Talk:Free variation

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[edit] Regional Accents

The article says: "...free variation is exceedingly common and along with differing intonation patterns is the most important single feature in the characterising of regional accents."

This may be true, but I have never heard it. At any rate, it needs a citation. (And since I have never heard it, I'm afraid I can't provide a citation. Mcswell 20:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't have the kind of book handy which would give a citation, but I can assure you it is true. Let's suppose an Englishman, a Scot, an American and an Australian all say the same single-syllable word. That is hardly enough to have identifiable intonation patterns, but you can already tell the accents because the vowels are placed differently. That's free variation. --Doric Loon 21:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Well... except it isn't really free variation. It's variation conditioned by dialect. Free variation, I thought, is when the two sounds in question can vary freely within a given dialect, or even idiolect. —Angr/talk 21:52, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. As soon as I get to my office I can certainly give you a citation for "free variation" being defined as both variation within an idiolect and variation between speakers including between dialects; i.e. all allophonic variation which is not complimentary distribution. I believe the the author is Schulz, and the book is called something like Englische Phonetik und Phonologie, but I will find it. I must admit, it always bothered me that the same term was being used for what are obviously quite different things, so possibly my source is not a good one. (If I remember correctly, he only uses free variation when talking about allophones, though other people use it for phonemic variation too.) --Doric Loon 08:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)