Computing and Language Variation

Computing and Language Variation explores dialects and social difference in language, examining how (and how much) linguistic difference impedes intelligibility, how national borders accelerate and di

Bringing together a team of renowned international scholars, this volume provides a wide-ranging collection of historical and state-of-the-art perspectives on language regard, particularly in the context of language variation and language change, and importantly, highlights the range of new methodologies being used by linguists to explore and evaluate it. The importance of language regard to the inquiry of language variation and change in the field of sociolinguistics is increasingly being recognized, yet misunderstandings about its nature and importance continue to exist. This volume provides scholars and students of sociolinguistics, with the tools and theory to pursue such inquiry. Contributions and research come from Europe, North America, and Asia, and language varieties such as Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and American Sign Language are discussed.

Style refers to ways of speaking - how speakers use the resource of language variation to make meaning in social encounters. This book develops a coherent theoretical approach to style in sociolinguis

What is the English language like, why is it like that and what do we need to know in order to study it? This wide ranging introductory textbook not only presents the English language from multiple pe

Languages show variations according to the social class of speakers and Latin was no exception, as readers of Petronius are aware. The Romance languages have traditionally been regarded as developing out of a 'language of the common people' (Vulgar Latin), but studies of modern languages demonstrate that linguistic change does not merely come, in the social sense, 'from below'. There is change from above, as prestige usages work their way down the social scale, and change may also occur across the social classes. This book is a history of many of the developments undergone by the Latin language as it changed into Romance, demonstrating the varying social levels at which change was initiated. About thirty topics are dealt with, many of them more systematically than ever before. Discussions often start in the early Republic with Plautus, and the book is as much about the literary language as about informal varieties.

Corpus linguistics was initiated with the compilation and exploitation of native English reference corpora. Over the past years, corpus linguistics has experienced such a great expansion and specialis

Methodological know-how has become one of the key qualifications in contemporary linguistics, which has a strong empirical focus. Containing 23 chapters, each devoted to a different research method, this volume brings together the expertise and insight of a range of established practitioners. The chapters are arranged in three parts, devoted to three different stages of empirical research: data collection, analysis and evaluation. In addition to detailed step-by-step introductions and illustrative case studies focusing on variation and change in English, each chapter addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and concludes with suggestions for further reading. This systematic, state-of-the-art survey is ideal for both novice researchers and professionals interested in extending their methodological repertoires. The book also has a companion website which provides readers with further information, links, resources, demonstrations, exercises and case studies related to eac

This volume provides a detailed analysis of language contact in North Africa and explores the historical presence of the languages used in the region, including the different varieties of Arabic and Berber as well as European languages. Using a wide range of data sets, it provides a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms of language contact under classical diglossia and societal bilingualism, examining multiple cases of oral and written code-switching. It also describes contact-induced lexical and structural change in such situations and discusses the possible appearance of new varieties within the context of diglossia. Examples from past diglossic situations are examined, including the situation in Muslim Spain and the Maltese Islands. An analysis of the current situation of Arabic vernaculars, not only in the Maghreb but also in other Arabic-speaking areas, is also presented. This book will appeal to anyone interested in language contact, the Arabic language, and North Africa.

Measured Language: Quantitative Studies of Acquisition, Assessment, and Variation focuses on ways in which various aspects of language can be quantified and how measurement informs and advances our un

This collection reflects Minoji Akimoto’s concern with studies of change in English that are theoretically-informed, but founded on substantial bodies of data. Some of the contributors focus on indivi

Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the first examination of the interplay between urbanization, language variation and language change in fifte

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the First International Workshop on Language, Music and Computing, LMAC 2015, held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in April 2015.The 13 papers presented in this vol

This book investigates issues of central importance in understanding the role of language in society in the Middle East and North Africa. In particular, it covers issues of collective identity and var

In this book John A. Hawkins argues that major patterns of variation across languages are structured by general principles of efficiency in language use and communication. Evidence for these comes fro

Understanding Language Structure, Interaction, and Variation is an introduction to the study of language and applied linguistics for students who have had a minimum of exposure to the discipline of li

The volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to create a broad perspective on the study of style and variation in spoken language. The book discusses key approaches to stylis

This volume examines linguistics, language acquisition, and language variation, emphasizing their implications for teacher education and language education. A majority of the essays consider issues in

By the award-winning former president of the Linguistic Society of America, this collection of some of John Russell Rickford's pioneering works shows how linguists in sociolinguistics and creole studies can benefit from utilizing data, theories and methods from each other, as they more frequently did in the 1960s and 1970s, when both subfields, in their modern forms at least, were getting started. The volume addresses fundamental sociolinguistic topics such as social class, style, fieldwork, speech community, sociolinguistic competence and language attitudes with data from Guyanese and other Caribbean creoles. Recurrent concepts are also considered including language versatility, variation and change, vernacular use, school success and criminal justice in African America and the Caribbean, using models, case studies and methodologies from sociolinguistics. Theoretical and applied scholars, students apprehensive about sociolinguistic fieldwork, and those considering dynamic methods like

Place has always been central to studies of language, variation and change. Since the eighteenth century, dialectologists have been mapping language features according to boundaries - both physical and institutional. In the twentieth century, variationist sociolinguists developed techniques to correlate language use with speakers' orientations to place. More recently, perceptual dialectologists are examining the cognitive and ideological processes involved in language-place correlations and working on ways to understand how speakers mentally process space. Bringing together research from across the field of language variation, this volume explores the extent of twenty-first century approaches to place. It features work from both established and influential scholars, and up and coming researchers, and brings language variation research up to date. The volume focuses on four key areas of research: processes of language variation and change across time and space; methods and datasets for

Despite the significant presence of Cuban immigrants in the US, current research on Cuban Spanish linguistics remains underexplored, most crucially its ramifications to areas such as language contact

A thoroughly revised and updated edition of the classic text, American English: Dialects and Variation, Third Edition, chronicles the ongoing story of language variation in American English. For the f

This up-to-date textbook overviews and evaluates the major approaches and methods used in Arabic sociolinguistic research with respect to diglossia, codeswitching, language variation, language attitud

Linguistic Variation: Confronting Fact and Theory honors Shana Poplack in bringing together contributions from leading scholars in language variation and change. The book demonstrates how variationist

In this book common sense computing techniques are further developed and applied to bridge the semantic gap between word-level natural language data and the concept-level opinions conveyed by these. I

In this book H.D. Adamson reviews scholarship in sociolinguistics and second language acquisition, comparing theories of variation in first and second-language speech, with special attention to the ps

If you are tired of computer training books that are written in “computer” language, then this is the book for you. This book is written in plain English and explains what the computer terms mean. If

This book provides a systematic study of sociolinguistic variation in seventeenth-century France. Drawing on a range of case studies, Wendy Ayres-Bennett makes available data about linguistic variation in this period, showing the wealth and variety of language usage at a time that is considered to be the most 'standardising' in the history of French. Variation is analysed in terms of the speaker's 'pre-verbal constitution' - such as gender, age and socio-economic status - or by the medium, register or genre used. As well as examining linguistic variation itself, the book also considers the fundamental methodological issues that are central to all socio-historical linguistic accounts and, more importantly, addresses the question of what the appropriate sources are for linguists taking a socio-historical approach. In each chapter, the case studies present a range of phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical issues, which pose different methodological questions for sociolinguists

Standard English has evolved and developed in many ways over the past hundred years. From pronunciation to vocabulary to grammar, this concise survey clearly documents the recent history of Standard English. Drawing on large amounts of authentic corpus data, it shows how we can track ongoing changes to the language, and demonstrates each of the major developments that have taken place. As well as taking insights from a vast body of literature, Christian Mair presents the results of his own cutting-edge research, revealing some important changes which have not been previously documented. He concludes by exploring how social and cultural factors, such as the American influence on British English, have affected Standard English in recent times. Authoritative, informative and engaging, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in language change in progress, particularly those working on English, and will be welcomed by students, researchers and language teachers alike.