Chapter 11. Variation of deontic constructions in spoken Catalan

Abstract

Different areas of linguistic research have given different meanings to the notion of free variation. This paper reflects on this term and variationist linguistics. We focus on the variation between prescriptive and nonstandard deontic verbal constructions in Catalan. Through a variationist lens, we use decision trees to explore 1,060 tokens of infinitive constructions with caldre, haver de, tenir de, tenir que and haver-hi que. The discussion of results is broadened to show that variationist linguistics can dismiss but not prove the existence of free variation, a notion we argue is nevertheless relevant in linguistics, whether as a fuel for more empirical studies of language use or as a label for linguistic phenomena for which no explanation is (yet) known.