The Sociolinguistics of Grammar -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Language variation, contact and change in grammar and sociolinguistics -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Language ecology, language evolution, and the actuation question -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Some consequences of thinking of languages as species -- 3. Constraints on innovations and exaptations -- 4. An ecological perspective on the phylogenetic emergence of language -- 5. Conclusions -- References -- Syntactic change -- 1. Introduction -- 2. An examination of some functionalist theories of language change -- 2.1 On the gradualness of linguistic change -- 2.2 Adult grammars and functional forces -- 2.3 Language change and the role of frequency -- 3. Against UG-based model of language change -- 3.1 UG-based approaches to morphosyntactic change and their inherent difficulties -- 3.2 History of English: Loss of V-to-I, rise of Neg-V, and Adv-V ordering -- 3.3 History of French: Loss of simple inversion, loss of V2, and loss of null subjects -- 3.4 History of Scandinavian -- 3.5 Parameters and processing principles -- 3.6 Parameters and rules -- 4. Conclusion -- References -- Language contact, linguistic variability and the construction of local identities -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Long-lasting language contact settings between dialect and Dutch in the Limburg area -- 2.1 Linguistic properties of the dative inalienable possession construction -- 3. The social stratification of the dative inalienable possession construction -- 3.1 The dialect of Montfort -- 3.2 Dutch of Heerlen -- 3.3 Place as a social construct: Oppositions in Limburg -- 3.4 How grammar allows for 'agency': The locus of individual variation -- 4. Bilingual acquisition of grammatical gender in the Randstad area -- 4.1 Monolingual acquisition of neuter gender.

4.2 Bilingual acquisition of neuter gender -- 4.3 Overuse of de in process of group identification -- 4.4 The locus of individual variation -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- The social side of syntax in multilingual Oslo -- 1. Background -- 2. Scope and goal -- 3. Data: The Oslo-UPUS-corpus -- 4. Findings and analyses -- 4.1 Overall results - interview and peer conversation -- 4.2 The linguistic context -- 4.3 The Socio-linguistic context -- 4.3.1 XSV as a sociolinguistic variable -- 4.3.2 XSV in interaction -- 5. The XSV pattern in a language contact perspective -- 5.1 The multilingual friendship network as a contact scenario -- 5.2 Emergence: Imperfect L2 learning versus intentional change -- 5.3 From participant oriented to discourse-oriented code switching -- 6. Concluding remarks -- References -- The expansion of the Preterit in Rioplatense Spanish -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1 The case in question -- 1.2 Brief notes on terminology -- 2. Background -- 2.1 Rioplatense: Sociolinguistic context -- 2.2 Previous research on Rioplatense -- 2.3 Expanding Preterits in other languages -- 2.4 Grammaticalization theory and source determination -- 3. Field and method -- 3.1 Informants and interviews -- 3.2 Analysis -- 4. Results -- 4.1 Preterit and its expansion in numbers -- 5. Contact? -- 5.1 Contact with Sicilian -- 5.2 Buenos Aires -- a high contact society? Categorical simplification as a post-contact phenomenon -- 6. Conclusion -- Abbreviations used in glosses: -- References -- Constructing diasystems -- 1. The status of multilingualism in grammatical theory -- 2. Diasystematic Construction Grammar -- 3. Diasystematic networks in Low and High German -- 3.1 Background -- 3.2 Demonstrative pronominal adverbs -- 3.3 Aspectual pseudo-coordination -- 4. Conclusion -- References -- Syntactic frames and single-word code-switching -- 1. Introduction.

2. Outline of a model of grammar -- 3. Mandarin Chinese - Norwegian single-word code-switching -- 4. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Norwegian discourse ellipses in the left periphery - interacting structural and semantic restrictions -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Ellipsis as economy - The principle of recoverability -- 3. General characteristics of the C-domain -- 4. Topic and focus in (spec,CP) -- 5. Structural restrictions in the left periphery -- 6. Interacting structural and semantic restrictions -- References -- Corpora -- The Myth of Creole "Exceptionalism" -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Creolization and linguistic change -- 3. Types of language change -- 4. The continuum of creoles and its pidgin origins -- 5. Creoles as "contact languages" -- 6. Creoles as anything BUT "exceptional languages" -- APPENDIX A -- A BIOLOGICAL PROGRAM FOR LANGUAGE -- Syntactic component -- Semantic component -- Execution of program by children -- References -- Some notes on bare noun phrases in Haitian Creole and in Gungbe -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Some properties of BNPs in Haitian Creole and Gungbe -- 3. A cross-linguistic sample of BNPs -- 3.1 A stative-vs-eventive contrast in Haitian Creole and Gungbe -- 3.2 Haitian Creole and Gungbe in the context of 'bare noun' languages -- 4. What is the structure of BNPs in Haitian Creole and Gungbe? -- 4.1 Are BNPs simply Cl(assifier)Ps or Num(ber)Ps? -- 4.2 Déprez's (2004) plural parameter -- 4.3 BNPs are DPs -- 5. Overt functional heads in Haitian Creole and Gungbe noun phrases -- 5.1 Lɔ́ and lɛ́ in Gungbe -- 5.1.1 Lɔ́ in Gungbe -- 5.1.2 Lɛ́ in Gungbe -- 5.2 La in Haitian Creole -- 5.3 Recapitulation and implications of our micro Trans-Atlantic Sprachbund comparisons -- 6. Implications for language-contact theoretical issues? -- References -- Coding in time -- 1. Introduction.

2. The J. Normann Jørgensen study and the variable (a) -- 2.1 The history of Danish (a) -- 2.2 The design of the Jørgensen 1980 study -- 2.3 The results of the J. Normann Jørgensen study: What do we know about the short (a)? -- 3. Another look at (a): The Copenhagen Study in Urban Sociolinguistics (1991) -- 3.1 Introduction: Generations -- 3.2 The variants and the coding -- 3.3 The selection of passages according to style -- 4. The LANCHART study -- 4.1 Design and coding practices -- 4.2 Results -- 5. Time is on our side -- 6. Acknowledging historicity while still avoiding radical (historical) relativism -- References -- Index.