Chapter 6. Conclusions
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Rafael Orozco
Abstract
This chapter brings together the most important conclusions drawn from our analyses of language variation and change in Barranquilla and New York City. The main findings reveal remarkable similarities in the linguistic conditioning on the expressions of futurity, possession and subject pronoun usage, respectively, in both communities, lending support to the theory of interdialectal parallelism. That is, the similarity of predictor effects found suggests that, despite the influence of language and dialect contact, the two populations are still members of the same speech community. Notwithstanding interesting differences in the effects of social predictors, the observed variation constitutes an instance of a much larger crosslinguistic evolutionary process of ongoing change that seems to have accelerated in the diasporic setting. These findings augment our knowledge of language variation and change, as they shed light on instances of morphosyntactic variation, especially those involving analytic and synthetic variants.
Abstract
This chapter brings together the most important conclusions drawn from our analyses of language variation and change in Barranquilla and New York City. The main findings reveal remarkable similarities in the linguistic conditioning on the expressions of futurity, possession and subject pronoun usage, respectively, in both communities, lending support to the theory of interdialectal parallelism. That is, the similarity of predictor effects found suggests that, despite the influence of language and dialect contact, the two populations are still members of the same speech community. Notwithstanding interesting differences in the effects of social predictors, the observed variation constitutes an instance of a much larger crosslinguistic evolutionary process of ongoing change that seems to have accelerated in the diasporic setting. These findings augment our knowledge of language variation and change, as they shed light on instances of morphosyntactic variation, especially those involving analytic and synthetic variants.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- About the author xi
- Preface xiii
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. The expression of futurity 27
- Chapter 3. The expression of nominal possession 61
- Chapter 4. Variable subject personal pronoun expression 95
- Chapter 5. Effects of social predictors 123
- Chapter 6. Conclusions 155
- References 169
- Index 187
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- About the author xi
- Preface xiii
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
- Chapter 2. The expression of futurity 27
- Chapter 3. The expression of nominal possession 61
- Chapter 4. Variable subject personal pronoun expression 95
- Chapter 5. Effects of social predictors 123
- Chapter 6. Conclusions 155
- References 169
- Index 187
