Syntactic variation and dialect divergence

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Abstract
The problem of how to model syntactic variation has received much attention over the last few years. Some of the well-known difficulties stem from attempts to extend to the syntactic level quantitative techniques which were originally developed to handle phonological variation. In particular, the application of the sociolinguistic variable model to the syntactic domain has come in for a good deal of criticism (e.g. Lavandera, 1978; Romaine, 1981). According to the classical Labovian formulation, all variants of a given variable must share ‘sameness of (cognitive) meaning’ (1972a: 271). Considerable doubts have been voiced about whether this requirement can consistently be met at the syntactic level. The problem is thrown into even greater relief when it comes to studying the sort of syntactic variation that occurs in situations of interface between standard and vernacular varieties. It has not generally been noted that assuming direct semantic equivalence between standard and nonstandard syntactic variants presupposes that they are embedded in structurally identical grammars. That is, apparently alternating standard and vernacular forms are simply treated as distinct surface realizations of the same underlying structure. The justification for this approach rests squarely on the belief that it is possible to offer a structural definition of the intuitively available concept of ‘dialects of the same language’. According to what we might call the PANLECTAL IDENTITY HYPOTHESIS, dialects of a single language are considered to share a common grammatical‘core’ and differ only in matters of low-level realization (e.g. Agard, 1971). Variation arising out of interface between dialects that are allegedly related in this way is thus describable in terms of variable rules which operate at low levels of realization.

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