New-dialect Formation in Canada

New-dialect Formation in Canada
Author: Stefan Dollinger
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027231087

This book details the development of eleven modal auxiliaries in late 18th- and 19th-century Canadian English in a framework of new-dialect formation. The study assesses features of the modal auxiliaries, tracing influences to British and American input varieties, parallel developments, or Canadian innovations. The findings are based on the "Corpus of Early Ontario English," "pre-Confederation Section, "the first electronic corpus of early Canadian English. The data, which are drawn from newspapers, diaries and letters, include original transcriptions from manuscript sources and texts from semi-literate writers. While the overall results are generally coherent with new-dialect formation theory, the Ontarian context suggests a number of adaptations to the current model. In addition to its general Late Modern English focus, "New-Dialect Formation in Canada" traces changes in epistemic modal functions up to the present day, offering answers to the loss of root uses in the central modals. By comparing Canadian with British and American data, important theoretical insights on the origins of the variety are gained. The study offers a sociohistorical perspective on a still understudied variety of North American English by combining language-internal features with settlement history in this first monograph-length, diachronic treatment of Canadian English in real time.

New-Dialect Formation

New-Dialect Formation
Author: Peter Trudgill
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2006-01-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0748626417

This book presents a new and controversial theory about dialect contact and the formation of new colonial dialects. It examines the genesis of Latin American Spanish, Canadian French and North American English, but concentrates on Australian and South African English, with a particular emphasis on the development of the newest major variety of the language, New Zealand English. Peter Trudgill argues that the linguistic growth of these new varieties of English was essentially deterministic, in the sense that their phonologies are the predictable outcome of the mixture of dialects taken from the British Isles to the Southern Hemisphere in the 19th century. These varieties are similar to one another, not because of historical connections between them, but because they were formed out of similar mixtures according to the same principles. A key argument is that social factors such as social status, prestige and stigma played no role in the early years of colonial dialect development, and that the 'work' of colonial new-dialect formation was carried out by children over a period of two generations. The book also uses insights derived from the study of early forms of these colonial dialects to shed light back on the nature of 19th-century English in the British Isles.

New-dialect Formation

New-dialect Formation
Author: Peter Trudgill
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195220438

This book presents a new and controversial theory about dialect contact and the formation of new colonial dialects. It examines the genesis of Latin American Spanish, Canadian French and North American English, but concentrates on Australian and South African English, with a particular emphasis on the development of the newest major variety of the language, New Zealand English. Peter Trudgill argues that the linguistic growth of these new varieties of English was essentially deterministic, in the sense that their phonologies are the predictable outcome of the mixture of dialects taken from the.

The Handbook of Language Contact

The Handbook of Language Contact
Author: Raymond Hickey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 901
Release: 2013-04-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1118448693

The Handbook of Language Contact offers systematic coverage of the major issues in this field – ranging from the value of contact explanations in linguistics, to the impact of immigration, to dialectology – combining new research from a team of globally renowned scholars, with case studies of numerous languages. An authoritative reference work exploring the major issues in the field of language contact: the study of how language changes when speakers of distinct speech varieties interact Brings together 40 specially-commissioned essays by an international team of scholars Examines language contact in societies which have significant immigration populations, and includes a fascinating cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world Accessibly structured into sections exploring the place of contact studies within linguistics as a whole; the value of contact studies for research into language change; and language contact in the context of work on language and society Explores a broad range of topics, making it an excellent resource for both faculty and students across a variety of fields within linguistics

Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages

Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages
Author: James N. Stanford
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027218641

Indigenous minority languages have played crucial roles in many areas of linguistics - phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, typology, and the ethnography of communication. Such languages have, however, received comparatively little attention from quantitative or variationist sociolinguistics. Without the diverse perspectives that underrepresented language communities can provide, our understanding of language variation and change will be incomplete. To help fill this gap and develop broader viewpoints, this anthology presents 21 original, fieldwork-based studies of a wide range of indigenous languages in the framework of quantitative sociolinguistics. The studies illustrate how such understudied communities can provide new insights into language variation and change with respect to socioeconomic status, gender, age, clan, lack of a standard, exogamy, contact with dominant majority languages, internal linguistic factors, and many other topics.

Canadian English

Canadian English
Author: James A. Walker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2015-06-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1135913692

This textbook is the only one of its kind to introduce the study of Canadian English in the context of basic concepts of linguistics and sociolinguistics. The book provides foundational information on linguistic principles and on the different branches of sociolinguistics, ranging from the large-scale ‘macro’ study of language usage (the sociology of language, dialect surveys) to the ‘micro’ study of language use (sociophonetics, sociolinguistic variation and change). Each chapter highlights the different ways of collecting and analyzing data, including census data and historical texts, surveys and questionnaires, publically available corpora, and interviews. Mini-projects at the end of each chapter offer hands-on experience with the methods presented in the chapter. In addition to discussing the classic works in the study of Canadian English, this book engages with such contemporary issues as new-dialect formation, language and social identity, and ongoing language change, making it key reading for students taking courses in the areas of Canadian English, varieties of English, language variation, and sociolinguistics.

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II
Author: Richard D. Janda
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 712
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1118732219

An entirely new follow-up volume providing a detailed account of numerous additional issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics. This brand-new, second volume of The Handbook of Historical Linguistics is a complement to the well-established first volume first published in 2003. It includes extended content allowing uniquely comprehensive coverage of the study of language(s) over time. Though it adds fresh perspectives on several topics previously treated in the first volume, this Handbook focuses on extensions of diachronic linguistics beyond those key issues. This Handbook provides readers with studies of language change whose perspectives range from comparisons of large open vs. small closed corpora, via creolistics and linguistic contact in general, to obsolescence and endangerment of languages. Written by leading scholars in their respective fields, new chapters are offered on matters such as the origin of language, evidence from language for reconstructing human prehistory, invocations of language present in studies of language past, benefits of linguistic fieldwork for historical investigation, ways in which not only biological evolution but also field biology can serve as heuristics for research into the rise and spread of linguistic innovations, and more. Moreover, it: offers novel and broadened content complementing the earlier volume so as to provide the fullest available overview of a wholly engrossing field includes 23 all-new contributed chapters, treating some familiar themes from fresh perspectives but mostly covering entirely new topics features expanded discussion of material from language families other than Indo-European provides a multiplicity of views from numerous specialists in linguistic diachrony. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, researchers and professional linguists, as well as all those interested in the history of particular languages and the history of language more generally.

Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English

Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English
Author: Simone E. Pfenninger
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2014-09-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027269939

The papers in this volume aim at facilitating exchange between three fields of inquiry that are of great importance in historical linguistics: language change, (socio)linguistic research on variation, and contact linguistics. Drawing on a range of recently-developed methodological innovations, such as methods for quantifying the linguistic variation (that is a prerequisite for language change) or new corpus-based methods for investigating text-type variation, the contributors are able to trace linguistic change in different periods and contact situations, demonstrate how variation occurs, and in how far language change results out of this variation. Thus, the chapters go beyond core issues of language variation and change, focusing on the boundary between word and grammar, discourse and ideology in the history of the English language.

Creating Canadian English

Creating Canadian English
Author: Stefan Dollinger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2019-07-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108497713

Traces the making of Canadian English, both as concept and global variety, throughout the twentieth century to the present.

Keeping in Touch

Keeping in Touch
Author: Raymond Hickey
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2019-11-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027261881

The current volume presents a number of chapters which look at informal vernacular letters, written mostly by emigrants to the former colonies of Britain, who settled at these locations in the past few centuries, with a focus on letters from the nineteenth century. Such documents often show features for varieties of English which do not necessarily appear in later sources or which are not attested with the same range or in the same set of grammatical contexts. This has to do with the vernacular nature of the letters, i.e. they were written by speakers who had a lower level of education and whose speech, and hence their written form of language, does not appear to have been guided by considerations of standardness and conformity to external norms of language. Furthermore, the writers of the emigrant letters, examined in the current volume, were very unlikely to have known of, still less have used, manuals of letter writing. Emigrant letters thus provide a valuable source of data in tracing the possible development of features in varieties of English in the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.