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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals

J.K. Chambers

Abstract

Vernacular universals arise in the context of sociolinguistic dialectology as

generalizations about intralinguistic variation, and their universal status is

emerging from analyses of putative crosslinguistic counterparts. The external

factors that underlie them have distinctive social and functional aspects. I

exemplify them by examining one of them, default singulars, a specific type of

copula nonconcord. In English, default singulars occur as invariant was (as in They

was too sick to travel). Socially, default singulars appear to develop naturally in

the absence of contact models, as dramatically illustrated by Schreiers work

(2002) on Tristan da Cunha. Functionally, they appear to result from stripping

away inflectional redundancies, especially when they involve complex look-up

mechanisms. Vernacular universals, unlike UG-based generalizations, are

identified partly in terms of their social patterning, in so far as there are regularities

in the way they are socially embedded, and this added dimension may provide a

concrete basis for coming to grips with them.

1. Introduction

2. Vernacular universals

3. Dynamic typology

4. Default singulars5. Linguistic constraints

6. Finding the baseline

7. Contact and language change

8. Worldliness and speech

9. Primitive and learned features

10. Nonconcord as a natural

tendency11. Grammatical constraints

12. Variationist typology

1. Introduction

At the dawn of the Chomskyan era, many people believed that progress in

linguistics would come from the discovery of principles that allowed

generalizations across language boundaries. Thus Roman Jakobson said,

We all seem to agree that linguistics is passing from the bare study of

variegated languages and language families, through systematic

TYPOLOGICAL research and gradual INTEGRATION, to become a thoroughly

universal science of language (Jakobson 1963: 275). That historical thrust

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128 J.K. Chambers

was waylaid, however, by the rise of Chomskyan syntax into the

mainstream in the 1960s, and by the parallel rise of sociolinguistics starting

at the same time and reaching mainstream status soon after.

Neither theoretical syntax nor sociolinguistic variation studies made

explicit claims about possible tie-ins with language typology. Chomskys

goals were implicitly typological, to the extent that they were oriented

toward universal grammar. The typological void remains, for that school,

an accidental gap. Sociolinguists, for their part, have been preoccupied with

discovering the distribution of types and tokens in real communities, and

only recently have begun to look beyond their own borders. As

sociolinguistics becomes less restricted to local events, it becomes

comparative and, as the comparative aspect gains weight, cross-linguistic

generalizations not only become possible but inevitable. Those

generalizations are typological, and, as I show below, have universalimplications.

2. Vernacular universals

Sociolinguists have amassed copious evidence in the past 35 years for a

surprising conclusion: a small number of phonological and grammatical

processes recur in vernaculars wherever they are spoken. This conclusion

follows from the observation that, no matter where in the world the vernac-

ulars are spoken Newfoundland, Harlem, Ocracoke, Ballymacarrett,

Tyneside, Buckie, the Fens, the Falklands, inner-city Sydney these

features inevitably occur.

Their ubiquity has one of two possible explanations. Either the features

were diffused there by the founders of the dialect, or they developed there

independently as natural structural linguistic developments. As I have

shown at greater length elsewhere (Chambers 2003: 266270), the

diffusionist explanation is implausible because of geographic spread. It is

also implausible linguistically, because these features occur not only in

working-class and rural vernaculars but also in child language, pidgins,

creoles and interlanguage varieties. Therefore, they appear to be natural

outgrowths, so to speak, of the language faculty, that is, the species-specific

bioprogram that allows (indeed, requires) normal human beings to become

homo loquens.I have characterized these recurring natural processes as vernacular

roots (Chambers 2003: 266270). The best candidates, based on their

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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 129recurrence, are listed below with alternative names and a simple English

example:

(ng) or alveolar substitution in final unstressed -ing, as in walkin,

talkinand runnin.

(CC) or morpheme-final consonant cluster simplification, as in pos

office, hanful.

final obstruent devoicing, as in hundret (for hundred), cubbert (for

cupboard)

conjugation regularization, or leveling of irregular verb forms, as in

Yesterday John seen the eclipse andMary heared the good news.

default singulars, or subject-verb nonconcord, as in They was the last

ones.

multiple negation, or negative concord, as inHe didnt see nothing. copula absence, or copula deletion, as in She smart or We going as

soon as possible.

Linguistically, these processes include some phonological ones (the first

three) and some grammatical ones (the other four). That raises the ultimate

challenge of bringing them together in a unified theory, though that may be

a premature concern until the framework is better understood. Elsewhere, I

have discussed morpheme-final consonant cluster simplification,

symbolized (CC), and conjugation regularization (Chambers 2003: 258

265), final obstruent devoicing (Chambers 2000), and multiple negation

(Chambers 2001) in detail and explored some of their implications asvernacular roots. In this article, I will deal mainly with default singulars.

3. Dynamic typology

I have listed the vernacular universals with their English names and

illustrated them with English examples. This is misleading. In so far as

these processes arise naturally in pidgins, child language, vernaculars, and

elsewhere, they are primitive features, not learned. As such, they belong to

the language faculty, the innate set of rules and representations that are the

natural inheritance of every human being. They cannot be merely English.

They must have counterparts in the other languages of the world that aredemonstrably the outgrowths of the same rules and representations in the

bioprogram.

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130 J.K. Chambers

Here, then, is where sociolinguistics intersects with typology. Luckily,

just as variation studies have evolved since Jakobsons time, so have

typological studies. Vernacular universals provide a potential resource for

typologists working within the dynamic framework characterized by

Kortmann (1997: 13): typology does not stop at accounting for (limits of)

variation across languages, but tries to give a unified account of

intralinguistic variation, crosslinguistic variation, and variation over time as

essentially the same external factors are held to underlie all three types of

variation. Like Kortmann, my goal is to make some progress toward

Crofts dynamic paradigm, in which the study of all types of linguistic

variation cross-linguistic (typology), intralinguistic (sociolinguistics and

language acquisition) and diachronic (historical linguistics) are unified

(Croft 1990: 258259).

Vernacular universals arise in the context of sociolinguistic dialectologyas generalizations about intralinguistic variation (so far mainly from

English dialects) but their universal status is emerging from analyses of

putative crosslinguistic counterparts. The factors that underlie them have

distinct cognitive and functional aspects. Socially, the vernacular universals

appear to fall into well-defined patterns in the acrolect-basilect hierarchy,

but functionally there appear to be several disparate principles at work

(from motor economy to cognitive overload). Unifying the functional

principles into a few empirically defensible cognitive strategies may be too

much to ask of any branch of linguistics at this time, important though it is

to try.

Vernacular universals raise the same challenges for typological analysisas do UG-based generalizations. To establish a claim for universality, it is

necessary to compare processes that occur in two or more languages. One

challenge arises in finding (or developing) descriptions at comparable

analytic depth in the two (or more) languages, and another arises from

determining equivalence between crosslinguistic categories. Unlike

grammar-based generalizations, however, vernacular universals are

identified partly in terms of their social patterning, in so far as there are

regularities in the way they are socially embedded, and this added

dimension may provide a concrete basis for coming to grips with them.

I can make many of these points concrete by looking in some detail at

the process of default singulars.

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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 1314. Default singulars

The grammatical phenomenon I am calling default singulars is

exemplified in this sentence from Feagins research in Anniston, Alabama

(1979: 202):

I seen three rats, butthey was all too far off to shoot.

Here, the subject of the second clause, they (= three rats), is plural, but the

verb form was is singular. In traditional grammar terms, the verb fails to

agree with the subject in number. Constructions like these are not

acceptable in standard English dialects anywhere in the world except in

highly restricted grammatical environments (discussed below). All standard

dialects require number concord between subject and verb be. Thenonconcord pattern in which was occurs with all subjects, though

nonstandard, occurs globally in vernacular dialects in various parts of the

world. Britain (2002: 17) identifies this as the first and most common of

two broad dominant patterns of past be across varieties of English,

defined as follows:

Vernacular Pattern 1: WAS occurs variably for standard WERE

throughout the paradigm, both affirmative and negative.

Its global distribution is evident from the fact that it is reported in Sydney,

Australia (Eisikovits 1991), Buckie, Scotland, Nova Scotia, Saman (allTagliamonte and Smith 2000), all varieties of African-American English,

and many other vernaculars.

There is a second pattern identified by Britain (2002: 19) as follows:

Vernacular Pattern 2: WAS occurs variably for standard WERE

in affirmatives, and WERENT in negatives.

Whereas in Pattern 1, the negated verb remains singular the boys was

interested, but the girls wasnt in the second pattern the verb form

changes when it is negated the boys was interested, but the girls werent.

It also occurs with singular subjects when the verb is negated, as in Johnny

werent interested at all. This pattern also has fairly wide distribution inEnglish vernaculars, being reported in North Carolina varieties (Ocracoke,

Lumbee, etc., in Schilling-Estes and Wolfram 1994; Wolfram and Sellers

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132 J.K. Chambers

1999), Reading (Cheshire 1989), and the Fens (Britain 2002); for a Britain-

wide survey, see Anderwald (2002). It remains to be seen whether its

distribution is global.

What I call default singular explicitly refers to Vernacular Pattern 1.

That is, it is purposely intended to specify the co-occurrence of the

unmarked verb form (the singular in standard dialects) with all subjects,

regardless of number. There is ample evidence that it is the basic vernacular

system, with was and wasnt in all persons and numbers. Clearly,

Vernacular Pattern 2, with was in affirmative and werentin negative, adds

a grammatical complication by, in effect, requiring the bound suppletive

form were when the negative clitic occurs. It represents movement in the

direction of a concord system, and in fact imports the standard plural

concord form (were) to do so. It appears to be at least one step removed

from the basilect. Wolfram and Sellers (1999) add evidence from diffusionto arrive at the same conclusion. They note that leveling to was [i.e.,

Vernacular Pattern 1] may occur as an independent innovation, but

Vernacular Pattern 2 is learned in the sense that cases of leveling to

were/nt in the United States appear to be traceable to influence from

British-based donor dialects (1999: 109).

Vernacular Pattern 1 is simpler, and, by definition, more basic. If my

assumption is correct, then eventually we should find evidence in some

vernacular dialects for Pattern 2 developing out of Pattern 1. As we will see

below, Schreier (2002) provides evidence for Vernacular Pattern 1 coming

into being spontaneously in an isolated speech community. This is further

evidence for its basilectal status.

5. Linguistic constraints

We now know that the nonstandard default singulars and the standard

concord patterns are poles on a continuum. In between, there is a graded

hierarchy in which concord occurs more frequently with certain types of

subjects than others. Two of them are so well known as to have their own

names (Britain 2002: 1920):

The existential constraint (E below): WAS is most frequent after

there.

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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 133Northern Subject Rule (B below): WAS is more frequent after

nonpronominal plural nouns (NPpl) than after pronouns.

So robust is the existential constraint (E) that it even intrudes into standard

dialects, allowing nonconcord variants such as Theres too many

McDonalds in Helsinki alongside regular constructions like Therere too

many. Nonconcord after expletive there is the only exception to invariant

concord in standard dialects (and even such nonconcord variants are often

inveighed against in usage guides, notwithstanding their frequency in

conversation). The Northern Subject rule (B) is named for the English

region where it appears to have become established as a rule-like process.

According to the Northern Subject Rule, plural nouns (as opposed to

pronouns) prohibit or at least inhibit concord in some dialects.

In actual speech communities, other subject types are graded along withplural nouns (NPpl) and existentials (there) in terms of the frequency of

default singulars that co-occur with them. The hierarchy was first

established, in my experience, by Feagin (1979), in her study of Anniston,

Alabama. She showed that the subject-types were graded from (A) to (E),

where (A) is the most inhibiting context for default singulars and (E) is the

most permissive, as in the following examples (slightly simplified from

Feagins originals as in Chambers and Trudgill 1998: 134136):

(A) they They was all born in Georgia, mama and my daddy

both.

(B) NPpl All the student teachers was comin out toWellborn.

(C) we We was in an ideal place for it.

(D)you You was a majorette?

(E) there There was about twenty-somethin boys and just

four girls.

The hierarchy is implicational. If a dialect permits default singulars afterwe

(C), then it permits them in the subject categories below it (D and E), but

not necessarily vice-versa. While this hierarchy holds for Anniston, there

is, as we shall see below, some variability in the hierarchy in different

communities. As always, the most predictable constraints are found at the

poles of the dialect continuum, the acrolect and basilect. Standard dialects(acrolects) permit default singulars variably in (E), but nowhere else (and

there are no categories below it). The deepest basilect variety has default

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134 J.K. Chambers

singulars in all contexts from (A) to (E), apparently invariably; in other

words, basilects have no concord rules at all. I can say this with greater

confidence than ever before because of recent studies of the English spoken

on Tristan da Cunha by Daniel Schreier (2002), for reasons discussed in the

sections below.

6. Finding the baseline

Tristan da Cunha (TdC) can be called the sociolinguists Galapagos. It is a

South Atlantic island, and perhaps the most isolated inhabited territory in

the world. It was colonized in 18201840 by British army personnel,

shipwrecked sailors and American whalers (Schreier 2002: 77). The arrival

of women from St. Helena Island in 1827 (Schreier 2002: 92) led to thefirst generation of native Tristanians in the years immediately following.

After 1869, when the Suez Canal was completed, Tristan da Cunha became

increasingly isolated, because the canal diverted traffic that formerly went

around the Cape and passed within hailing distance. In the half-century

from 1850 to 1900, the island received only three new settlers a weaver

from Yorkshire and two Italian sailors (Schreier 2002: 77).

The worst was yet to come. Schreier (2002: 77) says, The sociocultural

isolation of TdC peaked in the early twentieth century. Between 1900 and

1940, the Tristanians were pretty much on their own. There was no mail at

all for one ten-year period, and no ships for three years (Schreier 2002: 93).

Left to their own devices, the islanders developed strong networks and

extremely dense and multiplex ties (Schreier 2002: 93). There was only

one village, no formal education (until 1942), almost indistinguishable

gender roles, and, Schreier says, no social ranks.

In this closed, egalitarian society, the disparate dialects of the

immigrants were leveled by their offspring into a more or less uniform or

focused variety. It is predictable that New-World societies will go through

an astounding linguistic homogenization in the first generation (Chambers

2003: 65). In TdC, with virtually no social barriers and everyone in close

proximity every day, the homogenization may well have been nearly

complete, with the Tristanians shucking off even subtle variants in favour

of neighbourly norms.

One of the more striking developments involved default singulars.Colonists dialects were known to have had variable concord marking,

Schreier says (2002: 91): that is, both was and were could occur with

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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 135plural subjects in the English of the immigrant population. However, the

offspring of the immigrant generations, the native Tristanians, eliminated

concord from the dialect and adopted invariant was regardless of subject

number. That is, default singulars became the rule, categorically.

It is important to recognize that, as Schreier (2002: 92) says,

Categorical was regularization in early twentieth-century TdCE was

innovative rather than retentive. In other words, default singulars

developed as an invariant feature out of diverse source dialects in which it

had been only one of the variants. Schreier develops the following scenario:

Once homogeneity [of categorical was] emerged and was in place, it was

sustained by external factors such as immobility, isolation, and close-knit

social networks. the interplay of these factors leads to acceleration

(or, in extremis, to the completion) of language-inherent changes and to the

thriving of vernacular roots (2002: 93).Significantly, as Schreier makes clear in this quotation, he has

discovered a community in which default singulars, one of the vernacular

roots as described above, diffused throughout the community as a natural

development. The social conditions were decidedly eccentric, with total

absence of mobility, almost no contact with outside groups and no

immigration for several generations. Because there was little formal

education and limited literacy, there was not even a codified standard

language to measure the vernacular against.

TdC society seems to be rudimentary even compared to pidgin and

creole societies, because in the latter there are iron-clad social ranks and

occupational hierarchies, with the more-or-less standard speaking bosses atone end and the creole-speaking workers, often slaves historically, at the

other. Before Schreier, sociolinguists perhaps never came upon a

community in which the basilect developed in the complete absence of an

acrolectal superstrate. The superimposition of an acrolect has well-known

consequences. It means that many basilectal speakers will accommodate to

some processes from the higher styles, resulting in the creole continuum.

It also means that, by the time linguists come along with their tape

recorders and notebooks, basilectal forms are liable to be mixed with

intrusive variants by the process of decreolization. As far as I know, TdC in

the period from 18501945 is the only society ever studied in which there

was no stylistic continuum and no accommodation. The vernacular that

developed there out of the original dialect mixing had a kind of free choicein the absence of varieties that carried social values of prestige, learning or

power.

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136 J.K. Chambers

7. Contact and language change

The extreme isolation in which the native TdC vernacular developed could

not last. Since 1950, improved transportation, first with speedier water

travel and then with air transport, made the island more accessible to

outsiders and gave the islanders access to the outside world. Education

programs were instituted and British officials were posted there as teachers

and governors, joining the adventurers and wayfarers who found their way

to the island.

The linguistic results are predictable. As Schreier (2002: 94) points out,

variation began occurring after the recent emergence of the community

from insularity. The interlopers used non-local forms, and literacy, which

encodes standard grammar as its norm and prescribes it, became general in

a couple of generations. Standard forms began seeping into local speech,not with the force of a knockout but variably, at first as minor affectations

in the speech of a few Tristanians, and then more commonly, until they

eventually went unnoticed.

So default singulars were no longer invariable. For the generation born

and raised after 1950, it was possible to say They were tired out and we

were too, though in some sense everyone knew (and still knows) that the

normal, unaffected way of saying it is They was tired out and we was too.

Schreier (2002: 85, 88) compared the use of those Tristanians born and

raised in the isolated period with younger ones. Figure 1 shows the

difference. The traditional Tristanians almost never use the concord form,

were, as expected; but the younger Tristanians sometimes do. (Schreierprovides results for women only in the younger group, and they are, he

notes, ahead of men in the same age group, as expected in this

standardizing change.) The gradualness of the change is evident in the

infrequency with which the concord form occurs in the speech of the

younger people never more than half the time and usually much less.

The highest frequency for standard concord occurs in sentences with

you subjects (as in You were tired), at 50 percent. This violates the subject

hierarchy discussed in section 4 above, which is expected to show

descending frequencies from the left to the right on the X-axis, from they as

the most frequent subject for concord to there as the least. Apart from the

unruly behaviour ofyou, however, the hierarchy holds. With that lone

exception, the introduction of subject-verb concord in TdC English isproceeding according to the subject hierarchy established in faraway places

like Anniston and inner-city Sydney.

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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 137

Figure 1.Percentage of standard were with grammatical subjects in Tristan daCunha in isolated period (18501945) and after (based on Schreier 2002:

Table 3, 85 and Table 5, 88; TdC after 1950 percentages are calculated

by combining Schreiers Young and Middle groups in Table 5, p. 88).

8. Worldliness and speech

Emergence from extreme isolation in Tristan da Cunha brought numerouschanges, and some of them are linguistic. As in the case of default

singulars, the local norm is giving way variably to norms imported from

outside. The local norm remains, as we have seen, but it is now one

possibility among others. In this respect, Tristan da Cunha is not unique in

any way. There is a law-like relationship between what might be called

worldliness and speech. Put simply, the more urban and mobile the social

setting, the more standard the speech.

Sociolinguistic research on default singulars by several linguists in

widely separated communities over two or three decades provides the most

striking empirical evidence for urbanity and mobility as promulgators of

standard speech. Schreier (2002: Table 3, 85) tabulates several studies ofnonconcord. By a happy accident, it turns out that the studies have taken

place in settings distinguishable in terms of size, urbanization and

they NPpl we you there0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

%standardWERE

Grammatical subject

Tristan da Cunha 1850-1945

Tristan da Cunha after 1950 (womenonly)

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138 J.K. Chambers

movement. Sydney, Australia (Eisikovits 1991) and York, England

(Tagliamonte 1998) are large cities in highly urbanized regions; Anniston,

Alabama (Feagin 1979) is a mid-sized city at the hub of a rural region in

the American south; the Fens (Britain 2002) are an agricultural region in

the east Midlands of England; and Tristan da Cunha (Schreier 2002) is the

closeted Atlantic island. The studies of default singulars in these places

were undertaken independently, without reference to one another, and

separated by vast geographical distances. They are comparable because of

their shared methodologies, as quantitative variationist studies.

The comparison as shown in Figure 2 makes a stunning demonstration

of the dialect law of worldliness and speech. The communities show a wide

range of variation, from nearly pure standard concord (100 percent) to its

complete absence. The communities are stratified, and the stratification

correlates robustly it is not hyperbolic to say brilliantly, even exquisitely with urban complexity, from York and Sydney at the standard extreme,

through Anniston and the Fens in the mid region, to Tristan da Cunha at the

bottom. Equally brilliant is the discovery that the grammatical subject

hierarchy holds in all these disparate settings with only a few minor

discrepancies.

Figure 2. Percentage of standard were with grammatical subjects in five commun-

ities (based on data compiled by Schreier 2002: Table 3, 85)

c

c

cc

c

they NPpl we you there

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

%standardWERE

Grammatical subject

Tristan da Cunha (1850-1945)

Fens

Anniston

Sydney

York

c

c

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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 1399. Primitive and learned features

The intrusion of standard forms in default singulars in Tristan da Cunha (as

in Figure 1) provides the best empirical evidence so far for the theory of

Vernacular Roots. The core of the theory maintains that the standard

dialect differs from other dialects by resisting certain natural tendencies in

the grammar and phonology (Chambers 2003: 254). The basilectal form is

PRIMITIVE, part of the innate bioprogram, and the standard is LEARNED, an

experiential excrescence on the bioprogram. Finding the basilect in what

might be called a pure state is rare, because human well-being entails

outbreeding and social intercourse and also perhaps barter and territorial

expansion, all of which break down barriers. Socialization beyond the tribe

requires infrastructure, including ranks and protocols. It also, evidently,

fosters linguistic norms, superimposed on primitive forms. Kroch (1978:18)was perhaps first to recognize that language standardization is ideological,

with learned linguistic constraints originating as markers of status and rank.

Figure 2, with its strata of linguistic complexity layered according to social

complexity, provides a graphic demonstration.

Finding the basilectal form in its unadulterated state is uncommon.

Pidgins make the most likely sites, as Bickerton (1981) has argued, but by

the time linguists arrive pidgins are creolized at the very least, and the

purest basilectal form must be inferred from the creole continuum.

Schreiers discovery on Tristan da Cunha represents a breakthrough

because the default singulars in their pure basilectal form there are

palpable. Moreover, he has shown that they came into being as a naturalregression to primitive linguistic instincts, a conclusion that follows from

an apparent-time inference of very shallow time depth and therefore seems

virtually incontrovertible.

10. Nonconcord as a natural tendency

The theory of vernacular roots rests squarely on the assumption that

basilectal forms are in some demonstrable sense more natural than

standard forms. Demonstrating naturalness seems relatively easy for

phonological processes compared to grammatical ones (and perhaps for that

reason Kroch 1978 considered only phonology). For example, consonantcluster simplification (CC) represents economies in articulatory (motor)

gestures that are quantifiable (Chambers 2003: 258259). Principles that

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140 J.K. Chambers

might underlie natural grammatical processes are never so concrete. In

previous discussions, for conjugation regularization I have proposed an

underlying principle of cognitive overload (Chambers 2003: 260, based on

Pinker and Prince 1999, whereby idiosyncratic retrieval of strong forms

carries higher cost than rule-governed or inferable generalizations), and for

multiple negation an underlying principle of compositionality (Chambers

2001, based on Giannikidou 2000, whereby the morphosyntax carries more

than one negative marker but the semantic interpretation is a single

negative; by compositionality Giannikidou means that semantic

interpretation should be determined by morphosyntax).

For default singulars, a plausible principle suggests itself readily.

Nonconcord is structure-independent. Looked at from the top down, so to

speak, concord in standard dialects exacts a processing cost with no

information gain. Specifying number (and in some languages person andgender) in the verb replicates information already explicit in the subject.

Putting the inflectional markers in place requires identifying the subject,

analyzing its properties, and encoding some of those properties as

inflectional morphemes in the verb. It is structure-dependent in that it

requires a look-back mechanism to match number in the verb with number

in the subject. It gets more complicated when the subject is a dummy, like

there, because it then requires a look-forward mechanism to find the

number of the semantic subject that there represents (a point I return to

below). The information encoded by concord markers in the verb is

absolutely redundant.

Avoiding absolute redundancy seems like a sound principle for any kindof processing device, including the language faculty. In that sense, it has a

kind of intuitive credibility that is about the same as motor economy as an

explanation for (CC). It is perhaps a bit disquieting, I admit, to realize that

it adds yet another explanation for the naturalness of primitive processes,

along with the aforementioned cognitive overload and compositionality.

Offsetting that, I must say that these principles do not appear to be

unrelated. It seems to me that notions like these might ultimately be seen as

belonging to one or perhaps two more general principles of linguistic

cognition. What those general principles might look like awaits a day when

they are better understood, perhaps in some unforeseeable time when an

enlightened psycholinguistics will make real headway on linguistic

processing. It is important, it seems to me, to seek naturalness explanationsif only to accumulate best-guesses that might eventually stimulate more

concrete explorations into the workings of the language faculty.

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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 14111. Grammatical constraints

Turning to the grammatical constraints, the remarkably regular hierarchy of

subject-types that promote or inhibit verb concord, we can see that

hierarchy as a kind of evolutionary scale along which concord replaces

basilectal nonconcord. Though the hierarchy is remarkably orderly across

heterogeneous social and geographical boundaries, it will be evident that

attempts to explain the hierarchy differ in kind from attempts to explain

primitive processes because they require appeals not to general cognitive

processes but to specific English grammatical features.

Starting with expletive there, the subject form that promotes nonconcord

all the way up to the acrolect, there itself is inherently numberless, and thus

dictates nothing at all for agreement marking. Concord in there-sentences

comes from the following subject NP, which requires a look-aheadprocessor, but other concords require looking back. On both counts

inherent numberlessness of there, and the unique look-ahead processor to

the logical subject there promotes nonconcord. Expletive subjects other

than there, in dialects that have them, promote nonconcord in exactly the

same way. Tristan da Cunha and many other dialects have expletive it, as in

At that time it was no gas stoves (Schreier 2002: 84). Unlike there,

expletive it is inherently singular, but like there, concord requires a look-

ahead processor. In theory, it should promote nonconcord more strongly

than there, and it probably does.

The second most resistant site for concord is afteryou subjects. In

English,you is syncretically singular and plural, since the 15th century lossof singular thou. Its ambiguity may occasionally confound concord in the

stream of speech.

The other subjects, we, they and NPpl, have no semantic or grammatical

feature that distinguishes among them, or at least none that is discernible so

far. As such, their order in the hierarchy should be arbitrary, and one of the

empirical consequences should be that they are ordered differently in

different communities. In fact, they appear to be re-ordered (or dis-ordered)

in Buckie Scots and Saman (Tagliamonte and Smith 2000). Another

intimation of arbitrariness at the high end of the hierarchy is visible in

Figure 2 above, where Sydney and Anniston show a slight preference for

NPpl overthey, contrary to the expected order.

My main point in all this is to show that there is a fundamentaldifference between attempts at explaining the primitiveness of default

singulars and attempts at explaining the subject hierarchy that promotes

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142 J.K. Chambers

them. The latter is accidental, couched as it is in language-specific

idiosyncrasies such as numberless there and syncretic you. Because the

hierarchy hinges upon English-specific facts, it has little generality, and

obviously no claim to universality. Other languages may (or may not) have

hierarchies of subject forms that promote nonconcord, but it would be a

great coincidence if their hierarchies were the same as in English, or even

similar. They too, presumably, would be determined by facts about

language-specific morphemes and syntax.

Default singulars and the other root vernacular features, by contrast,

cannot be language-specific. They must be universal. As primitive features

of the language faculty, they cannot be English-specific. Default singulars

presumably arise naturally in all languages just as they did in Tristan da

Cunha, and get overlaid with learned features in the process of

standardization as they did in Sydney and York. My discussion of thesematters depends on English much more than I would like, but careful,

detailed, broad-based studies of vernaculars exist for English and are

virtually nonexistent for other languages. (Even non-English sociolinguists

tend to work on English vernaculars rather than vernaculars closer to home,

as Edgar Schneider, Heinrich Ramisch, Terttu Nevalainen, Jean-Marc

Gachelin, Mieko Ogura, and many other distinguished scholars.) There

may be a feudal residue behind this. I once asked a German professor how

multiple negatives worked in his language, and when it became clear to him

that I was asking him about the speech he might have heard from house

painters and auto mechanics, he replied that he did not think such people

would use such language in his presence, and certainly not to him.Mechanics and other workers sometimes do use such language with

professors in North America and many other English-speaking regions.)

Stuck with adequate analyses mainly from English, I take some solace in

Chomskys precedent for using available resources with the aim of finding,

as he put it (1968: 24), conditions that are not accidentally true of the

existing human languages, but that are rather rooted in the human

language capacity, and thus constitute what counts as linguistic

experience.

12. Variationist typology

The variationist typology that is implied by this programmatic outline

obviously needs an international cadre of variationists if it is going to be

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Dynamic typology and vernacular universals 143developed. It must be cross-linguistic, as are all linguistic typologies, in the

search for default singulars, multiple negatives, consonant cluster

simplification, and the other vernacular roots as they occur in different

languages. It must be comparative, as all typology is, in order to discern

what the processes share in two or more languages that allows them to be

equated as the same process. Ultimately, the analysis of vernacular

processes resolves into the search for basilectal forms. That cannot be

undertaken directly, except in extraordinary circumstances of the kind that

Schreier unearthed in Tristan da Cunha. Most often, base forms will be

obscured by the learned excrescences that accumulate in standardization.

Understanding the constraints that govern the highly restricted variety

known as the standard makes an instructive starting point, and vernacular

gradations should peel them away in structural layers. Those layers might

be hierarchical, as in English default singulars, and the hierarchy might bedetermined by language-specific properties, also as in English default

singulars. If they are language-specific, they belong to what Chomsky calls

the accidental conditions of human languages. The search for vernacular

roots, by contrast, belongs to the essence of language. When we glimpse

that essence, the core that underlies default singulars and other vernacular

processes in all languages, it should be possible to inquire into the biology

of the language faculty, its cognitive and physiological basis.

I intend this program as a concrete method of proceeding, but at the

same time I recognize it as one more attempt at realizing an age-old ideal in

the study of language. Jakobson (1963: 264) again: We [want to] see

emerging ever new, unforeseen, but henceforth perfectly discernibleuniformities of universal scope, and we are happy to recognize that the

languages of the world can actually be approached as manifold variations

of one world-wide theme human language.

Acknowledgements

At the Methods XI symposium where this article originated, I benefited

from astute comments by David Heap, Peter Trudgill and Aila Mielikainen.

This written version has been greatly improved by the formal scrutiny of

Melitta Cocan and the critical scrutiny of Lieselotte Anderwald, Lukas

Pietsch and Bernd Kortmann.

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144 J.K. Chambers

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