variationist
English
Etymology
variation + -ist
Noun
variationist (plural variationists)
- (linguistics) A person who studies variation in usage among speakers of the same language
Adjective
variationist (not comparable)
- (linguistics) Focused on synchronic or historical variation in the forms of language used
- 2013, Robert Bayley, “Variationist sociolinguistics”, in Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron, and Ceil Lucas, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 11:
- The central ideas of variationist sociolinguistics are that an understanding of language requires an understanding of variable as well as categorical processes, and that the variation witnessed at all levels of language is not random.
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