TOWARDS A SOCIAL SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- Preface -- Foreword -- Note -- I. The Social Organization of Variation and Change -- Dialect Typology: Isolation, Social Network and Phonological Structure -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Diachronic Features -- 2.1 Mergers and simplification -- 2.2 Diachronic Features: Assimilation -- 2.3 Diachronic features: Non-natural sound change -- 3. Synchronic Features -- 3.1 Allophonic complexity -- 3.2 Synchronic features: Fast speech phenomena -- 3.3 Synchronic features: Word length -- 3.4 Synchronic features: Inventories -- 4. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Dialectand Style in the Speech of Upper Class Philadelphia -- 1. Introduction -- 2. A Definition of the Upper Class -- 3. Sampling and Methods -- 4. Results -- 4.1 Philadelphia upper class vowel pronunciation -- 4.2 The speech style of the upper class -- 5. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- (ay) Goes to the City Exploring the expressive use of variation -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Are you a Detroiter? -- 3. (ay) in the Detroit Area -- 3.1 y deletion -- 3.2 Nucleus raising -- 4. The Social Value of (ay) -- 4.1 Extreme raising and key cultural themes -- 4.2 The interactional use of extreme raising -- 5. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- SocialClass and Language Variation in Bilingual Speech Communities -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Background -- 3. Minority Language Use Restriction, Social Class and the Social Stratification of Language -- 3.1 Diphthongization -- 3.2 Possessive à vs. de -- 3.3 Vas vs. vais -- 3.4 Summary -- 4. Minority Language Use Restriction, Social Class, and Linguistic Change -- 4.1 Leveling of the 3sg/pl verb distinctions -- 4.2 Interference and borrowing -- 5. Discussion -- Notes -- References -- "Why do women do this?" Sex and Gender Differences in Speech.

1. Preliminaries -- 2. Fronting and Backing Processes: Iconicity and expressive postures -- 2.1 Evidence from phonetic research -- 3. Sex and Gender Differences in Cairene Arabic -- 4. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Interactional Conditioning of Linguistic Heterogeneity -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Conceptual Framework -- 3. The Four Interactions -- 3.1 Mario -- 3.2 Paul -- 3.3 Marc -- 3.4 Guy -- 4. Selection of Cues -- 4.1 Summary -- 5. Acoustic Analysis -- 5.1 Results -- 5.2 Discussion -- 6. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Peaksand Glides in Southern States Short-a -- 1. Conflicting Reports on Southern States Short-a -- 1.1 Data Base -- 1.2 SSE vs. NSE -- 2. Pronunciation of Short-a -- 2.1 Short-a raising -- 2.2 Short-α and gliding -- 2.3 Conditions on gliding in SSE -- 2.4 Suprasegmental: Rhythm -- 2.5 Gliding: Summary -- 3. Change in Progress: Demographics -- 3.1 Gliding -- 3.2 Short-a Raising -- 4. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- Denasalization of the Velar Nasal in Tokyo Japanese: Observations in Real Time -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The velar nasal -- 3. Real Time Observations -- 4. Discussion -- Notes -- References -- II. The Linguistic Structure of Variation and Change -- Variation and Drift: Loss of Agreement in Germanic -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Subject-verb Agreement -- 2.1 First reduction -- 2.2 Second reduction -- 2.3 Unexpected innovations -- 2.4 Present variation -- 3. Strong/Weak Adjectives -- 3.1 Unexpected innovation -- 3.2 First reduction -- 3.3 Second reduction -- 3.4 Present variation -- 4. General Considerations -- 4.1 Drift -- 4.2 Innovation -- 4.3 Modularity -- 4.4 Variation -- 5. Moral -- Notes -- References -- Turning Different at the Turn of the Century: 19th Century Brazilian Portuguese -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Some Theoretical and Methodological Considerations.

3. Analysis: The Emergence of Distinctive Syntax in BP -- 4. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- Form and Function in Linguistic Variation -- 1. The Functional Hypothesis: Theoretical considerations -- 1.1 Formalizing distinctness -- 2. English Coronal Stop Deletion -- 2.1 Formal alternatives -- 3. -S Deletion in Portuguese -- 3.1 A formal analysis of -S deletion -- 3.2 -S deletion and distinctness -- 4. Denasalization in PBP -- 5. A Formal Explanation of the Portuguese Results -- 6. The Researcher's Paradox -- 7. Perception and Acquisition: The reproduction of functional constraints -- 7.1 Category strength -- 8. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- The History of the Ancient Hebrew Modal System and Labov's Rule of Compensatory Structural Change -- 1. Consonant Cluster Simplification and the Tense System of VBE -- 2. Labov's Rule of Compensatory Structural Change -- 3. Apocope and the Modal System of Ancient Hebrew -- 4. Secondary Differences Become Opposition Markers in Hebrew and VBE -- 5. The Collapse of the Old Modal System -- 6. The Rise of a New Modal System -- 7. The Use of the Present to Explain the Past -- Notes -- References -- Phonetic Evidence for the Evolution of Lexical Classes: The Case of a Montreal French Vowel Shift -- 1. Relevant Theoretical Issues -- 1.1 Chain Shifts -- 1.2 Lexical Diffusion -- 2. The MLL Vowels of Montreal French -- 3. The Corpus -- 4. Perceptual Analysis -- 5. Perceptual Results -- 5.1 Raised vowels -- 5.2 Lowered vowels -- 5.3 Exceptional Lexical Classes -- 6. Acoustic Analysis -- 7. Possible Influencing Factors -- 7.1 Etymology as a possible factor -- 7.2 Word frequency as a possible factor -- 7.3 Semantic network as a possible influencing factor -- 8. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- Phonological Rule Set Complexity in a Very Large Vocabulary Word Recognition System -- 1. Prologue -- 2. Introduction.

3. System Characteristics and Modeling Units -- 4. Phonological Components -- 4.1 Overview -- 4.2 Baseforms-only phonology -- 4.3 Medium phonology -- 4.4 Large phonology -- 5. Experiment -- 6. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- III. African-American Varieties of English -- The Origins of Variation in Guyanese -- 1. Explaining the Creole Continuum -- 2. Counterexamples to Conventional Model -- 3. New Model of Creole Development -- 3.1 The case of French creoles -- 3.2 Surinam creoles -- 4. Apparent Time Model of Language Change -- 5. The Problem of Guyanese -- 6. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- The Urbanization of Creole Phonology: Variation and Change in Jamaican (KYA) -- 1. Description of the Variable (KYA) -- 2. History of (KYA) -- 3. Two Variable Speakers: A sociolinguistic description -- 4. Acoustic Data -- 5. Variation of (KYA) in the Community -- 6. The Change Process -- 7. Conclusion: The Creole speech community -- Notes -- References -- CopulaVariabilityin Jamaican Creole and African American Vernacular English: A Reanalysis of DeCamp's Texts -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Holm's (1976, 1984) Analysis -- 3. My Reanalysis -- 3.1 __Noun Phrase -- 3.2 __Locative -- 3.3 __Adjective -- 3.4 __Verb(+ed) -- 3.5 __Verb+ing and __Verb (+continuative) -- 3.6 __gwain V and __go V -- 3.7 Copula absence by following syntactic environment reconsidered -- 3.8 Variable rule analysis of the grammatical constraints on copula absence -- 4. Summary and Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Contraction and Deletion in African American Vernacular English: Creole History and Relationship to Euro-American English -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Problems with the Contraction/Deletion Analysis -- 2.1 The first generalization -- 2.2 The second generalization -- 2.3 The third generalization -- 2.4 The fourth generalization -- 3. The Creole-Origins Hypothesis.

4. Contraction in Euro-American English. -- 5. The Preceding Environment -- 6. A New Approach to the Question of Creole Origin -- 7. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Dimensions of a Theory of Econolinguistics -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Black English Research in the Development of Linguistic Science -- 3. Toward an Integrated Theory of Economics and Linguistics -- 3.1 Models of the economic and linguistic distribution of the population -- 4. The Data and the Speakers -- 4.1 Data collection -- 4.2 Russell: Then and now -- 4.3 Leon: Then and now -- 4.4 Jojo: Then and now -- 4.5 Carlos: Then and now -- 5. Results From Long-Term Analyses of African American English -- 5.1. Copula variation -- 5.2 Nonstandard negation -- 6. Tentative Implications for Policy -- 6.1 Educational relevance -- 6.2 Implications for future research -- 7. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- William Labov: A Bibliography -- Books -- Articles -- Index.