On the nature of linguistic variation and its types

Topical issues of the general theory of linguistic variability are considered; the specificity of linguistic variation, its types in synchrony and diachrony are determined, lexical variability and the phenomena of doublet, heterophony, and language differentiation are distinguished. The differentiation of variant and linguistic differentiation seems to us more justified than the compromise allocation of “complete” and “incomplete”, “commonly used”, “professional” and “territorial variants” in a number of works.