Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Dedication
- 1 Methodology and aims
- 2 Methods for a sociolinguistic study of historical syntax
- 3 The history of the relative clause/markers in English with special reference to Middle Scots
- 4 The linguistic variables
- 5 The extralinguistic variables: methods for the reconstruction of language in its social context
- 6 Analysis of the data by two sociolinguistic techniques: cross-product analysis and implicational scaling
- 7 Variable rule analysis of the data
- 8 The bearing of sociolinguistic data on linguistic hypotheses
- 9 On the epistemological status of sociolinguistic theory
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - The bearing of sociolinguistic data on linguistic hypotheses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Dedication
- 1 Methodology and aims
- 2 Methods for a sociolinguistic study of historical syntax
- 3 The history of the relative clause/markers in English with special reference to Middle Scots
- 4 The linguistic variables
- 5 The extralinguistic variables: methods for the reconstruction of language in its social context
- 6 Analysis of the data by two sociolinguistic techniques: cross-product analysis and implicational scaling
- 7 Variable rule analysis of the data
- 8 The bearing of sociolinguistic data on linguistic hypotheses
- 9 On the epistemological status of sociolinguistic theory
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If you can't prove what you want to prove, demonstrate something else and pretend they are the same thing.
Darrell Huff (1973: 72)In the preceding chapter I attempted to apply variable rule analysis to a specific test case, variation in the relative marker system, to see if there was any justification for the claim that the Cedergren–Sankoff program can demonstrate a convergence between formal rule schemata and quantitative data. The results of the analysis were indeterminate and difficult to interpret, but they were indicative of problems in Labov's theory of variation and change. My data might be thought to be in some sense atypical and consequently my findings to be atypical also, but I will argue that this is not the case. In this chapter I focus on the empirical and ontological status of some of the so-called decisive solutions which have been proposed in sociolinguistic theory to show that there are indeterminacies as well as inconsistencies in a number of these analyses. I take up first Labov's (1969) analysis of the copula in BEV as a case in point. I mentioned in Chapter 2 that it was in this paper that Labov argued most forcefully for a program of empirical research which would produce decisive and correct solutions. I will demonstrate that the analysis Labov presents is not necessarily the ‘right’ one based on the quantitative data.
Labor's analysis of contraction and deletion of the copula in BEV
Labov decided to treat contraction and deletion of the BEV copula as two separate rules which were ordered so that contraction preceded deletion.
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- Socio-Historical LinguisticsIts Status and Methodology, pp. 218 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982