Examines the reduction of syntactic options in South Texas Spanish narrative discourse during the nineteenth century. Argues that nineteenth century Texas Spanish made ample use of the absolute construction as an orientation strategy in narrative discourse. (Author/VWL)

Reconstructs the present temporal reference system of Early African American English by investigating the aspectual conditioning of a morphosyntactic construction within the domain of present temporal reference in three representative varieties. (Author/VWL)

Recipes exhibit a phenomenon nonexistent in other commonly studied varieties, (for example, conversational discourse), namely, zero anaphors as direct objects. This article examines this phenomenon and explores its consequences for linguistic theory. Results reveal that stylistic, semantic, and discourse factors are the most important in the…

Variations in the use of perfect "have" and its alternatives in the Trinidadian creole continuum are examined, based on data from a sample of speakers from different social backgrounds. The findings have implications for the study of morphosyntactic variation in other divergent dialect situations. (Contains 56 references.) (Author/LB)

Using variationist methodology, this study analyzed natural speech data from 31 speakers of standard Canadian English and found an overwhelming preference for singular agreement in existentials. Contrary to predictions, this was not linked to a determiner-based structural distinction but rather to the form of the copula and the speaker's level of…