A Preliminary Study

We investigate Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants ' acquisition of the variable (ing), which occurs in progressive tenses, participles, noun phrases, etc., and which can be pronounced [ip] or [ln]. A VARBRUL 2 program analysis of native speaker speech shows that the production of (ing) is constrained by phonological, grammatical, stylistic, and social factors. An analysis of the nonnative speakers ' acquisition of these norms shows that [n] is more frequent before anterior segments (reflecting ease of articulation), and that males use [ln] more frequently than females, especially in monitored speech (perhaps reflecting their desire to accommodate to a male native speaker norm rather than to an overall native speaker norm). The analysis also shows evidence of The research reported here began in a course in sociolinguistic lield methods taught by Prolessor Gillian Sankolf, to whom we express our thanks. The members of this course and of a previous course collected the Philadelphia data and contribuled greatly to our understanding thereof. They include: Andy Brown, Thea Lange, Young-suk Lee, Cheri Micheau, Monica Prasad, and Pam Saunders. We thank these scholars {or allcwing us to use their hard-won results. Thanks to Walt Wolfram of the Center For Applied Linguistics lor allowing us to use the data from the Washington, DC, area informants. Thanks also to Jack Hoeksema, Richard Young, and Sharon Asir fcr helpful discussions. None o [ these scholars necessarily agrees with our clbims. While working on this project, Adairiscn was supported by a Mellon Fellorvship and Reqan by a Fulbright Fellowship at the Linguistics Departnent, University cl Pennsvlvania