Speakers display considerable variability in language use and representations: they may have different pronunciations of the same word, different intended meanings for the same phrases, and different sets of syntactic constraints in their internalized grammars. Comprehenders adapt to such variability by constantly updating their expectations for…

In this paper, I discuss methodological and ethical issues that arose in the process of documenting lexical variation in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages (YMSLs). YMSLs are indigenous sign languages used by deaf and hearing people in Yucatec Maya villages with a high incidence of deafness in the peninsula of Yucatán, Mexico. The documentation of rural…

Languages exhibit variation at all linguistic levels, from phonology, to the lexicon, to syntax. Importantly, that variation tends to be (at least partially) conditioned on some aspect of the social or linguistic context. When variation is unconditioned, language learners regularize it -- removing some or all variants, or conditioning variant use…

Linguists are sometimes confronted with choices concerning language names. For example, one and the same language may be referred to as Persian or Farsi. This short paper discusses some principles that one might use for making decisions when there are variant forms in use, or when one feels that none of the existing names is appropriate. The…

The growing recognition of the plurality of English underlying the World Englishes (WE) paradigm has problematised the conventional second language acquisition (SLA) views of errors. If English use in emerging English-speaking contexts is to be judged by local norms, as argued by WE scholars, applying exocentric norms in these contexts can be…

Dutch listeners were exposed to the English theta sound (as in "bath"), which replaced [f] in /f/-final Dutch words or, for another group, [s] in /s/-final words. A subsequent identity-priming task showed that participants had learned to interpret theta as, respectively, /f/ or /s/. Priming effects were equally strong when the exposure…

This article focuses on how attitudes toward HLLs [heritage language learners] have changed, both with regard to program development and in learning and teaching. First, the ambiguity towards heritage language preservation is illustrated by examining historical aspects of heritage languages in the United States. Secondly, a closer look at two…