We address the articulation between language change in the historical sense and language change as experienced by individual speakers through a trend and panel study of the change from apical to dorsal /r/ in Montreal French. The community as a whole rapidly advanced its use of dorsal [R]. Most individual speakers followed across time were stable after the critical period, with phonological patterns set by the end of adolescence. A sizeable minority, however, made substantial changes. The window of opportunity for linguistic modification in later life may be expanded with rapid change in progress when linguistic variables take on social significance.

A B S T R A C TThe rise of the periphrastic future (PF) at the expense of the inflected future (IF) is an established historical trend in Québécois French over at least the past 150 years. Previous research has also found higher rates of PF among younger speakers, many displaying categorical use in affirmative contexts. Because an apparent time interpretation of the synchronic data fits the historical record, we expected concomitant speaker stability across the lifespan. On the contrary, our panel study of 60 Montréal speakers (1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984) reveals age grading in a retrograde direction. As they aged, two-thirds of the speakers we studied increased their frequency of IF, an effect heightened for members of higher socioprofessional groups. Though not sufficiently robust to stem the historical tide, increased IF use by older speakers may retard the change somewhat, providing continuing IF input to child L1 acquisition. Rather than vitiating an apparent time interpretation, these results indicate that the rate of change may be slightly overestimated if age grading acts in a retrograde direction.

Use of discourse markers by 17 speakers of Anglophone Montreal French (AMF) showed^reM,YMiatipjijruridividual repertoires and frequency of use. Only five subjects manifested rates of usag^corrip^rableTo thos^ToTliaFive speakers or to their own LI usage in English. In decreasing order of frequency, the speakers used tu sais 'y'know'; la 'there' (the most frequent among LI Montreal French speakers); bon 'good', alors 'so', comme 'like', and bien 'well'; and the local discourse conjunction fait que 'so'. The subjects occasionally made use of the English markers you know, so, like, and well. Quebecois French markers with no English equivalent were used by the speakers who had been exposed to French in their early childhood environment. The one marker that showed influence from English was comme, apparently calqued on English like. Overall, frequent use of discourse markers correlated only with the speakers' knowledge of French grammar-evidence that a higher frequency of discourse marker use is the hallmark of the fluent speaker. As a feature that is not explicitly taught in school, mastery of the appropriate use of discourse markers is thus particularly revealing of the speakers' integration into the local speech community.

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