In this paper a text-copying task is explored as a naturalistic, reasonably direct, and sensitive psycholinguistic method for the determination of syntactic constituent structure. In two experiments, 70 subjects wrote out copies of typed passages. The points where they paused and looked back to the typed originals were recorded and aggregated across all subjects copying a given passage. The passages differed in content but contained sentences with comparable structure. In general, patterns of pausing were highly correlated across sentences which matched in structure, but reliably distinct in relevant control comparisons. Sentences, clauses and many details of their internal constituency emerge clearly. These details are presented and compared with descriptions from the field of theoretical linguistics. Some suggestive evidence in support of two-stage parsing models is noted.
After mentioning the social context where I am conducting my research (and where the ideas outlined below have yet to be put to the test), this paper briefly refers to work on the English of British schoolchildren of South Asian extraction. It then speculates on the relationship between their English and two ethnic processes – what Gumperz calls the 'interactive' and the 'reactive'. The way in which Network Analysis (as used by Gal and L Milroy) permits an investigation of the first of these is outlined, and then consideration is given to a means of examining the second (the 'reactive'). This is Identity Structure Analysis (ISA), developed by P Weinreich, which in addition provides a systematic method for discovering what it feels like inside a network. The paper ends with a bolder claim for this combination of Network Analysis with ISA. Together, they give empirical and economical realisation to several important components in Le Page's sociolinguistic hypothesis and riders. Depending on the adequacy and status of this theory, the methodology described here covers parameters that are really the most fundamental to any (neighbourhood) sociolinguistic survey (whose main focus is on the language of the individual speaker).1,2