Quantifying geographical variation in acceptability judgments in regional American English dialect syntax

Abstract

Abstract The acceptability of many syntactic constructions varies across speakers. In some, but not all cases, such interspeaker variation is due to speakers coming from different dialect regions. However, since neither dialect regions nor acceptability judgments are discrete, it is not always straightforward to determine when variation in a construction’s acceptability is geographically constrained. In this paper, I present one method of making this determination using the G i * statistic. I apply it to a variety of syntactic constructions, including presentative datives, so don’t I, be done my homework, intensifiers like wicked and hella, and do-support with have yet to sentences. Each shows a different geolinguistic profile, revealing different kinds of issues that quantitative analysis can shed light on. The results show fine-grained geolinguistic differences in syntactic acceptability judgments, demonstrating that the G i * statistic can be fruitfully applied to further our understanding of geographically-based variation in acceptability judgments.