h)>/h/ or /Ø/ in “house, hospital,..”
4-(t)>/t/ or /?/ in “better, bet,..”
5-(th)>/θ/ or /t/ in “thin, three,..”
6-(dh)>// or /d/ in “there, they,..”
7- The final (t,d) in in told/test

5. *Vowel variables/ 1- /e/ > pen, men,… 2- /o/ > dog, caught, coffee 3- /a/ > bag, bad, back 4- /u/ > pull
Grammatical Variables/
1- 3rd person sing. “S”. E.g.: he thinks/he think
2-copula be: he’s happy/he happy/he be happy
3-multiple negation: he don’t mean no harm.
4-the beginning of English clauses:
*She’s the girl who(m) I met.
*She’s the girl I met.
*She’s the girl that I met

6. 3 landmark studies carried in 3 urban areas by prominent sociolinguists in 1960s & 1970s.
Variation in New York City by “Labov”
Variation in Norwich by “Trudgill”
Variation in Detroit by “Shuy”

7. New York/
Labov chose 5 phonological variables:
1- (th) variable, initial consonant in(thin , three)
2- (dh) variable, initial consonant in (there, then)
3- /r/ in “farm, far,…”
4- /a/ in bag, bad
5- /o/ in dog, caught

8. Norwich:
Trudgill chose 3 consonants and 13 vowels.
1- (h) > happy, house
2- (ng) > walking, running
3- (t) > bet, butter.
*(t) has 4 variants :
-aspirated
-non aspirated
-glottalized
-glottal stop
The first two variants combined are least nonstandard.
The 3rd is more standard.
The glottal stop is non standard.
+13 vowel variants in (bad, name, path, tell, here, hair, ride, bird, tip, know, boat, boot, tune)

9. Detroit:
Shuy focused on 3 variables.
1 phono. & 2 gram.
-phonological variant:
*The realization of a vowel followed by a nasal consonant as a nasalized vowel.
-Grammatical variant:
1- Multiple negation “he ain’t got none neither”
2- pronominal apposition “that guy, he don’t care”

10. Wolfram considered other linguistic variables:
Phonological variable:
* pronunciation of final consonant clusters in words like “test, wasp, left”
* (th) in “tooth, nothing”
* final stops like in “ good, shed”
* pronunciation of (r) in “sister, pair”
Grammatical variable:
* he talk/he talks
* two year/ two years
*she’s nice/she nice/ she be nice

11. The social class to which each speaker belongs or the circumstances he/she goes through are related to the variants.

12. Indicators:
-Linguistic variables where no important social information is attached and only linguistically trained observers can distinguish.
e.g. North America distinguish between the vowels in “cot, caught”
Marker:
Quite noticeable and carries potent social information.
e.g. the dropping of g in “singing”.
The distribution of markers is related to social groupings and styles.

13. Stereotypes:
Popular characterization of the speech of a particular group.
E.g.
*New York: -boid for bird
-toitytoid street for “33rd street”
*Northumbrian : (wot- cher ) for “what cheer?” when greeting.