Variable rules meet Impoverishment theory: Patterns of agreement leveling in English varieties

This paper revives the sociolinguistic notion of ‘variable rules’ (Labov, 1969; Cedergren and Sankoff, 1974; Guy, 1991) as a specific and restricted mechanism within the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz, 1993; Embick and Noyer, 2007). We propose that intra-individual paradigm ‘leveling’ variation (or, variable syncretism), can be effectively modeled as resulting from post-syntactic feature deletion rules that apply variably. In other words, variable rules enact a structural change only probabilistically, rather than deterministically, when their structural description is met. By hypothesis, morphological ‘Impoverishment’ operations (Bonet, 1991; Halle, 1997; Noyer, 1998) are induced by the inherent and universal markedness of particular morphosyntactic features or their combination (Greenberg, 1966; Croft, 2003). We examine markedness-driven variable Impoverishment through case studies of three English varieties: be-leveling in Monmouthshire (Orton, 1962–1971) induced by marked [+author], was-leveling in Buckie (Adger and Smith, 2005; Adger, 2006) induced by marked [+participant], and weren’t- and ain’t-leveling on Smith Island (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes, 2003; Mittelstaedt, 2006) induced by marked [+negation].