When does variation indicate linguistic change in progress?

Abstract

AbstractIt is argued that two variables of Modern French (the negative particleneand the consonantlof clitic pronouns such asil) are indeed indices of ongoing linguistic change, even though this change appears to be of long duration. This conclusion is based not only on the distribution of the variables in a corpus of natural French discourse, but also on independent linguistic evidence, together with the available historical record. In the absence of adequate ‘real-time’ data, variationist analysis yielding synchronic, “apparent-time” data provides a useful means of charting the drift of the language.