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The loss of /hw/ in English in words like where and wheat is virtually complete in contemporary North American English, though /hw/ has lingered in Ontario, Canada. For vernacular speech from Almonte and Parry Sound, the authors analyze the decline of /hw/ in apparent time among individuals born from the 1880s to the 1950s. They place these observations within the field of language obsolescence and suggest that Parry Sound and Almonte are examples of intermediate isolation, less profound than is typical in studies of dialect loss. Almonte has retained /hw/ much longer than Parry Sound; this pattern parallels the greater share of /hw/-ful Scots and Irish speakers in Almonte's early immigration and accords with Parry Sound's increased outside contact due to a rising tourism industry. Both communities uniformly exhibit more /hw/ in content words than in function words as the feature recedes to total absence for speakers born in the 1950s. This pattern is an example of linguistic order persisting during obsolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines ongoing lexical variability among words that describe areas with trees, such as woods, bush and forest, among others. The historical perspective shows ongoing semantic evolution of these terms, from wood(s) (c.825) to the emergence of bush in the late 16th century or early 17th century. We assess regional, social and linguistic patterns of variation in 1849 tokens, from individuals born in the late 1800s to early 200s across 21 communities in Ontario, Canada. The most common word is bush; use of woods is moderate while forest is rare. Ancestry and migration play key roles in their distribution, demonstrating that ancestral roots, migration and language contact play into the selection of a word. We argue that lexical variation, when analysed in a comparative sociolinguistic perspective in the context of social typology, history and geographic location, offers important insights into language use and human behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new resource designed to facilitate the quantitative investigation of syntactic variation in spoken language from a comparative perspective. The datasets comprise homogeneously annotated collections of “interchangeable” (i.e. competing) genitive and dative variants in four varieties of English: American English, British English, Canadian English, and New Zealand English. To showcase the empirical potential of the data source, we present a suggestive analysis that investigates the extent to which the probabilistic grammar of genitive and dative variant choice differs across varieties. The statistical analysis reveals that while there are a number of subtle probabilistic contrasts between the regional varieties under study, there is overall a striking degree of cross-varietal homogeneity. We conclude by outlining directions for future research. This article is part of the Special Collection: Probabilistic grammars: Syntactic variation in a comparative perspective

The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how sociolinguistic research can be applied to endangered language documentation field linguistics. It first provides an overview of the techniques and practices of sociolinguistic fieldwork and the ensuring corpus compilation methods. The discussion is framed with examples from research projects focused on European-heritage English-speaking communities in the UK and Canada that have documented and analyzed English dialects from the far reaches of Scotland to the wilds of Northern Ontario, Canada. The main focus lies on morpho-syntactic and discourse-pragmatic variation; however, the same techniques could be applied to other types of variation. The discussion includes examples from a broad range of research studies in order to illustrate how sociolinguistic analyses are conducted and what they offer for understanding language variation and change.

An analysis of perfect verb forms in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) looks at the distribution of forms by semantic function and co-occurrence patterns in Samana English and ex-slave recordings. Results suggest that despite the overall rarity of this category in the general realm of past time, the most frequent forms used to mark it ("have" + past participle and bare past participles) are not at all marginal in contexts "licensed" for the present perfect in standard English. Co-occurrence patterns with temporal distance, adverbs, and conjunctions also mirror those of the present perfect in standard English, while differing from those proposed for creoles. This suggests that the form "have" actually functions as a productive marker of perfect in these data. Bare past participles, with the exception of "seen" and "done," are probably the result of "have" deletion since their occurrence is highly restricted to the same perfect context. It is argued that the origins of these perfect forms and their functions must be traced to the original source in Britain, not to the influence of creoles. (MSE)

In May 2019, the authors conducted sociolinguistic interviews with 39 White residents of Marmora and Lake, Ontario, a place founded predominately by British settlers, with a mixed farming/mining economy up until the late twentieth century. The data are rich in well-known dialect features, including preterit come, zero relative pronouns, and, most strikingly, zero articles. Praat analyses confirm that these zero articles are not simply due to phonetic reduction, and analysis of the zero variants exposes several trends. Among the oldest members of the population, the incidence of zero articles is relatively frequent, especially among men, a typical pattern for dialect obsolescence. In addition to phonetic conditioning, consistent with definite article reduction at earlier times, the data also show a strong effect of information status, consistent with patterns for the zero definite article in York, England. Older individuals use zero articles across more contexts compared to younger ones, suggesting systemic adjustments in an evolving grammatical system. The authors argue that the use of the zero articles in Marmora reflects an earlier stage in the history of both the definite and indefinite articles in English. They also consider cultural changes and psychological impacts from personal commentaries to highlight the importance of social context. This research demonstrates that rural Ontario offers key insight into the earlier stages and current state of dialects in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 40th volume of the journal Diachronica, which features contributions from 40 linguists on various aspects of language change. The authors reflect on the history of the field, current debates, and the relationship between synchrony and diachrony. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the ways in which language systems are shaped by their immediate past states and the role of variation in language change. It also highlights the need for collaboration and co-authorship in linguistic research. The article encourages continued collaboration in the field of linguistics for future progress and understanding, while acknowledging the diverse perspectives and contributions of different researchers and emphasizing the importance of respecting and valuing these differences. [Extracted from the article]

Subject dislocation (SD) is common across languages. In French, it is a vernacular norm. In English, it is comparatively rare. This article examines English SD in a unique contrastive situation in Ontario, Canada: two communities where SD is a community norm, one where individuals speak both English and French (Kapuskasing), and the other where the population speaks English only (Parry Sound). Dislocated subjects are produced by the same underlying linguistic mechanisms in both places, with parallel constraints by type of subject and intervening material, suggesting a typological universal. However, SD is age-graded in Kapuskasing, regardless of heritage language. In Parry Sound, it is obsolescent, in steady decline over the twentieth century. We conclude that while typological trends are underlain by universal cognitive processes, locally embedded sociocultural influences are the source of differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who as a restrictive relativizer in English is an old change from above. In urban dialects, it still acts as a prestige form, whereas it is infrequent or negligible in rural British and American varieties. We compare earlier findings from Toronto, the largest city in the province of Ontario (D'Arcy & Tagliamonte, 2010), with a range of communities from the Ontario Dialects Project (Tagliamonte, 2003–present). While none of the rural locations has as much who as Toronto, there is a substantial range. Regions along the major highways to the north and east of the city have more who , while the smaller towns in less accessible locations have less, consistent with a Cascade Model effect (Labov, 2003). Nonetheless, who shows evidence of diffusion, increasing in apparent time in recent decades. We suggest that this reflects overt pressure from above, consistent with the enduring role that prestige plays in English relativizer variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the mechanism by which a linguistic change advances across successive generations of speakers? We explore this question by using the model of incrementation provided in Labov 2001 and analyzing six current changes in English. Extending Labov's focus on recent and vigorous phonological changes, we target ongoing morphosyntactic(-semantic) and discourse-pragmatic changes. Our results provide a striking validation of the incrementation model, confirming its value as a key to understanding the evolution of linguistic systems. However, although our findings reveal the predicted peak in the apparent-time progress of a change and corroborate the female tendency to lead innovation, there is no absolute contrast between men and women with respect to incrementation. Instead, quantitative differences in the social embedding of linguistic change correlate with the rate of the change in the speech community.

Previous work has shown that stance—the way speakers position themselves with respect to what they are talking about and who they are talking to—provides powerful insights into why speakers choose certain linguistic variants, beyond correlations with macro-social categories such as gender, ethnicity, and social class. However, as stancetaking moves are highly context-dependent, they have rarely been explored quantitatively, making the observed variable patterns difficult to generalize. This article seeks to contribute to this methodological gap by proposing a formal guide to coding stance and demonstrating how it can be operationalized quantitatively. Drawing on a corpus of eight individuals, self-recorded in three situations with varying levels of social distance, we apply this method to variation between English complementizers that and zero (i.e. no overt complementizer), providing a replicable and theoretically grounded protocol that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative analyses in a variationist sociolinguistic study. (Stance, complementizers, that , English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the quotative system of contemporary British and Canadian youth. Multivariate analysis of nearly 1300 quotative verbs demonstrates that the innovative form "be like" is productive in both Canada and Britain. Traditional quotatives such as "say,""go,""think" are used according to somewhat different patterns in the two corpora. (Author/VWL)

Aims to contribute new data on verbal "-s" by systematically examining its behavior in Devon English (DE), a variety spoken in Southwest England, and a broader historical and cross-dialectal perspective for understanding the origin and function of verbal "-s" in nonstandard varieties of English in North America. (Author/VWL)