Variation (linguistics)
In linguistics, variation (from Latin variatio "change") is the possibility of different realizations of a unit of the linguistic system in a concrete utterance. Variations can appear in all grammatical levels of description.
Differentiation of the term from variety
In socio- linguistics and in comparative linguistics , the term variety is used for different expressions of a language ( special languages , sociolects , style levels , etc.) .
causes
Many linguistic variations can be accompanied by dialectal differences. For example, the choice of pronunciation of the <r> sound in German (see below) is linked to north-south differences. While the tongue-r is preferred in the southern part of Germany, the uvula-r is predominant in the central and northern part. Other major causes of variation are language change and borrowing. The variation between the strong and weak forms of some verbs can be traced back to the change in language, which consists in the gradual reduction of strong verbs (example: buk - backte ). When borrowing, inflectional forms of the language of origin and the receiving language are often juxtaposed, for example on the subject of the Greek-derived plural Thema-ta and the German-derived plural Them-en .
Variation in the different levels
In phonology
In phonology, the term free variation describes two or more sounds (phone) based on the same phoneme and the appearance of which is not tied to a specific phonetic context. If the appearance of two or more variants of a phoneme is tied to a context, we speak of allophones in combinatorial variation / complementary distribution .
For example, the pronunciation of the consonantic / r / sound in German is subject to a free variation: the meaning of a word does not change, regardless of whether a / r / sound contained therein has a rolled uvular (suppository) r ( [ʀ] ), a rolled alveolar (tongue) r ( [r] ) or as a voiced fricative ( [ʁ] ). The type of pronunciation at most provides information about the regional origin of the speaker.
The vocalized variant of the / r / sound in German, on the other hand, is distributed complementary to the other variants. While the consonantic variants in standard German are articulated almost exclusively in the syllable sound, all other occurrences of the sound are realized by the vowel a-Schwa ( [ɐ] ). [ɐ] on the one hand and the consonantic variants of the / r / on the other hand are therefore allophones of the same underlying / r / phoneme.
In morphology
Variation in morphology occurs when two or more morphological structures can be used to indicate the same syntactic properties. As in phonology, a distinction must be made between free variation and combinatorial variation / complementary distribution .
Free variation: In German, for example, both a genitive and a dative ending can be used to indicate the argument of the preposition because of (compare because of the accident with because of the accident ). With some nouns, the choice between different plural endings is free to a certain extent: For the noun Account, you can choose between the plural forms Konti, Kontos, and Accounts .
Combinatorial variation / complementary distribution: The plural of most nouns is regulated in such a way that only a certain plural ending can be chosen for a certain noun. The choice of the plural ending can depend on the sound environment (the plural ending depends on the preceding sound: Tracht-en, but Aunt-n ) or the root of the word (the preceding sound does not determine the plural ending: Sand - Sand-e, Rand - Ränd-er ) be dependent.
Another case of variation in the morphology can concern the inflected forms of individual words, in which the speaker can choose between two equally valid forms, such as the participle form of the verb winken (regional: waved or standard language: waved ). In this case, the free variation is regionally restricted.
Usually, in the case of morphological or morphosyntactic variation, one variant is seen as the stylistically better one, while the other is sometimes rejected as "wrong" or colloquially. Differences between common and technical language (common language: Säu-e - technical language Sau-en ) or in the meaning of the various plural forms (for example in the forms Wört-er - Wort-e ) can play a role.
The allomorphs of one and the same morpheme are always considered variants of this morpheme.
In the syntax
There is free variation in syntax when one or more structures can be used to express the same proposition.
An example from German is the syntactic structure of the embedded sentence in a question construction with a matrix verb such as “think” or “believe”:
- What do / do you think has written them?
- What do / do you think that she wrote has ?
- What do / do you think, what they wrote was ?
All of these sentences have the same content, but they differ considerably in terms of their sentence structure. While the inflected verb ( hat ) appears at the beginning of the embedded sentence in the first example , it can be found at the end of the sentence in the other examples. An introductory connecting element (such as a conjunction) is also missing in this sentence. The last two sentences differ in such a way that in the last one question particle ( what ) serves as a link, while in the middle one a complementer ( that ) shows the hierarchical order of both sentences.
In semantics
In semantics, the concept of variation corresponds to that of "reading". Accordingly, there are several variants to understand an ambiguous sentence, i.e. several readings. This can affect sentence semantics as well as word semantics.
The sentence Peter pursues the man with the bicycle has two readings: In one version, Peter is the one who has the bicycle with him, in the other reading the man whom Peter is following is the one with the bicycle. In this case, the ambiguity is accompanied by a structural ambiguity: the sentences of both readings are based on different syntactic structures.
A word like bank also has several meanings: On the one hand, it could mean the credit institution, on the other hand, the seat.
In pragmatics
In pragmatics, variation describes linguistic differences that occur during a speech act due to the extra-linguistic environmental conditions and are variable. The variations exist in space, time, society and speech situation of a conversation. They are called diatopic, diachronic, diastratic and diaphasic variation.
literature
- Hadumod Bußmann (Ed.): Lexicon of Linguistics. 3rd updated and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-520-45203-0 (keywords allomorph, allophone, distribution, variant, variety ).
- Helmut Glück (Ed.), With the collaboration of Friederike Schmöe : Metzler Lexikon Sprache. 3rd, revised edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-476-02056-8 (keywords allomorph, allophone, distribution, variant, variety ).
- Heide Wegener: The nominal inflection of German - understood as a subject of study. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1995. ISBN 3-484-31151-7 . Covers the different types of inflection rules.