Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

A cognitive approach to quantitative sociolinguistic variation 299

dialect area and so it is possible to rule out the effects of age-grading in the
data. The general trend in these data follows the pattern of other studies of
(th) in Britain – this is a change in progress that is being led by younger
adolescents. Older adolescents and adults favor the standard dental variant
and younger adolescents favor the incoming labiodental variant. In compar-
ison with other research on this variable, there is, however, one significant
difference: unlike in most other communities, it seems that it is females
who are the highest users of the labiodental variant in WFHPB^6. The mean
difference between use of (th): [f] among males and females in this corpus
is significant (t-test: t=5.766, df. = 53, p< 0.0001). There are no females in
the 25+ year old age bracket in WFHPB but in the 12-15 year olds and the
16-24 year olds, females are using higher proportions of the labiodental
variant than males in this community.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

25+ year old males 16-24 year old males 16-24 year old females 12-15 year old males 12-15 year old females

thf

Figure 2. Variants of (th) in WFHPB stratified by age and sex

In order to reach a better understanding of the patterning of (th) in this
community, we felt it necessary to consider the potential effects of a num-
ber of other (social, linguistic and cognitive) constraints on variation. To do
this, it was necessary to employ more advanced statistical techniques.