Eskil Hansen
This paper reports on some results from a major sociolinguistic research project, the Oslo Speech Project (Talemälsundersokelsen i Oslo [TAUS]), carried out at the University of Oslo between 1971 and 1976. The subjects (48 in all) were divided according to sex, age, and geographic area (East vs. West). The taped Interviews amounted to 24 hours and approximately 250,000 words. In the analyses, the mainfocus was on syntax. The reported results establish that there are clear patterns of social Variation in the syntax oforal language. The syntactic stratification is not so large, however, that one can speak of social-group syntax or maintain that there are syntactic features typicalfor the speech ofpeople with a certain sociocultural background.