Language change inevitably leads to variation, and variation within a speech community often leads to social valuation of particular features as "good" or "bad". "Good" variants are typically believed to be characterized logical superiority or venerability, (1) or either; "bad" variants must then be illogical and/or recent inventions (2) by the vulgar. But neither logic nor great age play a significant role in the (3) labeling of variants. Consider "ain’t", which may be the English word most is despised by schoolteachers and pundits. Far from being (4) logical or recent, "ain’t" is a legitimate phonological descendant (5) of "amn’t", which was the original contraction of "am not". It isn’t clear how "ain’t" fell in disrepute, but once there, it left an (6) awkward gap in the system of negative contractions: We have "You’re going, aren’t you ", "She’s going, isn’t she", and so on, but sure no real person actually says "I’m going, am I not". (7) Instead, people say "I’m going, aren’t I ", in the part because they (8) have been taught to avoid "ain’t" like the plague; and here logic shudders, because while "You are going, She is going," etc., are fine, "I are going" is possible for native speakers of English. The point (9) of this example is not to urge rehabilitation of ain’t-legislating language change is generally a losing proposition-but to illustrating (10) the linguistically arbitrary nature of social valuation of the results of language change.