Children begin acquiring sociolinguistic variation at a young age, as early as 3-5 years old. Studies have found that preschoolers demonstrate sensitivity to social factors like formality of context and apply linguistic constraints in a similar way to adults. While phonological constraints may emerge before age 6, sensitivity to social meaning and ability to vary speech styles continues developing through childhood. Observation of one child's development suggests variable postvocalic R and short I tensing emerge between 17-36 months, indicating sociolinguistic competence develops early in parallel with other language skills.

1. 1
• Speaker Variable: Age
 Interactions with Gender
 Sociolinguistic competence in Children
Today

2. 2
Sex-related variability: Differentiation of speech behavior
between males and females related to physiological,
neurological and biological factors.
Gender-related variability: Differentiation of speech
behavior between males and females related to gender
roles.
Key terms

3. 3
• Speaker Variable: Gender
•Articles:
Eckert, 1998: “Gender and Sociolinguistic
Variation
Eckert, 1988: “Adolescent social structure and
the spread of linguistic change”
Gal, 1997: “Peasant men can’t get wives”
Today

4. 4
Review:
Traditional generalization regarding gender differences in speech:
 “Women use fewer stigmatized and non-standard variants than do
men of the same social group in the same circumstances. “
Chambers, p. 102
 Traditional explanations for the generalization
 On what basis do authors relate women to “standard variants”?
 Data
 Studies

5. 5
The last word?
Studies of Language Variation:
 Men and women in different cultures stand in different relations to
linguistic markets.
 Exclusion from workplace
 Obtain jobs where required to be “technicians of language”
 Given responsibilities for representing an organization
 A clear delineation of gender roles in society becomes associated with clear
distinctions in male and female use of sociolinguistic markers
 Where gender roles also signal differences in social mobility, we may
expect other factors to interact with gender: e.g., education, social class

6. 6
Eckert:
Theoretical Goal:
--explain the mechanisms whereby phonological change spreads outward
from urban areas and upward through the socioeconomic hierarchy
Research Goal:
--in a social network study, examine adolescent’s use of innovatory and
conservative linguistic forms
 Eckert 1988: Belten High Study
 vowels show flux in this dialect:
 (ae) bad [Q] to raised variant [e]
 (uh) cut ranges from to backed [ç]
 (ay) right monopthongizes to [a˘]
advances with proximity to Detroit
advances with proximity to Detroit
advances with distance from Detroit
[√]

7. 7
Sociolinguistic Competence
A fluent speaker’s knowledge (largely tacit) of admissible variation in
language, the types of social meaning that may be embedded in language, and
the rules governing alternative structural choices.
•Language forms index social categories (genders, social classes, ages,
regional origins, social networks) and stylistic registers
e.g., post-vocalic /r/. Variants: {[®], ø} ”transmitter to receiver”
e.g., (ae)-tensing. Variants: {[iQ], [e´], [Q]} ”cat”
e.g., (-ing)-alternation. Variants: {[IN], [In]} ”singin’”
•A comprehensive theory of language accounts for speakers’ knowledge of:
systemic potential (Is Alternation X part of my system?)
appropriateness (Is Alternation X effective or suitable in this context?)
occurrence (Is Alternation X done, and likely to be understood by another speaker?)
feasibility (Is Alternation X possible, given means of implementation available?)
region
region/class
register

8. 8
Milestones in Linguistic
Development
3 months: Linguistic Precursors
Child’s physiology gets ready for speech (lowering of larynx,articulatory control)
5 months: Babbling
Early babbling (5-6 mos) “aaaaa”, “bababababa,” “pppppppp”
Canonical babbling (7-10 mos) “mada,” “dele”
12 months: One-Word Stage
Protowords: consistent phonetic form used to refer to something (e.g., “yaya” juice)
Holophrastic speech: A single word used to convey an entire utterance, e.g. “allgone”
18-24 months: Two-Word Stage
Emergence of syntax, e.g. “Give ball”
>18 months: There’s no Three-Word stage!
Babytalk, Babytalk
Child’s language acquisition is
“The greatest intellectual feat
any one of us is ever required to
perform.”
-- Leonard Bloomfield (1933)

9. 9
Categorical vs. Variable
Features
 Linguistic forms may occur categorically, or show fluctuation
 Fluctuating forms occur with a likelihood or probability value (non-random, learnable)
 (largely) Categorical feature:
 In right-branching languages, determiners will appear to the left of the nouns they modify
(“the snowstorm”)
 Tensing of short-a (Northern Midwest dialects) ”cat”
 (largely) Variable feature:
 Postvocalic /r/ deletion in informal settings “Park the car in Harvard yard.”
 Double-modal constructions “She might could want to come.”
 Can occur at any level of the grammar

10. 10
The issue
 Acquisition of variation
 child learners expect language to contain and
employ socially meaningful variation
 Adults, not children, have been subject of
sociolinguistic studies of variation
 But, how does systematic variability develop?
What does it look like?

11. 12
Difficulties Obtaining Child Speech
 Chevrot, et al. (2000), Roberts (2002)
 Developmental variation due to differences in physiological and cognitive
maturation
 Patterns reflecting imitation
 Distinguishing word-by-word (“lexical”) learning from rule-based learning
 Testing difficulties: attentional fluctuation (often resulting in insufficient
amounts of data to be representative of the speaker)
 Low intelligibility of utterances (less so for preschool age)
 Possibility of DIFFERENT stylistic or social goals (different form-meaning
mapping than in adults)

12. 13
Early Perspectives
 Labov (1964)
 Categorical features first
 Vernacular (=dialectal) forms predicted to be acquired LATE in
adolescence (10-12)
 Standard forms acquired later (around age 14) under contact with other
members of the linguistic community outside of their friends and family.
“By theageof six achild exposed to English will haveconstructed thegrammar of his
language. Thisdoesnot mean that no further development of hisknowledgeof languageis
possible. ...Wealso learn certain lessusual constructionsof thelanguage. These
exceptional or marked patternsof thelanguagearenot taken to bepart of thecore
grammarof thelanguage, they belong to themarked periphery of thegrammar and may
beacquired later. Thenativespeaker will also haveto learn all of thesocial or cultural
conventionsassociated with hislanguage, for instance, that certain wordsbelong to avery
high stylewhereasothersareinformal. Theseconventionsarenot part of thegrammar,
they belong to themoregeneral domain of human behavior.” (Haegeman 2005, p. 17)

13. 14
Crosslinguistic Evidence: studies of
acquisition of variability in children
For what ages has systematic variation been found?
 Fischer (1958) British English (t,d), (-ing): social variation ages 3-10
 Roberts (1994, 1996, 1997) American English (Philadelphia variety), (t,d): both, ages
3-4
 Díaz-Campos (2005) Venezuelan Spanish, intervocalic-d deletion: both, ages 3-5
 Sankoff and Blondeau (2006) Montreal French trilled /r/ vs. uvular /R/: both, ages 3;6-
4;11
 Purcell (1984) Hawaiian Creole English, various variables: both, 5-12
 Chevrot, Beaud & Varga (2000) Southeastern French /R/: both, ages 6-7
 Romaine (1978) Scottish English trilled /r/: social and stylistic, ages 6-8
 Fischer (1958) British English (t,d): stylistic variation ages 10-11
 Reid (1978) Scottish English glottal stop, (-ing) alternation: stylistic, age 11

14. 15
Roberts (1994,6,7)
 16 children ages 3;2-4;11
 obtained large amounts of data; a range of
styles (6-13 sessions/child)
 deletion of final (-t,d) in consonant clusters
 adult’s patterns: (most deletion to least
deletion):
Grammatical constraint:
 monomorphemes, e.g., next [nEks]
 semi-weak verbs, e.g., lost, slept [las]
[slEp]
 regular past tense forms missed [mIs]
Phonological constraint:
 delete more for a following
consonant>vowel>pause
 “past tense”>”past us”> “ran past.”
American English (Philadelphia area)
•Findings:
•Preschoolers similar to adults:
–phonological constraints
mastered
•Rule-based not word-based
pattern:
–semiweak verbs treated
differently from adult
semiweak forms
•Social constraints less-well
mastered

15. 16
Díaz-Campos (2005)
 36 children in 2 cohorts: ages 42-53 mos
(3;6 - 4;5) and 54-71 mos (4;6 - 5;11)
 Working (WC) and middle (MC) social
classes
 Targeted 2 speech styles
 Do children's productions fluctuate in a
manner showing sensitivity to formality?
 Examined interaction between
socioeconomic class and age (to tease
apart developmental effects)
 intervocalic /d/-spirantization
 e.g., boda [boDa]
 Findings:
 Again, preschoolers similar to adults
 Both social classes deleted more in
informal than formal styles
Venezuelan Spanish
•Deletion levels in younger
cohort suggest this is not a
maturational, but a
sociolinguistic effect:
WC=28% MC=10%
•Concludes that
preschoolers are showing
adult-like command of a
variable linguistic feature.

16. 17
Chevrot, Beaud & Varga (2000)
 60 children ages 6-7, 10-12
 Exp. 1: Studied deletion of post-
consonantal, word-final /R/ (e.g., sucre,
vinaigre, coffre)
 Exp. 2: Pseudoword experiment tests rule-
vs. lexical-based learning
 “bydeincre,” “maullopre”
 Factors tested: age, formality of situation,
phonological environment
 Findings (Exp. 1):
 6-7 yr olds deleted more than 10-12 yr olds
 more deletions in informal than in formal
style
 Following phonological environment is most
crucial predictor of deletion
 Older children show a stronger stylistic
“adaptation”
Southeastern French
 Findings (Exp. 2):
 written prompts lead to conservation
of /R/, whereas oral learning
associated with style-based
deletions commensurate with Exp. 1
 Conclusions: phonological constraint
emerges prior to age 6;
 sociolinguistic constraint emerges
around age 6-7
 lexical learning ruled out

17. 18
Limitations
•Descriptive coverage (Romance and Germanic)
•Phonological variation only
•Lexical learning not completely ruled out

18. 19
Insights from Rohan
 home environment:
English/Sinhalese/Jamaican Creole
 first words 10-12 mos (“mama,”
“dada,” “amma”)
 68 words, 14 mos
 earliest signs of phonological
variation, 17 mos
(17 mos.)

19. 20
Insights from Rohan
(1) postvocalic-r
heart, harbor, mirror*, shark
 “Amma says /ha˘t/; you [Mommy] say /ha®t/”
(23 mos.)
 “Trevor is at the ‘[ha˘ b´]’ Is it ‘/ha®˘b´®/’,
Mommy?” (23 mos.)
 “mirror” [mi®´]
 “shark” [Sa˘k] (“babytalk style”, 26 mos. to
present)
(2) tensing of short-(i) (Eastern US)
 “locomotive” [ti˘v]
 generalized to “detective”
*deletion in syllable-initial contexts prohibited (mi-ROR)
(36 mos.)

20. 21
Current Perspective
 Children do acquire socially-influenced variable patterns prior to
adolescence
 Children become socially competent language users early--as they acquire
language
 Simultaneity of acquisition of variable and categorical features makes it
difficult to defend a view that sociolinguistic competence vis a vis
acquisition of variation is layered on top of or follows “basic acquisition.”
 Adult-modeled variation may be instructive for learning styles