For some time now there have been concerted efforts to bridge generative approaches to language with sociolinguistically informed usage-based models of language variation and change. It is generally acknowledged that generative and sociolinguistic approaches to variation can be complementary (e.g. Barbiers 2005:235; Coetzee & Pater 2011:403). Indeed, there have been notable advances at this interface, in terms of addressing, for instance: the role of style in constraint-based frameworks such as stochastic OT; syntactic variation and change; acquisition of variation as grounded in Principles and Parameters; and formal understandings of well-known empirical challenges in sociolinguistic theory (e.g. Boersma & Hayes 2001; Cornips & Corrigan 2005; Cheshire et al. 2013; Yang 2016). However, the fields remain far apart in key areas. For instance, there remains little consensus on where the probabilistic factors that have been the focus of variable rule analysis in quantitative (Labovian) sociolinguistics interact with the type of grammar-generated variation that comes out of the Principles and Parameters tradition (cf. Adger 2006; Bresnan et al. 2007). We therefore bring together in this workshop scholars working on these and other traditional problems with reference to recent theoretical and methodological innovations, at various levels of linguistic description.

Invited speakers: