ABSTRACT
In the early days of the discipline, variationist sociolinguistics concerned primarily, if not solely, the investigation of phonological variation. The existence of variation at other levels of language has never been a matter of dispute, at least within sociolinguistics. However, the extension of variationist methods to higher linguistic levels—in particular, to morphology and syntax—sparked a fierce theoretical debate, which has continued, though at a lesser degree of intensity, to the present. A key issue in this debate is whether the notion of the sociolinguistic variable, the analytical tool of variationism, can legitimately be extended to variation 'above and beyond phonology'. The chapter argues that variation in agreement with collective nouns represents an important case study of morphosyntactic variation in French because the topic has been relatively neglected in this variety. It shows that diachronic variation in agreement with la plupart has given way to a synchronic state of plural-only agreement for this noun.
