8th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe Book of Abstracts Plenary talks 2 3 Dynamics, Variation and the brain Jürgen Erich Schmidt | Forschungsstelle Deutscher Sprachatlas, University of Marburg German dialects offer a unparalleled data situation to carry out precise research on language change. In German dialects, phonetic-cum-phonological change can be traced back in space and time for a period of one hundred years on the basis of valid empirical data. The data situation makes it possible to determine which factors play a role in triggering the different types of sound change. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how neurolinguistic methods can be used to study speaker-listener constellations between language varieties coming into contact with one another. It becomes apparent that linguistic stability, word for word phonological change and the rapid change of phonemes as a whole are accompanied by differing physiological processes in the brain for the speaker and the listener. 4 The large and the small of it: Big issues with smaller samples in the study of language variation Miriam Meyerhoff | Victoria University of Wellington Many variationists work with large corpora based on dozens or even hundreds of speakers. In addition, their analyses are based on relatively frequent variables (e.g. vowels). Much of my work on language variation has investigated variation in smaller corpora of less well-studied languages, and dealing with the issues raised by small samples has been a recurring issue for me as a sociolinguist. These include the relationship between community size and internal variation, the relationship between the individual and the group, and how we theorise and model individuals as members of larger communities or social groups, e.g. reconciling the speech community (not the idiolect) as the basic unit of analysis with recent trends to systematically model speaker as a random effect. Some of the problems I have encountered are specific to my research context but some concern issues of relevance to all variationists – they are just writ large when you start looking small. 5 Analytic and synthetic: Typological change in varieties of European languages Susanne Michaelis & Martin Haspelmath MPI-EVA Leipzig & University of Leipzig Since the early 19th century, linguists have sometimes tried to understand language change from a broader perspective, as affecting the entire character of a language. Since A.W. von Schlegel (1818), it has been commonplace to say that Latin is a synthetic language, while the Romance languages are (more) analytic, i.e. make more use of auxiliary words and periphrastic constructions of various kinds. However, the newly developed analytic constructions may again turn into fused patterns, as in the well-known case of the Romance future tense (e.g. Spanish cantar-é ‘I will sing’ from cantare habeo), a phenomenon that we call “anasynthesis”. In this talk, we address three major points regarding this broad picture: (i) We discuss the basic question of how to distinguish analytic and synthetic patterns in the first place, noting that the distinction if understood synchronically rests on the conceot of “(auxiliary) word”, which is not well-defined except in a trivial orthographic sense. But there is no question that a diachronic process of “analyticizing” or “refunctionalizing” is widespread and is involved in a substantial number of salient grammatical innovations. (ii) We highlight the strongly analyticizing developments in creole languages, based on examples from the “Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures” (2013). Compared to other Romance varieties, especially of course the standard varieties, all creoles show drastic loss of inflectional markers, their replacement by new function items, and/or the development of novel function items, mostly from earlier lexical roots. (iii) We propose an explanation of these developments on the basis of the contact history of these languages, invoking general principles of contact-induced grammatical change, and we ask whether similar differences can be found within some of the major language families (e.g. with French being more analytic than Spanish, or Bulgarian more analytic than Russian), or even within the major languages (with some vernacular varieties being more analytic than the standard varieties). 6 Panels 7 PANEL 1: Quantitative and qualitative approaches to language (de)standardization ORGANISERS Stefan Grondelaers | Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen Jürgen Jaspers | Université Libre de Bruxelles The alleged ‘destandardization’ in many European languages (Deumert & Vandenbussche 2003) has spawned a great number of quantitative (experimental) and qualitative (discourse- analytic) investigations into the perceptual factors believed to motor (standard) language change. It is typical for the indifferent relationship between these methods that their joint interest in (de)standardization has scarcely engendered any co-operation. This workshop intends to facilitate such a détente in order to demonstrate that both perspectives are needed to obtain an accurate picture of the present-day dynamics in standard languages. Quantitative approaches usually rely on the speaker evaluation design (Lambert et al. 1966), in which participants evaluate speech clips (representing different varieties) on a number of adjectival measures. In view of the fact that these experiments are rigidly controlled to exclude non-relevant perception triggers, more qualitatively inclined researchers typically deplore their limited contextual sensitivity. Qualitative analysis comes in a number of shapes. Discourse-analytic approaches (Van Hoof & Jaspers 2012) build on primary sources (such as post-war propagandistic documents) to uncover language ideology (change). A second brand of qualitative analysis proposes interactional micro-analysis of a small number of case studies in convergence with the idea that the social meaning of linguistic features is relative to the unfolding interaction in a specific context. Quantitative researchers deplore the empirical austerity of such approaches, and question the relation between the proposed case studies and the discourses they are said to exemplify. Unsurprisingly, quantitative and qualitative accounts of standard language (change) often result in very different assessments and predictions. In Flanders for example, corpus counts and experimental investigations such as Grondelaers, Van Hout & Speelman (2011) and Grondelaers & Speelman (2013) support the idea of a destandardizing official standard variety, and a (re)standardizing colloquial variety. Qualitative investigations such as Van Hoof and Jaspers (2012), by contrast, conclude that the deeply engrained hierarchization of varieties brought about by the Flemish hyperstandardization has not changed drastically, as a result of which the current Flemish standard language situation had better be qualified as a case of “late standardization”, in which standardizing and vernacularising forces are conditioning each-other, rather than cancelling each-other out. Such diametrically different predictions are not entirely exceptional in current (de)standardization research (compare, for example, Kristiansen’s (2002, 2009) experimental accounts of de- and restandardization in Danish with discourse-analytical work by Madsen (2013) and Stæhr (2014), or experimental accounts of destandardization in the UK with Rampton’s (2006) insistence on the continuing relevance of a Cockney-‘posh’ dyad in adolescents’ speech practices). Does this divergence result simply from the different methodologies, from the micro- or macroscopic focus, or from (ideologically determined) different meta-beliefs? 8 1. Flemish Dutch is destandardizing: Evidence from speaker evaluation Stefan Grondelaers | Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen Dirk Speelman | Quantitative lexicology and Variational Linguistics, University of Leuven Roeland van Hout | Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen 2. Language ideology in sociolinguistic change: Quantitative and Qualitative studies in Denmark Tore Kristiansen | LANCHART, University of Copenhagen Nicolai Pharao | LANCHART, University of CopenHagen Marie Maegaard | LANCHART, University of CopenHagen Janus Møller | LANCHART, University of CopenHagen 3. Teachers’ and pupils’ strategies in dealing with monolingual, SLI-driven language-in-education policies in Flanders Steven Delarue | GHent University (Belgium) Inge Van Lancker | GHent University (Belgium) 4. Standard and ColloQuial Belgian Dutch pronouns of address: A variationist- interactional study of child-directed speech in dinner table interactions Dorien van de Mieroop | KU Leuven Eline Zenner | KU Leuven Stefania Marzo | KU Leuven 5. Delineating standard and non-standard varieties: on the need to combine perceptual and productive data Anne-Sophie Ghyselen | University of Ghent 6. Flemish Dutch is not destandardizing: Evidence from ethnographic and discourse-analytic analysis Jürgen Jaspers | Université Libre de Bruxelles 7. Re-labelling standard speech – Reformulating sociolinguistic values Lian Malai Madsen | LANCHART, University of Copenhagen 8. The dynamics of multistandardisation and diversification in a dialect area Leonie Cornips | Meertens Instituut Amsterdam & University of MaastricHt Vincent de Rooij | University of Amsterdam 9. Implicit measures of automatic evaluation: Exploring new Quantitative methods to measure the perception of