Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

SALIENCE IN LANGUAGE CHANGE
remains as to where the dialect diversity that is the source of variants came
from in the first place’ (2000: 55). Part of the reason for investigating salience
is that, by trying to ‘unpack’ this complex phenomenon, we may be able to
shed light on the interplay of internal (language-structural) factors and the
large range of other factors which impinge on language change, including
contact and those in the social psychological and sociodemographic domains.
This can give us a window on the ‘why’ of the source of the diversity
mentioned by Croft.
It is particularly in dialect contact that Trudgill sees the salience notion
as applying. This, we would argue, is because restrictions on adoption caused
by structural differences, as well as the more general difficulties speakers
experience in learning new items, are of a much lesser order in dialect contact
than in language contact. Instead, sociolinguistic factors, particularly social
psychological ones, come to the fore in influencing the adoption or nonadoption
of linguistic forms. As we shall see, salience attempts to combine
both structural (internal) factors with sociolinguistic and psychological
(external) factors in a single explanatory concept.
The case study we will discuss here concerns the convergence of
linguistic features in three English urban centres, this being a manifestation of
a wider process of dialect levelling taking place in Britain. By choosing
features from the discourse and grammatical levels as well as the
phonological level, we can follow up Trudgill’s implied injunction to look at
features other than phonological ones (1986:37).
2. ‘Salience’ as explanation in linguistics
There are a number of phenomena, particularly in language change, language
acquisition and sociolinguistically-determined variation, for which it seems
expedient to turn to some notion of ‘psychological prominence’ when
attempting an explanation. In what follows, we discuss six cases where the
notion has been adduced in an explanatory capacity. It will become clear that,
in order for salience to avoid having a circular definition or being a label, it
must have recourse to language-external factors, which will be a combination
of cognitive, social psychological or pragmatic factors.
A rather straightforward, and circular, definition of ‘salience’ as
referring to ‘high frequency’ is used by Bardovi-Harlig (1987) in her study of
EFL learners’ acquisition of English preposition stranding, as in Who did
John give the book to?. This construction, she claims, is marked, yet is learnt
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