Search

The historical and socio-linguistic analysis of the common variable rule usage in the Southern States of the US reveals that the negative auxiliary contractions of the variable rule is widely used. This is indicated by the presence of style -shifting prevalent among the speakers in the Southern States. The common variable rule originated in the Southwestern countries of the UK.

Examines the assimilatory process by which /z/ surfaces phonetically as [d] before syllabic /n/ in the contracted auxiliary verb forms from both a sociolinguistic and a historical standpoint. Documentation of the phenomenon in Southern American speech; Troike and the LAGS data.