ABSTRACT
Higher level syntactic variables have been shown by investigators to present complex issues of analysis and interpretation. However, some apparently simple grammatical variables, such as patterns of negation or subject-verb concord, are generally thought to be relatively amenable to quantitative analysis and are extensively investigated both by sociohistorical linguists and by LVC researchers in contemporary communities. With reference to examples drawn from work in northern parts of the UK, I argue that analysis of subject-verb concord is in some regions complex in terms of its dialect history, its internal constraints and its social distribution on a vernacular/standard continuum. Contrary to what we might expect from reports in the LVC literature, clearly localised variants of a number of different variables are used in Belfast and Newcastle-upon-Tyne by educated speakers. This issue is discussed with reference to ideological questions of how the notion of a spoken standard is understood in dialect areas distant from the southern areas of the UK. Particular attention is paid to the contrast between prescriptive comment and social processes such as dialect levelling in influencing analysts’ understanding of the nature and development of differently constructed standard Englishes.
