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

SALIENCE IN LANGUAGE CHANGE
• Markedness/naturalness play no part in predicting the spread of vowel
features
Grammatical variables and discourse features
Following Cheshire (1987), we distinguish between morphological variables,
for which it is relatively easy to identify variants which do not affect any
aspect of meaning, and syntactic variables, for which this is difficult or
impossible, and where the notion of ‘variable’ may be inapplicable anyway.
In the study reported here, we focused on morphology. Morphological
variables are likely to be salient in Trudgill’s terms because they involve
different lexical realisations of underlying grammatical categories. This
component, or level, was not originally investigated by Trudgill, though he
encourages others to do so (1986: 37). In addition to quantifying the
frequencies of a number of variables, we also investigated their salience by
asking the teenage subjects whether they thought particular grammatical
forms could be heard locally. The majority of the non-standard features
investigated have long been shared by all three non-standard varieties. But
there is some evidence of levelling between the three towns (that is, change
leading to convergence) with respect to specific features. For example:
• them as demonstrative adjective is being generalised (Hull them there,
as in look at them there cars) is absent from teenage speech)
• there is a reduction in frequency of two localised features – Hull zero
definite article and Reading present tense -s – in favour of
majority/standard forms
• there is an increased use of clause-final tag innit, replacing [FntFC], in
Hull. In the two southern towns, the tag need not agree with its
antecedent in number, person or modal verb
To this can be added a feature which is not a variable sensu stricto: the use of
like as a focus marker, as in I’m like real tired when I get in and as a marker
of reported speech or thought, as in He’s like wow that’s great. At the same
time, there is a loss in all three towns of clause-final discourse marker like,
which shares some of the functions of a tag, e.g. I’ve got a lot to do, like.
85