This study begins from two observations. The first is that linguistic variation is socially meaningful (see Labov 1963, Ochs 1992, California Style Collective 1993, Eckert 2000, Irvine 2001, Podesva et al. 2001, Bucholtz and Hall 2005, Campbell-Kibler 2006, inter alia). The second is that speakers use their knowledge of language (i.e., linguistic competence) to engage in various linguistic acti...

In this paper we present an analysis of stylistic variation that uses a factor analytic technique to group the variables responsible for the bulk of the linguistic variation found in a corpus of pharmaceutical leaflets. Two main factors of variation were found and analysed in more detail; they also were compared with other two analyses.

In this paper, resources and methods for annotating speech databases with various types of linguistic information are discussed. The decision tree paradigm is explored for pronunciation variation modelling using multiple linguistic context parameters derived from the annotation. Preliminary results suggest that decision tree induction is a suitable paradigm for the task.

This article lays out an approach that combines a formal-generative perspective on language, including tolerance of abstract analyses, with a typological focus on comparing unrelated languages from around the world. It argues that this can be a powerful combination for discovering linguistic universals and patterns in linguistic variation that are not detected by other means.

Syntactic structures, by their nature, reflect first and foremost the formal constructions used for expressing meanings. This renders them sensitive to formal variation both within and across languages, and limits their value to semantic applications. We present UCCA, a novel multi-layered framework for semantic representation that aims to accommodate the semantic distinctions expressed through...

1. Introduction In traditional dialectology, dialect variation is often represented by areas within which similar dialects are spoken. The dialect areas are found by drawing dividing lines (isoglosses) between areas where different representations are found for selected linguistic variables. However, different isoglosses do not always coincide which makes it difficult to draw borders between th...

Linguistic accommodation is a recognised indicator of social power and social distance. However, different individuals will vary their language to different degrees, and only a portion of this variance will be due to accommodation. This paper presents the Zelig Quotient, a method of normalising linguistic variation towards a particular individual, using an author’s other communications as a bas...