Linguistics 1028A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 14.1: Sociolinguistics, Underlying Representation, Phoneme

• School: Western University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: Linguistics 1028A/B
• Professor: Stephanie Kelly

Document Summary

Social distinctions are reflected in linguistic distinctions and variationist sociolinguistics explains that connection. Variationist sociolinguistics: the branch of linguistics that seeks to explain the connection between social distinctions and linguistic variation. Structured variation: language variation that is correlated with other factors. The thing with several possible realizations is the variable. Variable: a set of forms, any of which may be used to express the same function or meaning and the use of which cannot be expressed by a categorial rule. And each possible realization is a variant. Variant: one of a set of several possible forms that can be used to express the same function or meaning. Brother (labiodental fricative) , (interdental fricative) , brudder (glottal stop) or bro"er. The variant likely to surface depends on linguistic factors (dental stop) , bruvver. Linguistic factor: a linguistic property that may be correlated with structured variation. Probabilistic: rules or constraints that are non absolute (e. g. , [r] is usually deleted after vowels)