Open research questions in Linguistic Variation and Morphology

What the literature leaves open

• 1038/s41598-026-52236-w 11 pattern suggested further research is warranted to better understand a possible effect of daily-life language use for number processing (as well as other individual differences in, for example, proficiency and number- processing strategies) on the activation of an indirect route through the L1 or L2.

  Number comparison in bilinguals is not affected by their second language · 2026 · DOI

• The main limitation of the current study was the method of speech sample collection. While on-line data collection with audio-samples recorded using participants’ own smartphones had the advantage of reaching a large number of potential participants and led to successful questionnaire data collection from 2133 participants, only 472 (22%) uploaded a voice sample, out of which only 60 (2.8%) passed quality screening. While care was taken to only include high quality recordings, different recording devices are likely to have introduced uncontrolled variation to the data (De Decker & Nycz, 2011; Leemann et al., 2020; Penney et al., 2021; Rathcke et al., 2017). For example, vowel formants vary between recording devices, indicating that ideally, device specifications should be the same for all participants (De Decker & Nycz, 2011; Guan & Li, 2021; Penney et al., 2021; Rathcke et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2021). Despite these challenges, smartphones have provided data suitable for acoustic vowel analysis as early as 2011 (De Decker & Nycz, 2011) with F1 and F2 values measured in lossy compressions falling within 3–9 Hz of values measured in uncompressed data (Bulgin et al., 2010). F0 measures were not found to differ between recording devices (Guan & Li, 2021; Rathcke et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2021). On-line data collection also placed limitations on the stimulus. The Australian anthem was chosen as text that participants were expected to be able to recite without having to read from the screen. This led to a short and phonetically unbalanced stimulus. A longer text (e.g., the Arthur, the Rat passage) would have allowed for capturing range and variation in F0 more accurately (Leung et al., 2022). A phonetically balanced stimulus would have allowed for having a balanced sample with at least three repetitions of key vowel phonemes and /s/, in canonical contexts that control for coarticulation. Future research should aim to further examine variation in the speech of gay AusE-speaking men in lab-based recordings with a phonetically balanced stimulus. Given the phonetically unbalanced stimulus and the large number of factors examined, smaller but potentially meaningful effects may not have reached the threshold of statistical significance.

  Sexual Identity, Gender-Nonconformity, and Acoustic Speech Characteristics of Gay and Straight Australian English-Speaking Men · 2026 · DOI

• Generic overgeneralization effect or quantifier domain restriction? Evidence from… 15 Since tense may modulate the salience of contextual restriction or influence participants’ truth-value judgements, future work should examine more closely how tense interacts with quantifier interpretation.

  Generic overgeneralization effect or quantifier domain restriction? Evidence from paraphrasing in Polish · 2026 · DOI

• Since the contact situation is ongoing, much more can be done to explore the social drivers of language creation and change, like identities and ideologies, that have been understudied in new regional dialect formation (Dodsworth, 2017).

  Evidence of second-stage new-dialect formation in South Florida preadolescents · 2026 · DOI

• audiences perceive and ideologically interpret such appropriative performances remain unexplored, particularly when confronted with conflicting identity cues, such as a White singer engaging in linguistic minstrelsy (Bucholtz and Lopez 2011).

  Seeing vs. Believing: Gauging Perceptions of Racial Identity and Authenticity in Pop Music · 2026 · DOI

• 1. Iminumungkahi sa mga lokal na pamahalaan ng Surigao City na bumuo ng komprehensibong Sinurigawnon Language Preservation and Standardization Program na magsisilbing mekanismo sa dokumentasyon, standardisasyon, at promosyon ng wikang Sinurigawnon. Ang programang ito ay maaaring isama sa lokal na cultural heritage and education agenda upang matiyak ang patuloy na paggamit at transmisyon ng wika sa susunod na henerasyon. 2. Sa mananaliskik,ang pagbuo ng standardized orthography ay dapat nakabatay sa natural speech patterns ng speech community upang mapanatili ang linguistic authenticity at acceptance ng mga tagapagsalita. 3. Sa Department of Education na palakasin ang Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) implementation sa rehiyon sa pamamagitan ng pagbuo ng localized instructional materials na nakabatay sa phonological at prosodic patterns ng Sinurigawnon. Ang paggamit ng empirikal na linguistic data sa teaching materials ay makatutulong sa mas epektibong literacy development. 4. Sa mga lokal na pamahalaan at educational institutions na magsagawa ng regular na community-based linguistic documentation projects na may partisipasyon ng mga katutubong nagsasalita, lalo na ang mga nakatatandang miyembro ng komunidad na may hawak ng tradisyunal na linguistic knowledge. Ang ganitong hakbang ay makatutulong sa language vitality preservation. 5. Sa mga policy makers na isama ang linguistic heritage preservation sa tourism at cultural identity programs ng Surigao. Ang pagpapalakas ng lokal na wika ay makatutulong hindi lamang sa cultural preservation kundi pati na rin sa sustainable cultural tourism development. 6. Para sa mga research funding institutions, inirerekomenda ang pagbibigay ng suporta sa mga long-term linguistic research programs na nakatuon sa endangered language monitoring, intergenerational language transmission, at phonological change monitoring sa Sinurigawnon. REFERENCES [1]. Alas, T. A. (2020). Surigaonun morphologic structuration in the lyrical textuality of Surigaonun popular songs. Scientific International (Lahore), 32(5), 505-508. [2]. Bayang, E. E., Lloren, M. C., & Ciruela, D. M. A. (2025). A sociolinguistic analysis of the Surigaonon language: Demographics, usage, and linguistic patterns for preservation strategies in Surigao del Norte. Journal of Information Systems Engineering, 10(17s), 63-… [3]. Ciruela, D. M. A. (2024). Structural classification of Surigaonon, Cebuano, and Tagalog languages: A comparative morpho-lexical analysis. International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 6(4), 16-37. http://doi.org/10.36892/ijlls.v6i4.1884 [4]. Dumanig, F. P. (2015). Descriptive analysis of the Surigaonon language. Polyglossia/Research Repository.

  Prosodic and Acoustic Evidence for the Phonological Conditioning of /O/ and /U/ in Sinurigawnon: Toward Orthographic Standardization · 2026 · DOI

• Originality: Unlike prior work, this paper analyzes original, manually collected WhatsApp data, typically underexplored due to access and privacy limitations, leveraging understudied variables such as style, sentiment (affect/emotion), attitudes, and linguistic factors and their interactions under a single model of digital CS.

  Predicting language choice in a digital medium: A computational approach to analyzing WhatsApp code-switching in Hong Kong · 2025 · DOI

• Overall, this study supports the notion of L1 attrition as a natural consequence of bilingualism—one that is domain- and experience-dependent, unfolds along a continuum, and involves a complex (and possibly inverse) relationship between L1 and L2 performance that warrants further investigation.

  L1 Attrition vis-à-vis L2 Acquisition: Lexicon, Syntax–Pragmatics Interface, and Prosody in L1-English L2-Italian Late Bilinguals · 2025 · DOI

• However, evidence comes mainly from phonological or syntactic tasks, prompting an underexplored question: can higher L2p also entail a more native-like organization of semantic memory? Methodology: We asked high and low proficiency bilinguals to describe concepts in their second (English) and first (Spanish) language.

  Do we mean the same? Semantic native-likeness in highly proficient second language users · 2024 · DOI

• However, there is limited research on how the systemic barrier of linguistic profiling enables or hinders the role of the organization or individual career development (Hughes and Mamiseishvili, 2018).

  Guest editorial: Linguistic profiling and implications for career development · 2024 · DOI

• This study investigates parenthetical I assume / believe / feel / guess / suppose / think in the spoken parts of the Indian and Sri Lankan English components of the International Corpus of English to answer the question of to what extent parenthetical function, that is, expressing either the speaker's opinion or insufficient knowledge, is influenced by structural, contextual and sociobiographic factors.

  Parentheticals in spoken Indian and Sri Lankan English · 2024 · DOI

• Methods Twenty-three under-researched, “rarer” (less learned and therefore less known as a foreign language or L2) and minority languages were evaluated by 145 participants in terms of eroticism, beauty, status, and orderliness, subjectively perceived based on language sound.

  Phonaesthetics and personality—Why we do not only prefer Romance languages · 2023 · DOI

• Abstract Though research on the multiethnolect spoken in London—Multicultural London English (MLE)—has described the social distribution of the variety, the stylistic potentials of MLE remain poorly understood.

  The recontextualisation of Multicultural London English: Stylising the ‘roadman’ · 2023 · DOI

• Originality: This study makes use of a novel experimental methodology in studying several under-researched areas: variation in traditional Chukchi, shift-induced variation in a polysynthetic language, and NI as a locus of variation.

  Language variation in a shifting community: Different patterns of noun incorporation in Modern Chukchi · 2022 · DOI

• Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Currently available data show mixed results as to whether emotional resonance is stronger for words expressed in the mother tongue (L1) compared to a second language, acquired later in life (L2).

  Behavioral evidence for differences in emotional resonance during processing first and second language · 2022 · DOI

• It is recommended that further research of Code-switching (CS) in series language will be made to examine speaker’s intentions in a larger sample of inclusions, as well as their syntactic structure, semantics, and psychological motivation.

  Code-switching from french into english as a reflection of personalization function in Netflix series “Emily in Paris” · 2022 · DOI

• Moreover, while studies in LVC have long relied on social network theory to predict language performance, existing research on language acquisition during study abroad provides conflicting results and explanations for learner gains during study abroad.

  At the Intersection of SLA and Sociolinguistics: The Predictive Power of Social Networks During Study Abroad · 2022 · DOI

• Significance/implications: Now that some tendencies are identified, it remains to be seen whether naturalistic Yiddish–Slavic speech exhibits the same patterns of CS.

  Yiddish–Slavic language contact in multilingual songs: Describing deliberate code-switching · 2021 · DOI

• The current study is of interest because it focuses on heritage speakers’ phonemic inventories, an understudied area of linguistics (Rao & Ronquest, 2015; Kim, 2018) and it combines the BLP Questionnaire and the follow-up interview to retrieve information about heritage speakers’ degree of bilingualism and linguistic attitudes.

  The Production of /p, t, k/ among Heritage Speakers of Spanish in the United States · 2021 · DOI

• The major findings included: (1) “no standard dialect utilized” yielded the highest number of responses for productions of regional theatres; (2) Broadway coaches utilized General American and Location Specific Accents the most; and (3) industry professionals regarded flexibility and malleability as the most beneficial speech skills.

  The Current Use of Standard Dialects in the United States Theatre Industry · 2021 · DOI

• While a lot of research has been carried out in order to investigate cross-linguistic transfer in the direction from the native language (L1) towards the second language (L2) as well as L2 impact on L1 in childhood bilinguals (Yelland, Pollard & Mercury 1993; Cunningham & Graham 2000) and immigrants (Jarvis 2003; Pavlenko & Jarvis 2002; Laufer 2003; Pavlenko 2003), studies on the impact of foreign language learning in the classroom on L1 in L1-dominant environment are scarce.

  Students’ L1 non-standard lexical constructions as an effect of second language formal instruction · 2021 · DOI

• Second Dialect Acquisition by Jeff Siegel aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the largely understudied field of second dialect acquisition (SDA), as distinct from second language acquisitio.

  Second Dialect Acquisition · 2020 · DOI

• By analysing the way that changes in masculinity structures are reflected in performance of fictional protagonists, this paper demonstrates the necessity for further research on language use, particularly by protagonists, in fictional media, as well as on the way that dominant language ideologies are reproduced and consumed in the popular culture market.

  Voices of the hero · 2018 · DOI

• Utilising nearly forty years of sh?nen anime, this study constructs a diachronic analysis of first-person pronoun usage, the primary pragmatic index of gender performance in Japanese, as well as average pitch and pitch range, which are frequently cited as salient phonetic markers of gender performance but are understudied in this area with regard to language in media.

  Voices of the hero · 2018 · DOI

• Originality: This study sheds light on (factors that contribute to) young heritage speakers’ L1 lexical competence, a topic that has hitherto been under-investigated.

  Influential factors in lexical richness of young heritage speakers’ family language: Iranians in New Zealand · 2017 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Linguistic Variation and Morphology

• Language and Social Class · British Journal of Sociology · 1960 · 257 citations
• English as a lingua franca: interpretations and attitudes · World Englishes · 2009 · 234 citations
• The Economics of Language · Journal of Economic Literature · 2020 · 129 citations
• Cross-Cultural Emotion Recognition and In-Group Advantage in Vocal Expression: A Meta-Analysis · Emotion Review · 2020 · 125 citations
• Native language influences on word recognition in a second language: A megastudy. · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · 2008 · 98 citations
• Calculating speakers: Codeswitching in a rational choice model · Language in Society · 2001 · 84 citations
• Why not both? Rethinking categorical and continuous approaches to bilingualism · International Journal of Bilingualism · 2021 · 75 citations
• Prosody in Infant-Directed Speech Is Similar Across Western and Traditional Cultures · Journal of Cognition and Development · 2013 · 70 citations
• English or a Local Language in Advertising?: The Appreciation of Easy and Difficult English Slogans in the Netherlands · Journal of Business Communication · 2010 · 67 citations
• Americans’ attitudes toward foreign accents: evaluative hierarchies and underlying processes · Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development · 2020 · 66 citations

Most recent work

• Comparative Study of the Northern Greek Dialectal Systems of Thassos and Lesbos · Languages · 2026
• “Yeeees, Thank You Please!”: the Pragmatics of Please in African Englishes · Contrastive Pragmatics · 2026
• Social variation of code-switching acceptability · International Journal of Bilingualism · 2026
• Family language policies, educational dynamics and Spanish as a heritage language in Germany · Journal of Spanish Language Teaching · 2026
• Tamil Speakers in Switzerland: An Intergenerational and Typological Perspective · Languages · 2026
• Prosodic and Acoustic Evidence for the Phonological Conditioning of /O/ and /U/ in Sinurigawnon: Toward Orthographic Standardization · International Journal of Advanced Research in Science Communication and Technology · 2026
• ‘It’ll be real German, but German with a little twist’: Teaching and learning about dialects in the study abroad classroom · Language Teaching Research · 2026
• Exploring variation in sociolinguistic evaluation across human and machine talkers · Linguistics Vanguard · 2026
• A complicated source · Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics · 2026
• The languages of faith and belonging: sociolinguistic repertoires of two American Muslim girls of West African descent · Linguistics and Education · 2026

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