Variable rules meet Impoverishment theory:Patterns of agreement levelling in English varieties

• Published in: Lingua
• Main Authors: Parrott, Jeffrey K., Nevins, Andrew
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: /dk/atira/pure/core/keywords/FacultyOfHumanities; Faculty of Humanities; Distributed Morphology; variation; syncretism; Impoverishment; markedness; morphosyntax; Smith Island
• Online Access: https://curis.ku.dk/portal/da/publications/variable-rules-meet-impoverishment-theory(31f15c80-e252-11dd-b5fc-000ea68e967b).html; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2008.05.008

This paper revives the sociolinguistic notion of ‘variable rules’ (Labov 1969, Cedergren and Sankoff 1974, Guy 1991) as a specific and restricted mechanism within the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993, Embick and Noyer 2007). We propose that intra-individual paradigm ‘leveling’ variation (or, variable syncretism), can be effectively modeled as resulting from post-syntactic feature deletion rules that apply variably. In other words, variable rules enact a structural change only probabilistically, rather than deterministically, when their structural description is met. By hypothesis, morphological ‘Impoverishment’ operations (Bonet 1991, Halle 1997, Noyer 1998) are induced by the inherent and universal markedness of particular morphosyntactic features or their combination (Croft 2003, Greenberg 1966). We examine markedness-driven variable Impoverishment through case studies of three English varieties: be-leveling in Monmouthshire (Orton 1962-1971) induced by marked [+author], was-leveling in Buckie (Adger and Smith 2005, Adger 2006) induced by marked [+participant], and weren’t- and ain’t-leveling on Smith Island (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 2003, Mittelstaedt 2006) induced by marked [+negation]. This paper revives the sociolinguistic notion of ‘variable rules’ (Labov 1969, Cedergren and Sankoff 1974, Guy 1991) as a specific and restricted mechanism within the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993, Embick and Noyer 2007) . We propose that intra-individual paradigm ‘leveling’ variation (or, variable syncretism) can be effectively modeled as resulting from post-syntactic feature deletion rules that apply variably. In other words, variable rules enact a structural change only probabilistically, rather than deterministically, when their structural description is met. By hypothesis, morphological ‘Impoverishment’ operations (Bonet 1991, Halle 1997, Noyer 1998) are induced by the inherent and universal markedness of particular morphosyntactic ...