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Linguistic Variation
The term linguistic variation (or simply variation) refers to regional, social, or contextual differences in
the ways that a particular language is used.
Variation between languages, dialects, and speakers is known as interspeaker variation. Variation within
the language of a single speaker is called intraspeaker variation.
Since the rise of sociolinguistics in the 1960s, interest in linguistic variation (also called linguistic
variability) has developed rapidly. R.L. Trask notes that "variation, far from being peripheral and
inconsequential, is a vital part of ordinary linguistic behavior" (Key Concepts in Language and
Linguistics, 2007). The formal study of variation is known as variationist (socio)linguistics.
All aspects of language (including phonemes, morphemes, syntactic structures, and meanings) are subject
to variation.
Examples and Observations
 "Linguistic variation is central to the study of language use. In fact it is impossible to study the
language forms used in natural texts without being confronted with the issue of linguistic
variability. Variability is inherent in human language: a single speaker will use different linguistic
forms on different occasions, and different speakers of a language will express the same meanings
using different forms. Most of this variation is highly systematic: speakers of a language make
choices in pronunciation, morphology, word choice, and grammar depending on a number of non-
linguistic factors. These factors include the speaker's purpose in communication, the relationship
between speaker and hearer, the production circumstances, and various demographic affiliations
that a speaker can have."
(Randi Reppen et al., Using Corpora to Explore Linguistic Variation. John Benjamins, 2002)
 Linguistic Variation and Sociolinguistic Variation
"There are two types of language variation: linguistic and sociolinguistic. With linguistic
variation, the alternation between elements is categorically constrained by the linguistic context in
which they occur. With sociolinguistic variation, speakers can choose between elements in the
same linguistic context and, hence the alternation is probabilistic. Furthermore, the probability of
one form being chosen over another is also affected in a probabilistic way by a range of extra-
linguistic factors [e.g. the degree of (in)formality of the topic under discussion, the social status of
the speaker and of the interlocutor, the setting in which communication takes place, etc.]"
(Raymond Mougeon et al., The Sociolinguistic Competence of Immersion Students. Multilingual
Matters, 2010)
 Dialectal Variation
"A dialect is variation in grammar and vocabulary in addition to sound variations. For example, if
one person utters the sentence 'John is a farmer' and another says the same thing except
pronounces the word farmer as 'fahmuh,' then the difference is one of accent. But if one person
says something like 'You should not do that' and another says 'Ya hadn't oughta do that,' then this
is a dialect difference because the variation is greater. The extent of dialect differences is a
continuum. Some dialects are extremely different and others less so."
(Donald G. Ellis, From Language to Communication. Routledge, 1999)
 Types of Variation
"[R]egional variation is only one of many possible types of differences among speakers of the
same language. For example, there are occupational dialects (the word bugs means something
quite different to a computer programmer and an exterminator), sexual dialects (women are far
more likely than men to call a new house adorable), and educational dialects (the more education
people have, the less likely they are to use double negatives). There are dialects of age (teenagers
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have their own slang, and even the phonology of older speakers is likely to differ from that of
young speakers in the same geographical region) and dialects of social context (we do not talk the
same way to our intimate friends as we do to new acquaintances, to the paperboy, or to our
employer). . . . [R]egional dialects are only one of many types of linguistic variation."
(C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language, 3rd ed. Wadsworth,
2012)
 Linguistic Variables
- "[T]he introduction of the quantitative approach to language description has revealed
important patterns of linguistic behaviour which were previously invisible. The concept of a
sociolinguistic variable has become central to the description of speech. A variable is some point
of usage for which two or more competing forms are available in a community, with speakers
showing interesting and significant differences in the frequency with which they use one or
another of these competing forms.
"Furthermore, it has been discovered that variation is typically the vehicle of language change."
(R.L. Trask, Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics. Routledge, 1999/2005)
- "Lexical variables are fairly straightforward, as long as we can show that the two variants--such
as the choice between soda and pop for a carbonated beverage in American English--refer to the
same entity. Thus, in the case of soda and pop, we need to take into account that for many U.S.
southerners, Coke (when used to refer to a beverage and not the steel-making fuel or the illicit
narcotic) has the same referent as soda, whereas in other parts of the U.S., Coke refers to a single
brand/flavour of the beverage . . .."
Definition and Examples of Language Contact
Language contact is the social and linguistic phenomenon by which speakers of different languages (or
different dialects of the same language) interact with one another, leading to a transfer of linguistic
features.
History
"Language contact is a major factor in language change," notes Stephan Gramley, author or multiple
books on the English language. "Contact with other languages and other dialectal varieties of one
language is a source of alternative pronunciations, grammatical structures, and vocabulary." Prolonged
language contact generally leads to bilingualism or multilingualism.
Uriel Weinreich ("Languages in Contact," 1953) and Einar Haugen ("The Norwegian Language in
America," 1953) are commonly regarded as the pioneers of language-contact studies. Weinreich was the
first to note that those who learn second languages see linguistic forms from their first and second
languages as equal.
Influences
Language contact often occurs along borders or as a result of migration. The transfer of words of phrases
can be one-way or two-way. Chinese has influenced Japanese, for instance, though the reverse has not
largely been true. Two-way influence is less common and is typically restricted to specific regions.
Pidgins are often developed for trade purposes. These are a few hundred words that can be spoken
between people of different languages.
Creoles, on the other hand, are full-fledged languages that result from the blending of more than one
language and are often the first language of a person.
In recent decades the internet has brought many languages in contact, thus influencing one another.
Still, only a few languages dominate the web, influencing the others, notes the website Translate Media.
English by far predominates, along with Russian, Korean and German. Even languages spoken by
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multiple millions, such as Spanish and Arabic, have, by comparison, little representation on the internet.
As a result, English words are influencing other languages worldwide at a far greater rate as a direct result
of internet use.
In France, the English term “cloud computing” has come into common use despite efforts to get French
speakers to adopt “informatique en nuage.”
Examples and Observations
"[W]hat counts as language contact? The mere juxtaposition of two speakers of different languages, or
two texts in different languages, is too trivial to count: unless the speakers or the texts interact in some
way, there can be no transfer of linguistic features in either direction. Only when there is some interaction
does the possibility of a contact explanation for synchronic variation or diachronic change arise.
Throughout human history, most language contacts have been face to face, and most often the people
involved have a nontrivial degree of fluency in both languages. There are other possibilities, especially in
the modern world with novel means of worldwide travel and mass communication: many contacts now
occur through written language only. ...
"[L]anguage contact is the norm, not the exception. We would have a right to be astonished if we found
any language whose speakers had successfully avoided contacts with all other languages for periods
longer than one or two hundred years."
—Sarah Thomason, "Contact Explanations in Linguistics." "The Handbook of Language Contact," ed.
by Raymond Hickey. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013
"Minimally, in order to have something that we would recognize as 'language contact,' people must learn
at least some part of two or more distinct linguistic codes. And, in practice, 'language contact' is really
only acknowledged when one code becomes more similar to another code as a result of that interaction."
—Danny Law, "Language Contact, Inherited Similarity and Social Difference." John Benjamins, 2014)
Different Types of Language-Contact Situations
"Language contact is not, of course, a homogeneous phenomenon. Contact may occur between languages
which are genetically related or unrelated, speakers may have similar or vastly different social structures,
and patterns of multilingualism may also vary greatly. In some cases the entire community speaks more
than one variety, while in other cases only a subset of the population is multilingual. Lingualism and
lectalism may vary by age, by ethnicity, by gender, by social class, by education level, or by one or more
of a number of other factors. In some communities there are few constraints on the situations in which
more than one language can be used, while in others there is heavy diglossia, and each language is
confined to a particular type of social interaction. ...
"While there a great number of different language contact situations, a few come up frequently in areas
where linguists do fieldwork. One is dialect contact, for example between standard varieties of a language
and regional varieties (e.g., in France or the Arab world). ...
"A further type of language contact involves exogamous communities where more than one language
might be used within the community because its members come from different areas. ... The converse of
such communities where exogamy leads to multilingualism is an endoterogenous community which
maintains its own language for the purpose of excluding outsiders. ...
"Finally, fieldworkers particularly often work in endangered language communities where language shift
is in progress."
—Claire Bowern, "Fieldwork in Contact Situations." "The Handbook of Language Contact," ed.
by Raymond Hickey. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013
The Study of Language Contact
"Manifestations of language contact are found in a great variety of domains, including language
acquisition, language processing and production, conversation and discourse, social functions of language
and language policy, typology and language change, and more. ...
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"[T]he study of language contact is of value toward an understanding of the inner functions and the inner
structure of 'grammar' and the language faculty itself."
—Yaron Matras, "Language Contact." Cambridge University Press, 2009
"A very naive view of language contact would probably hold that speakers take bundles of formal and
functional properties, semiotic signs so to speak, from the relevant contact language and insert them into
their own language. To be sure, this view is much too simplistic and not seriously maintained any longer.
A probably more realistic view held in language contact research is that whatever kind of material is
transferred in a situation of language contact, this material necessarily experiences some sort of
modification through contact."
—Peter Siemund, "Language Contact: Constraints and Common Paths of Contact-Induced Language
Change." "Language Contact and Contact Languages," ed. by Peter Siemund and Noemi Kintana. John
Benjamins, 2008
Language Contact and Grammatical Change
"[T]he transfer of grammatical meanings and structures across languages is regular, and ... it is shaped by
universal processes of grammatical change. Using data from a wide range of languages we ... argue that
this transfer is essentially in accordance with principles of grammaticalization, and that these principles
are the same irrespective of whether or not language contact is involved, and of whether it concerns
unilateral or multilateral transfer. ...
"[W]hen embarking on the work leading to this book we were assuming that grammatical change taking
place as a result of language contact is fundamentally different from purely language-internal change.
With regard to replication, which is the central theme of the present work, this assumption turned out to
be unfounded: there is no decisive difference between the two. Language contact can and frequently does
trigger or influence the development of grammar in a number of ways; overall, however, the same kind of
processes and directionality can be observed in both. Still, there is reason to assume that language contact
in general and grammatical replication in particular may accelerate grammatical change . ..."
—Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva, "Language Contact and Grammatical Change." Cambridge University
Press, 2005
Old English and Old Norse
"Contact-induced grammaticalization is part of contact-induced grammatical change, and in the literature
of the latter it has been repeatedly pointed out that language contact often brings about loss of
grammatical categories. A frequent example given as illustration of this kind of situation involves Old
English and Old Norse, whereby Old Norse was brought to the British Isles through the heavy settlement
of Danish Vikings in the Danelaw area during the 9th to 11th centuries. The result of this language
contact is reflected in the linguistic system of Middle English, one of the characteristics of which is the
absence of grammatical gender. In this particular language contact situation, there seems to have been an
additional factor leading to the loss, namely, the genetic closeness and—accordingly—the urge to
diminish the 'functional overload' of speakers bilingual in Old English and Old Norse.
"Thus a 'functional overload' explanation seems to be a plausible way to account for what we observe in
Middle English, that is, after Old English and Old Norse had come into contact: gender assignment often
diverged in Old English and Old Norse, which would have readily led to the elimination of it in order to
avoid confusion and to lessen the strain of learning the other contrastive system."
—Tania Kuteva and Bernd Heine, "An Integrative Model of Grammaticalization." "Grammatical
Replication and Borrowability in Language Contact," ed. by Björn Wiemer, Bernhard Wälchli, and Björn
Hansen. Walter de Gruyter, 2012
Language contact and language change
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Types of contact

Any discussion of language contact and ensuing borrowing must take the various types of contact and the
results for the languages involved into account. For the present discussion one must distinguish two basic
kinds. The first is direct transfer where the effect is immediate, frequently with alteration in the structure
of the recipient language. Immediate influence on closed classes of a language (morphology and syntax)
presumes an intensity of contact and a lack of external constraints such as a notion of standard,
perpetuated by general education and a literate public. This sort of extreme social situation is most typical
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for pidgins arising in the colonial period outside of Europe but may also have occurred in the early phases
of European languages where there was little outside influence on language development in contact
situations.

The second main type can be termed delayed effect contact. The effect here is not immediate. There is no
structural upheaval in the recipient language but a gradual penetration due to prolonged exposure to
another language by large bilingual sections of a community. Characteristic for such a scenario is low-
level influence in a general sense: ‘speech habits’ migrate from one language to another. These may lead
later to structural if not indeed typological change. The development of French [y], if it has its origins in
contact with Celtic (not everyone agrees on this), must have arisen in this manner. This view of gradual
change is of course more Neogrammarian than one which presupposes the sudden appearance of a contact
phenomenon in a recipient language. If Celtic had /y/ at the time of the initial development of Vulgar
Latin to French in Gaul (which is by no means certain) then an abrupt appearance could only have
occurred in a scenario which assumes lexical diffusion: the Romance speakers started borrowing words on
a large scale from the Celts and among these words would have been some with /y/ and this pronunciation
would have then spread to encompass native sections of their vocabulary causing a shift of U to /y/.
Another possible case of delayed effect contact is found in Old English in the contact with the native Celts
of Britain. It is known that the Germanic settlers did not banish the Celts but subjugated them and the
continuous contact with the speakers of British Celtic, which had much weakening of consonants, may
have given added impetus to the phonetic attrition which is ultimately responsible for the loss of endings
and the typological re-orientation of English towards an analytic type in the Middle and Early Modern
English periods.
CODE-SWITCHING is a phenomenon where speakers move from one language to another and back
again with the same sentence. There are many speculations about why this takes place but two reasons can
be put forward: 1) speakers have become acquainted with some phenomenon in the second language and
switch to it when talking about it, 2) speakers feel that the second language is more prestigious and switch
to it to make their speech appear more fashionable.
The switching may involve single words (sometimes called ‘sugaring') or whole clauses. The latter type is
governed by strict rules about what point in a sentence can act as a pivot for the switch-over. If code-
switching is widespread in a community and becomes socially accepted then it may lead in the fullness of
time to changes in the original language just as borrowing or structural transfer has done in the cases
where it is attested.
WHAT GETS TRANSFERRED? When considering what items are borrowed when two languages are in
contact, direct or indirect, the distinction between closed and open classes is once more of direct
relevance. The main open class is the lexicon and the items most easily borrowed are independent words.
Next come free-floating discourse items such as exclamations or interjections as these are not part of the
grammatical system of a language. An example would be arrah ‘well, anyway’ from Irish which was
transferred to English and used be very common (it became too typical of this variety and nowadays
speakers tend to avoid it). What also gets transferred easily, are idioms probably because these behave
like single indivisible units and can be borrowed as a block without disturbing any further aspect of the
borrowing language.
The prototypically closed classes — morphology and syntax — are only affected if the type of contact is
direct and intense. The reason for this is simple: speakers do not alter closed classes unless there is strong
exposure to a new system. This means that a degree of bilingualism is necessary in a situation of face-to-
face contact for the elements of one language’s closed class to penetrate that of another language.
Reasons of contact
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REASONS FOR CONTACT Languages can come into contact in a variety of ways. Basically there are
two types: the first is direct contact in which speakers of one language turn up in the midst of speakers of
another (because of invasion, emigration, etc.), the second is where the contact is through the mediation of
literature or nowadays television and radio. This is the case with the contact between German and English
at the moment; the former type can be illustrated clearly with examples from history such as Scandinavian
or French contact with English.
In any contact situation there will be two possible scenarios for change. One is where lexical borrowing
takes place from language one into language two. The second is where structural interference from one
language leads to changes in language two. The essential difference is that for interference to take place,
there must be a degree of bilingualism in the community, otherwise there are no speakers to transfer
structures from a second language into their mother tongue. With an indirect contact situation borrowing
can take place without bilingualism. However in this case, the contact only results in lexical borrowing
(see German vis à vis English today). In the history of English the contact with the Scandinavians lead to
a lot of bilingualism and thus to more extensive borrowing, e.g. on the morphological level, cf. the
pronouns of the third person plural in th- which are imports from Scandinavian.
Direct contact Indirect contact

(speakers intermingle) (no mixing of speakers)

Linguistic effect

Lexical loans; Pronunciation; Structural Only lexical loans ('cultural borrowings')

Cases where attested

Scandinavian and late Old English Central French and Middle English

Low German and Swedish Modern English and Modern German

Contact and bilingualism

Contact situations have a number of further consequences for the languages involved. If contact is
accompanied by extensive bilingualism then there is a distinct tendency for both languages to simplify
morphologically to a more analytic type. This can be seen in the history of English where the periods of
contact appear to have led to an accelerated movement from a synthetic to an analytic type. The most
extreme case in this respect is that of pidgins which, given the type of imperfect bilingualism which is
characteristic of them, always result in severely analytic language types.
Bilingualism usually sorts itself out and one language wins out over the other (English over the other
languages it has been in direct contact with), unless the languages involved enter some sort of equilibrium
for social or political reasons as has happened in Belgium with French and Flemish for instance. There is
in fact an even clearer kind of stable bilingualism, called diglossia (see section on sociolinguistics above).
By this is meant a situation in which two languages (Spanish and Guaraní in Paraguay) or two distinct
varieties of the same language (Swiss and High German in Switzerland) are used side by side in separate
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spheres of life, typically in the public and private sphere. The functional distinction of the two
varieties/language guarantees their continuing existence in a speech community.
The direction of contact is determined by factors of social prestige. Of two languages one will be of
higher standing than the other. This is termed the superstrate language. The other is then the substrate
language. In a few cases where both languages are approximately equal in social status one speaks of
adstrate languages. Normally the substrate language is influenced by the superstrate one, as was the case
with England with respect to French in the late Middle Ages. An influence may be exerted by a substrate
language, but this is usually low level and not of any immediate relevance to the structure of the
superstrate language, though substrate influence may be the source of changes in cases of delayed effect
contact.
Interference is the transfer of a structure from one language into another language in which it is not
permissible (see section on contrastive linguistics above). For instance if an English speaker says in
German Ich bin gewiss, dass er nicht bereit ist, dies zu tun (based on English I'm certain that he's not
prepared to do this) then this is an item of illegal structural transfer. Equally if a German says He wants
that you come tomorrow then this is obviously modelled on the German sentence Er will, dass du morgen
kommst and again is an example of negative transfer, i.e. interference, from the mother tongue of the
speaker. Interference can be an established historical feature of a language variety if it has been accepted
across a broad front by previous generations, e.g. the Irish English construction as in I'm after eating my
dinner (= ‘I have just finished eating my dinner') is a clear interference phenomenon from Irish which
entrenched itself in the course of the early modern period.