STOCHASTIC
(Statistics) From Greek Στόχος, 'aim' or 'guess'. Refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution (Lexico UK English Dictionary, 2020). Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselves, these two terms are often used synonymously. Furthermore, in probability theory, the formal concept of a stochastic process is also referred to as a random process (Adler and Taylor 2009, Stirzaker 2005, Chaumont and Yor 2012, Rosenblatt 1962, Kallenberg 2002).
 Non-deterministic approaches in language studies are largely inspired by the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, for example, in functionalist linguistic theory, which argues that competence is based on performance (Newmeyer 2001, Bybee 1999). This distinction in functional theories of grammar should be carefully distinguished from the langue and parole distinction. To the extent that linguistic knowledge is constituted by experience with language, grammar is argued to be probabilistic and variable rather than fixed and absolute. This conception of grammar as probabilistic and variable follows from the idea that one's competence changes in accordance with one's experience with language. Though this conception has been contested (Chomsky 1959), it has also provided the foundation for modern statistical natural language processing (Manning and Schütze 1999) and for theories of language learning and change (Bybee 2007). | Wikipedia, 2023

STOCHASTIC O.T.
(Phonology) One influential approach to modeling linguistic variation in Optimality Theory is Stochastic OT (Boersma 1998; Boersma and Hayes 2001). In this framework, constraint rankings correspond to points on a number line. While the exact numerical values assigned to the constraints are arbitrary, a greater value corresponds to a higher ranking, and so domination relations between constraints can be represented numerically.
 Stochastic OT models variation by adding an element of unpredictability to the ranking relationships between constraints. In the grammar of a particular language, each constraint has an intrinsic and consistent ranking value. However, every time an input is mapped to an output by the grammar, the ranking value for each constraint is perturbed by a noise component (stated informally, for each constraint in the grammar, a small amount is added to or subtracted from the ranking value), resulting in a value known as the selection point for the constraint in question. The noise component is drawn from a normal distribution whose mean is the constraint's ranking value and whose standard deviation is some constant value, often set at 2.0 units by convention; each constraint's selection point will be within three standard deviations (±6.0 units) of the ranking value in more than 99% of all input-output mappings. Boersma and Hayes (2001) propose that all constraints have the same standard deviation for their noise distribution, because the noise function is part of the grammar as a whole and not the property of an individual constraint. The proposal that the noise distribution is the same for all constraints has crucial consequences for variation involving markedness scales. | Jennifer Smith and Elliott Moreton, 2011

STR-RETRACTION

1. (Sociolinguistics; Phonology) Or, (str)-retraction. An ongoing sound change in English in which /s/ retracts towards [ʃ] in the context of a /str/ cluster. This change appears to be quite widespread, occurring across the US, UK, and New Zealand. (Durian 2007, Gylfadottir 2015, Lawrence 2000, Shapiro 1995) | E. Wilbanks, 2016
2. (Sociolinguistics; Phonology) Some speakers of English have been reported to palatalize, or retract, /s/ before /t ɹ/, leading /s/ in this context to sound similar or identical to a palatal fricative [ʃ] (e.g., pronouncing street as [ʃt ɹit] or distract as [dɪʃt ɹækt]). Reports of retracted (str), as I will refer to this variable, have come from studies examining speakers in a range of English-speaking locations. This includes various places in the United States: from Georgia (Phillips 2001), southern Louisiana (Rutter 2011), and Columbus, Ohio (Durian 2007), to Philadelphia (Labov 1984), where it was first mentioned in the sociolinguistic literature. It has also been observed in the U.K. (Glain 2014), in location-specific studies of Estuary English (Bass 2009) and Cockney English (Altendorf 2003), as well as in New Zealand (Lawrence 2000). Most of these studies refer to retracted (str) as an innovative variant, and a few make direct claims about its status as a change in progress toward this pronunciation and away from standard /s/ in this context. | Duna Gylfadottir, 2015

STRATIFICATIONAL GRAMMAR

1. (Stratificational Grammar) 
   Sydney M. Lamb, Outline of Stratificational Grammar (1966)
    
   • Four necessary levels of sentence analysis:
     • The sememic stratum: structure of clauses and sentences.
     • The lexemic stratum: structure of phrases.
     • The morphemic stratum: structure of word forms.
     • The phonemic stratum: syllable structure.
   • Each stratum has its elementary units.
   • Each stratum has its own combinatorial pattern.
   • Strata are hierarchically related:
     • Each is realized by the elements in the level structurally beneath it.
     • Without making use of rules that convert one entity into another.
   
    | Markéta Lopatková, 2023
2. (Stratificational Grammar) A model of linguistic structure. We can visualize the overall concept as a multistory building connected by a complex series of stairways. The arrangement of rooms and hallways on each floor is that stratum's tactic pattern, and the manner in which the stairways lead from various parts of one floor to various parts of another (and all the way up and down) is the grammar's realization pattern. Among the strata, we find at the top the semantic or semiological strata defining relationships of meaning, then the syntactic and morphological (together the grammatical) relationships of order, then the phonological and phonetic relationships of sounds and their feature components at the bottom.
    The patterns relating all of the points on and among all of the strata are visualized as lines and nodes. The nodes make use of only three logical primes: AND (conjunction), OR (disjunction) and order (precedence).
   • In an unordered AND, x is realized with y in no particular order.
   • In an ordered AND, x is realized with y, such that x precedes y.
   • In an unordered OR, either x or y is realized, with no preference for one or the other.
   • In an ordered OR, x is realized given condition z (from either that stratum's tactic pattern or from some other stratum), and otherwise y is realized.
   
    It is important to note that these nodes, although they are often called entities, are not physical entities per se, but rather are relationships among relationships. | Toby D. Griffin, 2010
3. (Stratificational Grammar) A structural framework developed by Sydney Lamb in the 1960s that aims to provide an account of the structure of language, the relationship between meaning and speech.
    The framework is called stratificational because one of its chief features is its treatment of linguistic structure as comprising several structural layers or strata. Its earlier form, in the late fifties and early sixties, followed the tradition of structural linguistics in treating the structure as composed of linguistic elements and their relationships. In the mid-sixties, work on the relationships among linguistic units revealed that when the relationships are fully plotted, the units actually disappear, so that the entire structure consists of a network of relationships.
    In keeping with the idea of stratification, the network as a whole can be considered to consist of multiple subnetworks, called stratal systems. Operation of the system, for speaking and understanding, takes the form of activation passing through the network. Multiple pathways are invariably active in parallel at any time. By the end of the twentieth century, stratification and the relationship of realization had become widely recognized, and the theory's distinctiveness lay in its focus on the conception of linguistic structure as a network of relationships. Accordingly, it increasingly became referred to as relational network theory rather than stratificational theory. Beginning in 1971 it was also called cognitive linguistics, but when that term became more widely used for a variety of other theories during the eighties and nineties, the more distinctive term neurocognitive linguistics began to be used. This latter term is in keeping with the hypothesis that relational networks are related to neural networks of the brain. (Christie 1973/1977, Lamb 1966, 1971, 1999) | Glottopedia, 2017
4. (Stratificational Grammar) In Lamb's current formulation of the theory, all natural languages have between four and six separate structural levels comprising code-like systems through which the transducing processes of language are mediated. Explication of the model is generally in terms of six strata, the number posited for English (Lamb 1966). The six-stratum arrangement is expressed as a three by two system consisting of three major language components of two strata each. These strata are, thus, within the same domain and, presumably, more closely related to each other than to the strata of the other components. All languages have the three components, though not necessarily two strata in each.
    The three components are: phonology, containing the hypophonemic and phonemic strata; grammar, containing the morphemic and lexemic strata; and semology, containing the sememic and hypersememic strata. Each stratum has its own tactics (syntax) and its own inventory and, though they are structured in parallel fashion, they are not isomorphic. The semological component is adjacent to the upper interface (permeable by experience), the phonological component adjacent to the lower interface (permeable by sound) , and grammar mediates between the two. (The vertical arrangement, however, is merely a convention.) The system constitutes a bidirectional, hierarchical network and the processes of encoding and decoding are converses of each other. (Gleason 1964). | Leila Margaret Hougham, 1970
5. (Stratificational Grammar) According to Algeo (1968), most grammarians have been writing stratificational grammars without knowing it because they have dealt with units that are related to one another, but not simply as a whole to its parts, or as a class to its members. The question, then, is not whether a grammar is stratified but whether it is explicitly stratified. This paper discusses the model of language that is being developed by Sydney Lamb and H. A. Gleason, Jr. It is explicitly stratified and recognizes six strata (hypersememic, sememic, lexemic, morphemic, phonemic, and hypophonemic) grouped into three major structural components of two strata each: semology, grammar, and phonology respectively. Collectively, the strata are a system or code for relating communicative content at the "top" to vocal expression at the "bottom". Each stratum consists of an inventory of its characteristic units or emes, and a set of tactic rules that specify how the emes combine with one another on that stratum. Finally, strata are connected to one another by realization rules, which describe how the emes of one stratum are linked to those of another. Any text, for example a sentence, exists on all the strata simultaneously. On each stratum the text will be a structure of emes ordered by the appropriate tactic rules, but on each stratum it will differ in structure. | ?, ?

STRATIFICATIONAL ORDERING

1. (Stratificational Grammar) A language has several layers of structure. These may be thought of as existing on top of one another, as it were. In a stratificational framework one views the entire structure as present at one time, and one encounters different structural layers or levels instead of different derivational periods in a fictional time span. We speak of these various levels as differing from one another in height. Higher levels are closer to meaning; lower levels are closer to expression. | Sydney M. Lamb, 2004
2. (Example)
    ○ Descriptive phonologists find evidence for more than two levels of alternation in phonology (e.g., Chafe 1968), but mutation rules impose their own notational ordering requirements independent of the linguistic structure and therefore cannot be used as a basis for arguing about how much stratificational ordering is needed if one uses a realizational format. (Lamb 1971) | Glottopedia, 2017

STRATUM

1. (Systemic Functional Linguistics) Most approaches to linguistics recognize some kind of layering in language, to represent different kinds and levels of abstraction. SFL now recognises two kinds of layering: stratal and metafunctional. The following are regarded as strata: context, semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology, phonetics and, for written language, graphology (sometimes called orthography). The metafunctions are: ideational (subdivided into experiential and logical), interpersonal and textual. The strata are assumed to be hierarchically ordered, context being the highest stratum and phonetics the lowest; the metafunctions are assumed to be in parallel with each other. | Margaret Berry, 2017
2. (Stratificational Grammar) Or, stratal system. One of several layers of structure in the linguistic information system. Each stratum consists of lines and nodes organized into nections, the fundamental modules of network structure. Each stratum has distinctive patterns of arrangement of nections. Different versions of relational network theory have recognized different numbers of such stratal systems, but these differences amount to variations on a general theme of three major systems, phonological, lexico-grammatical, and semantic-conceptual. Relations between strata are called realizational.
    Each stratal system includes a tactic pattern, controlling the combinations appropriate to that system. According to one common breakdown of realizational levels, these patterns are phonotactics (the structure of syllables and phonological words), morphotactics (the structure of words and grammatical phrases), lexotactics (the structures of clauses and sentences), and semotactics (the structure of thoughts, ideas, procedures, rituals, etc.)
    Before 1961, strata were called levels, but the term was found to be too ambiguous, since it was being used by linguists in many different ways. The term realizational level, however, is still a valid synonym. (Lamb 2004, 2007) | Glottopedia, 2017
3. (Examples)
    ○ To compare L₂₁ and L₂₂₂ in a diachronic way, the common features of the two languages will trace back to node L₂ which has two different sources. That is to say, L₂₁ and L₂₂₂ either descend from their common protolanguage L, or borrow from the dominant dialect C. L–L₂–L₂₂–L₂₂₁ demonstrates the internal evolution from dialect L to L₂₂₁, and therefore represents what we call the native stratum. The stratum that borrows from another dialect, C in this case, is called the borrowing stratum. The purpose for historical strata analysis is to peel away the loan strata so as to show the native stratum, therefore, paving the way for the application of historical comparative method. | Pan Wuyun, 2016
    ○ Dialect words can help to identify the location of people who use them. There are four major dialectal varieties in Great Britain: Lowland Scotch, Northern, Central (Midland) and Southern. There are three major dialectal varieties in the USA: Midwestern (Central), Southern, New England. This classification doesn't include lots of minor local dialects which differ either on the phonetic level or the lexical one. Each of the mentioned groups is very important for linguists as well as the whole stratum of sub-neutral words is of great value for linguistics. | Д. Ч. Кочерго, И. Р. Чепикова, 2012
    ○ The domains of application in applied linguistics have changed considerably since the early 1960s. In most of these domains, the fundamental property of language as a resource for making meaning has increasingly been foregrounded. This approach recognizes, amongst other dimensions of language, its multi-stratal character, i.e. that a given instance of language consists of patterns of meaning (semantics), realized by patterns of wording (grammar), realized by patterns of sounding (phonology) or writing (graphology). The co-selection of these patterns both construes and expresses the kind of social context in which the language operates. There has not yet been a register of English described from the point of view of all four strata. | Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, Annabelle Lukin, David G. Butt, Chris Cleirigh, and Christopher Nesbitt, 2005
    ○ Japanese has an extensive body of sound-symbolic expressions commonly known as giongo / gitaigo / giseigo 'mimetic words'. These expressions form a cohesive system with distinct phonological characteristics such that phonologists consider them to form one of the four major vocabulary strata, along with the Yamato (native), Sino-Japanese, and foreign strata (McCawley 1968, Itô and Mester 1995). Yet, in spite of this standing as a distinct vocabulary stratum, the sound-symbolic stratum has been least utilized in Japanese historical linguistics as a source for internal reconstructions. | Shoko Hamano, 2000
    ○ In recent work (Packard 1990, 1992, 1993), Packard has presented a variety of arguments that Mandarin morphology should be analyzed in terms of a stratum-ordered model of the kind proposed in Lexical Phonology and Morphology (Pesetsky 1979, Kiparsky 1982, Mohanan 1982, 1986/2012). | Richard Sproat and Chillin Shih, 1993
    ○ From a synchronic viewpoint, however, lexical stratification may be held to deal with structural divisions in the vocabulary (whether they result from historical borrowing or not). We shall adopt this usage here, and reserve the term stock for groupings based purely on provenience. On a structural basis, we can readily identify a Sino-Japanese stratum and a Western stratum in the modern Japanese vocabulary: in these two cases, that is, stock and stratum largely coincide. We are concerned to show here that, for items of native stock, there are strong structural grounds for distinguishing an expressive stratum from a regular or neutral ('nonexpressive') stratum. | A.E. Backhouse, 1983
    ○ Stratificational theory is here called cognitive linguistics since it aims to provide a model of the information system that enables a person to speak his language. The theory began in the mid-fifties with a three-stratum model, and it added a fourth stratum, above the classical morphemic level, in 1961. During the sixties a series of revisions occurred, not all of which involved direct progress. The paper concludes with a brief introduction to the current model, which has three grammatical strata and one phonological stratum for the language proper, plus a conceptual system containing all of the individual's knowledge (other than his language). | Sydney M. Lamb, 1971

STRESS ACCENT
See PITCH ACCENT.

STRICT INTERPRETATION
(Semantics) A wide range of expressions can be given more or less "strict interpretations", for example, flat and empty. Sometimes we use them in loose ways: when we say the fridge is empty, we don't mean it is an absolute vacuum. Sometimes we use these expressions intending to defer to the strict usage of relevant experts: when we say that an event is probable, we aim to invoke the concept as defined by experts on probability theory, even if we ourselves don't know exactly what that is.
 When we borrow an expression from a strict science, we may employ harmless-for-our-purposes simplifications that make our utterances, strictly speaking, false. We often use language this way: when describing my rheumatoid pain I may say that I have arthritis in my thigh, and it will be clear enough what I mean. But I aim to mean by arthritis what my doctor means, so if she informs me that it refers only to afflictions of the joints, I will adjust my usage. When we aim to use an expression as the experts do, but our everyday purposes aren't demanding, we often get by with uses that don't quite meet the strict standards. Call these cases of speaking strictly-enough. | Renée Jorgensen Bolinger and Alexander Sandgren, 2019

STRIDENT
(Phonology) This widely accepted feature, originally proposed by Jakobson (1939), was defined as follows by Jakobson, Fant and Halle (1952):

Strident phonemes are primarily characterized by a noise which is due to turbulence at the point of articulation. This strong turbulence, in its turn, is a consequence of a more complex impediment which distinguishes the strident from the corresponding mellow consonants: the labiodentals from the bilabials, the hissing and hushing sibilants from the nonsibilant dentals and palatals respectively, and the uvulars from the velars proper.

STRING-VACUOUS MOVEMENT
(Syntax) We tend to assume that most instances of wh-words will undergo this movement, even if it doesn't really look like it, as in this example:

1. John kissed a frog.
2. Who kissed a frog?

3. Who t kissed a frog?

STRUCTURAL BORROWING

1. (Morphology; Sociolinguistics) Or, morphostructural borrowing. The borrowing of abstract morphological schemata. In the strict sense of this term, the borrowing is limited to structures completely unattested in the recipient language.
    "Structural borrowing" in word-formation is defined here as the increase or decrease in frequency of use of an abstract word-formation schema caused by language contact and includes the new availability of a virtually unknown schema (i.e. a change from a null to a non-null frequency, or structural borrowing sensu stricto).
    A wide variety of changes is attested. From a qualitative standpoint, they do not affect the different recipient languages to the same extent. A qualitative cline of structural borrowing can be posited—from "minimal" to "slight", "moderate" and finally "heavy" change—depending on the relative degree to which the core of the word-formation system is affected. There is heavy restructuring when a process which used to be virtually unavailable emerges in the word-formation system, as in the case of lexical blending for a number of languages of Central and Eastern Europe. There is moderate restructuring in case of, for instance, positional innovation. This includes the appearance of prefixation (alongside suffixation) in Basque and of right-headed compounding (alongside left-headed compounding) in French and Italian. There is slight restructuring when the general form of a pattern is only marginally modified, as in Polish compounding, which now includes some new interfixless constructions. Finally, the change may be only minimal, when it does not have consequences on the forms of new outputs, as in the case of clipping in Polish. | Vincent Renner, 2018
2. (Morphology) Structural factors that facilitate borrowing (cf. Moravcsik 1978, Field 2002) include:
   1. nouns > non-nouns, function words
   2. free morphemes > bound morphemes
   3. derivational morphology > inflectional morphology
   4. agglutinating affix > fusional affix
    | Yaron Matras, 2011

STRUCTURAL CASE

1. (Grammar) Case which is assigned in a certain structural configuration, depending on government (and adjacency) only (as opposed to inherent case).
    It has been proposed that a verb assigns structural Accusative case to its NP complement, and that Nominative case is assigned by the finite inflection INFL to the canonical subject position [NP, IP]. More recently, structural case is identified with case assignment to the specifier in a specific kind of AGRP. (Chomsky 1986, 1991) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
2. (Grammar) In the Principles-and-Parameters (P&P) model of grammar, nominative and accusative case are assigned to NPs that occupy specific positions in the syntactic structure at the level of S-structure: nominative is assigned by Infl to NPs in the specifier of IP, and accusative is assigned by V to its complement/sister NP (Chomsky 1981, 1986). This is why nominative and accusative are called "structural cases": they are assigned to whichever NP sits in the relevant structural position, regardless of the theta role it is assigned at D-structure, and regardless of what category assigns that theta role.
    P&P also differentiates the notions of structural and inherent case: structural case is dissociated from theta role assignment, but inherent case is indeed equivalent to it and can only be assigned by a theta role assigner to its assignee. Inherent case then correlates with thematic assignment, and therefore, there can be no dissociation between theta role and inherent case. This distinction between Case Theory and Theta Theory on the one hand, and between structural and inherent case on the other, is maintained in the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995). What varies with respect to P&P are the structural positions where cases are checked: nominative and accusative case checking involve Spec-head relations with Agr_S and Agr_O respectively (Chomsky 1995). | Itziar Laka, 2006

STRUCTURAL IDENTITY
(Syntax) Under what circumstances can bits of a syntactic structure be said to be the same as or different from other bits of a syntactic structure? The answer that we give is that occurrences of expressions are syntactically the same just in case they are reconstructions of each other. The grounds on which expressions are identical in the sense of reconstructions are twofold.

1. There must be lexical identity—they are composed of the same lexical expressions.
2. There must be "structural identity"—the constituent elements that dominate the lexical expressions must be syntactically organized in the same way.

STRUCTURAL PRIMING

1. (Psycholinguistics) Or, syntactic priming, or, structural repetition. The tendency for speakers to reuse recently experienced structures.
    Bock (1986) gave experimental participants pictures that can be described with either of the two kinds of dative structures (double objects, The woman handed the boy the paint brush, versus prepositional datives, The woman handed the paint brush to the boy). Participants described these pictures after saying an unrelated prime sentence that used either a double-object or prepositional dative structure.
    Priming was seen in the tendency for speakers to use the structure of the prime when describing the picture. Similar effects were seen for other structural alternations such as active transitive sentences (Lightning is striking the church) versus passives (The church is struck by lightning).
    The important aspect of this priming is that it appears to be the persistence of an abstract syntactically characterized structure (e.g., the frame: Noun_phrase Auxiliary_verb Main_verb Prepositional_phrase for a full passive), and not the lexical content of the utterance, its meaning, or its intonational properties (Bock and Loebell 1990). As such, structural priming provides evidence for a production process that uses structural abstractions during grammatical encoding. | Gary S. Dell and Cassandra L. Jacobs, 2016
2. (Psycholinguistics) Repetition is a central phenomenon of behavior, and researchers make extensive use of it to illuminate psychological functioning. In the language sciences, a ubiquitous form of such repetition is "structural priming", a tendency to repeat or better process a current sentence because of its structural similarity to a previously experienced (prime) sentence (Bock 1986). | Martin J. Pickering and Victor S. Ferreira, 2008
3. (Psycholinguistics) The effect by which, in a dialogue, the current speaker tends to re-use the syntactic constructs of the previous speakers. SP has been used as a window into the nature of syntactic representations within and across languages. Because of its importance, it is crucial to understand the mechanisms behind it. Currently, two competing theories exist.
   1. According to the transient activation account, SP is driven by the re-activation of declarative memory structures that encode structures.
   2. According to the error-based implicit learning account, SP is driven by prediction errors while processing sentences.
    By integrating both transient activation and associative learning, Reitter et al.'s hybrid model (2011) assumes that SP is achieved by both mechanisms, and predicts a priming enhancement for rare or unusual constructions. Finally, a recently proposed account, the reinforcement learning account, claims that SP driven by the successful application of procedural knowledge will be reversed when the prime sentence includes grammatical errors. These theories make different assumptions about the representation of syntactic rules (declarative vs. procedural) and the nature of the mechanism that drives priming (frequency and repetition, attention, and feedback signals, respectively). | Yuxue C. Yang, Ann Marie Karmol, and Andrea Stocco, 2021
4. (Psycholinguistics) Producers have a conspicuous tendency to reuse recently executed utterance plans, so that the likelihood that a speaker utters a passive sentence, for example, increases if that speaker has recently heard, read, or uttered another passive sentence (Weiner and Labov 1983, Ferreira and Bock 2006). This tendency toward Plan Reuse (also called structural persistence or syntactic priming) persists over time and over other intervening utterances. The effect is argued to be not (or not only) the temporary activation of recent plans but rather a manifestation of long-term implicit learning of syntactic structure (cf. Branigan et al. 1999, Chang et al. 2006). On this view, language users are continually learning from their and others' language use; with every utterance, a syntactic plan becomes more likely to be used in the future. Thus, while the phenomenon is often described as one of short-term repetition, its learning basis links it to retrieval from long-term memory. | Maryellen C. MacDonald, 2013

STRUCTURAL TRANSLATION
See METAPHRASE.

STYLE

1. (Sociolinguistics) A set of linguistic variants with specific social meanings. In this context, social meanings can include group membership, personal attributes, or beliefs. Linguistic variation is at the heart of the concept of linguistic "style"—without variation there is no basis for distinguishing social meanings. Variation can occur syntactically, lexically, and phonologically.
    Many approaches to interpreting and defining style incorporate the concepts of indexicality, indexical order, stance-taking, and linguistic ideology. Note that a style is not a fixed attribute of a speaker. Rather, a speaker may use different styles depending on context. Additionally, speakers often incorporate elements of multiple styles into their speech, either consciously or subconsciously, thereby creating a new style. | Wikipedia, 2021
2. (Sociolinguistics) Broadly speaking, "style" refers to the way that individual speakers vary their language in response to different aspects of the social situation.
    Early sociolinguistic accounts of style were taxonomic, detailing the many factors known to affect individual variation, such as topic, setting, or channel. With the advent of variationist research, style became quantifiable and measurable: crucially, William Labov's pioneering work showed that when stylistic variation was seen in conjunction with social variation, much of what had previously been considered free variation was in fact systematically structured. Social variation was analyzed as variation between groups—typically distinguished on the basis of gender, social class, age, and ethnicity—and a clear distinction was drawn between social and stylistic variation.
    Recent variationist work, however, gives more attention to speaker agency and the creative aspect of language use, focusing on how individuals exploit socially patterned variation to create a range of identities and to define and redefine the situation. As Eckert and Rickford state in their introduction, many researchers now see the borders between social and stylistic constraints on variation as highly permeable, and find the areas of overlap increasingly interesting. | Jenny Cheshire, 2007

STYLE-SHIFTING

1. (Sociolinguistics) Refers to a single speaker changing style in response to context. As noted by Eckert and Rickford (2001), in sociolinguistic literature the terms style and register sometimes have been used interchangeably. Also, various connotations of style are a subject of study in stylistics.
    "Style-shifting" is a manifestation of intraspeaker (within-speaker) variation, in contrast with interspeaker (between-speakers) variation. It is a voluntary act which an individual effects in order to respond to or initiate changes in sociolinguistic situation (e.g., interlocutor-related, setting-related, topic-related). | Wikipedia, 2021
2. (Sociolinguistics) One of the earliest characterizations of "style-shifting"—how people vary their way of speaking from moment to moment—was in terms of attention paid to speech in a given moment. This view asserted that reduced attention to speech often corresponded to the use of a less self-conscious, less prestige-oriented, vernacular style (Labov 1966). Later approaches included a wider range of interpersonal social dynamics and identity projection (e.g., Bell 1984, Coupland 1985, Schilling-Estes 2002, Eckert 2008), and these models are now seen by some as having "very largely supplanted the attention to speech explanation" (Coupland 2007). | Devyani Sharma and Kathleen McCarthy, 2018

STYLISTIC FRONTING

1. (Syntax) A leftwards movement of adverbs (negation and sentence medial adverbs), participles, verb particles, PPs and DPs into a position that precedes the finite verb. | Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, 2004
2. (Syntax) An optional movement process, found in Icelandic, of a word or a phrase into a phonological subject gap and it is associated with formal style (Maling 1980). The contrast between (1), without SF, and (2), with SF, illustrates the optionality. The relative clause has a subject gap and thus SF can apply and move the non-finite main verb in front of the finite auxiliary.
   1. Bækur
      books

      [_CP
      [_CP

      sem
      that

      eru
      are

      lesmar
      read

      til
      for

      skemmtunar]
      entertainment]

      eru
      are

      bestar.
      best

      'Books that are read for entertainment are the best ones.'
   2. Bækur
      books

      [_CP
      [_CP

      sem
      that

      lesnar
      read

      eru
      are

      til
      for

      skemmtunar]
      entertainment]

      eru
      are

      bestar.
      best

      'Books that are read for entertainment are the best ones.'
    | Lilja Björk Stefánsdóttir and Anton Karl Ingason, 2018

STYLISTIC REGISTER

1. (Sociolinguistics) Among the many judgments that native speakers of English can make in word choice, they have intuitions about "stylistic registers"; they know, for instance, that the phrase henceforth the parties agree is very formal, but c'mon, guys is very colloquial. They also know that the former phrase can be used in official (e.g., legal) documents, but not with friends or family, while the latter is unlikely to appear in an academic paper. Understanding this stylistic distinction does not just help us decide what to say and when. It helps us decipher people, offering clues as to who might be a pompous bureaucrat, overusing formal vocabulary in inappropriate situations; who might be a cheerful, formality-eschewing hipster; etc. Knowing about stylistic registers helps us interpret people's linguistic behavior. | Nila Friedberg, 2021
2. (Sociolinguistics) Or, style register. To find the appropriate words for the speaker's ideas. Rhetorical figures shape the speech and form the stylistic relevance of the discussed topics. There is no unique style that fits all the situations and no "stylistic register" that is appropriate for every audience.
    The last but not least constituent of persuasion is performance—intonation and body language bond the speaker with the audience. So stylistic register is formed under the influence of communicative situation, and it affects the organization of verbal and nonverbal argumentation, the semantics, syntax, and pragmatics of communication. | Iryna Voloshchuk and Galyna Usyk, 2018

Page Last Modified August 25, 2025

 

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