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Variation Theory • 19 A different kind of objection to variable rules was raised by Derek Bickerton (1971), the eminent creolist. e. standard grammatical rules and variable rules), but also some kind of recognition device to tell the speaker whether to interpret a particular set of data as rule-plus-exceptions or as area-of-variability. When we recall that the data on which non-variable rules are based is often incomplete and heterogeneous, the mode of operation of such a device must seem somewhat mysterious.

Quoted in Sankoff and Labov, 1979, p. 203) Sankoff and Labov (1979) also pointed out that many studies employing variable rules were specifically aimed at discovering which individuals and groups within a community shared which rules and which constraints. For example, in their study of South Harlem teenagers, Labov, Cohen, Robins, and Lewis (1968) constructed a single variable rule for /t,d/ deletion only after analyzing the data from each of their subjects individually. Because these were early days in variation studies, the researchers were surprised to find that their subjects shared the same constraints and the same constraint ordering.

For example, words ending in -ing, such as running and darling, have an informal pronunciation (runnin’, darlin’) as well as a formal pronunciation. As we will see in chapter 2, studies (Cofer, 1972; Houston, 1985) have found that middle-class speakers and women use the formal variant more often than working-class speakers and men. Perhaps the most studied example of socially patterned variation involves the deletion of the sounds /t/ and /d/ when they occur in a consonant cluster in word final position, so that the words mist and buzzed are pronounced mis’ and buzz’.