This book represents the culmination of an extended period of field work on the Palauan language, carried out while I was a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego. The book was born as a short term paper written in 1982; from a forgettable infancy, that paper grew and grew, reaching the age of majority in my dissertation at the end of 1985. Some of its offspring have gone off on their own, as indepen dent papers, as course materials, or as thoughts that have not yet com pletely materialized. Some have been disowned. The full adulthood of this study of Palauan is realized in the present book. Virtually every section of the dissertation has been rewritten, updated, or otherwise (I hope) improved. Where the dissertation was still struggling with various problems, the book has found solutions. The aim of the book remains, however, to give broad coverage of Palauan, with emphasis on A' binding, rather than to focus narrowly on a few highly specific theoretical issues. I hope to have achieved a balance between presenting the language clearly and nonprejudicially, and deal ing with various of its properties in current theoretical terms. If I have, the book should prove to be a resource for further typological study of the phenomena it describes.

Comparative work on linguistic varieties that are overall very similar can help us determine where and how exactly grammatical systems differ from one another, and how they change over time. This book explores a range of data on unfamiliar constructions across regional and social dialects.

This volume addresses an important gap in the literature on task design and second language use. Building on insights from over 50 years of research on the relationship between task demands and language use, it examines how referent similarity relates to developmentally-relevant variation in the use of nominal structures, comparative structures and abstract lexis among first and second language speakers of English. In addition to providing an empirical basis for future research on tasks, it shares both theoretical and practical information on task design, which will greatly benefit curriculum and material developers.

This volume brings together studies that combine both traditional and contemporary tools in the study of syntactic geolectal variation, with a special focus on a subset of Iberian varieties. There is an increasing body of research on syntactic micro-variation, but the interaction between dialectology (which makes use of atlases, corpora, databases, questionnaires, interviews, etc.) and formal syntactic studies has traditionally been weak (or even nonexistent), which is precisely the gap the contributions in this book aim at filling in. From a broader perspective, this collection is meant as a contribution to the subfield of linguistic variation and to the more general field of Romance linguistics, with special interest in Spanish and in other Iberian languages. The volume is meant for both researchers and students interested in linguistic variation or dialectology and, specifically, in syntactic variation in Iberian languages.

This groundbreaking collection showcases Jenny Cheshire’s influential work in bringing greater attention to quantitative analysis of socio-grammatical variation and builds upon her contributions with new lines of inquiry pushing sociolinguistic research forward. Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, the volume is structured in six parts with a particular focus on syntactic, morpho-syntactic, and discourse-pragmatic variation and change, each section turning a lens on a different aspect of socio-grammatical variation. The first sections of the volume focus on the role of structure, its relevance for sociolinguistic production and perception and the impact of social structure on formal structure. Two sections look at the interface of variationist research with other aspects of linguistic research, including generative syntax and discourse-pragmatic features. The final sections consider the importance of integrating broader external factors in socio-grammatical variation, exploring the impact of interactional pressures in the sociolinguistic environment and the role of multi-ethnic contact varieties. Taken together, this volume demonstrates the critical role of socio-grammatical variation in our understanding of language change as a holistic process.