24.914 | Spring 2019 | Undergraduate

Language Variation and Change

Readings

Buy at MIT Press Campbell, L. (2013). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, 3rd Edition. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262518499.

Guy, G. (1980). Variation in the group and the individual: the case of final stop deletion. In W. Labov (ed.), Locating Language in Time and Space. Academic Press. 1–36. ISBN: 9780124321014.

Harrington, J., Palethorpe, S., and Watson, C. (2000). Monophthongal vowel changes in Received Pronunciation: an acoustic analysis of the Queen’s Christmas Broadcasts (PDF - 2.3 MB). Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 63–78.

Labov, W. (1963). The social motivation of a sound change (PDF). Word 19, 273–309.

Labov, W. (1981). Resolving the neogrammarian controversy (PDF - 9.1 MB). Language 57, 267–308.

Labov, W. (1994). Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal factors. Blackwell. ISBN: 9780631179146.

Labov, W. (2010). Principles of Linguistic Change: Cognitive and Cultural Factors. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 9781405112154.

Ladefoged, P.N. (2001). A Course in Phonetics. Heinle & Heinle. ISBN: 9780155073197.

Ohala, J.J. (1981). The listener as a source of sound change (PDF - 1 MB). In C. S. Masek, R. A. Hendrick, & M. F. Miller (eds.), Papers from the Parasession on Language and Behavior. Chicago Ling. Soc. 178–203.

Pierrehumbert, J. (2001). Exemplar dynamics: Word frequency, lenition, and contrast (PDF). In J. Bybee and P. Hopper (eds.), Frequency effects and the emergence of lexical structure. John Benjamins. 137–157.

Pintzuk, S. (1995). Variation and change in Old English clause structure. Language Variation and Change 7(2), 229–260.

SES # Topics Readings
Introduction
1 Introduction  
Geographical Variation
2 Regional Accents - Transcription Ladefoged (2001) ch. 4
3 Overview of Accent Variation in the USA  
4 Speech Acoustics Labov et al. (1997)
5 Acoustic Analysis of Speech Ladefoged (2001) ch. 8
Sound Change as a Source of Variation I: Regularity of Sound Change
6 What are the Units of Sound Change?  
7 Regular Sound Change vs. Lexical Diffusion Labov (1981), (2010) ch. 13
8 Regular Sound Change vs. Lexical Diffusion (II)  
Age-Related Variation
9 Age-Related Variation Harrington et al. (2000)
Social Variation
10 Social Variation Labov (1963)
Variation within the Individual, Stable Variation
11 Variation within the Individual  
12 The Role of the Listener in Sound Change Guy (1980)
The Mechanisms of Sound Change I: Phonetic Conditioning
13 Phonetic Conditioning of Sound Change  
14 An Exemplar-Based Model of Sound Change Ohala (1981)
15 Phonetic Grammar and Gradual Change  
16 Stability and Change Pierrehumbert (2001)
17 Sound Change and Fashion  
The Mechanisms of Sound Change II: Grammatical Conditioning
18 Morphological Conditioning  
19 Chain Shifts  
20 Chain Shifts (cont’d)  
The Comparative Method
21 The Comparative Method: Introduction Campbell (2005) ch. 5
22 The Comparative Method: Grouping Languages, Cladistics  
In-Class Presentations
23 Presentations  
24 Presentations  
Syntactic Change
25 Word Order Change in Old English Pintzuk (1995)
26 Syntactic Change (II)  

Course Info

As Taught In
Spring 2019
Learning Resource Types
Lecture Notes
Written Assignments