ABSTRACT
The problems of explaining long-range patterns of linguistic change fall into two opposing types. One is to explain parallel developments after long separation, as in the history of colonial Englishes in the Southern Hemisphere (Trudgill 2004). The second type is the explanation of divergent developments in neighboring dialects that have never been separated. The increasing diversity of regional dialects in North America has focused attention on a number of situations of the second type (Labov 2010: Chapter 3; Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006 [henceforth ANAE]). They all involve common features of the forks in the road that are found at the heart of this process of divergence.
