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.
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.
S'appuyant sur des données diachroniques documentant la variation en ce qui concerne la référence temporelle au futur en français, cet article fait la lumière sur la contribution du suivi de cohorte à la compréhension du changement linguistique. La recherche en temps réel présente une étude de cas de 12 locuteurs suivis au cours d'une période de 24 ans (1971 à 1995). Les résultats indiquent une augmentation de l'usage du futur synthétique, une tendance contraire à celle du changement communautaire en cours qui suggère plutôt un déclin de la forme synthétique. Cependant, l'analyse des contraintes linguistiques sur la variation indique que la polarité, que l'on considérait précédemment le facteur principal influençant la variation, continue d'exercer une influence incontestable sur la distribution des formes. L'article conclut à la complémentarité des approches méthodologiques en temps apparent et en temps réel dans l'étude de la variation et du changement linguistique.Based on diachronic data documenting the variation related to future temporal reference in French, this study sheds light on the contribution of panel study in the understanding of language change. This real-time study provides a follow-up of 12 speakers of Montreal French over a period of 24 years (1971 to 1995). The results show an increase in the use of the synthetic future, a tendency contrary to the one characterizing the community change in progress that rather suggests a decline of the synthetic forms. Still, the analysis of the linguistic constraints on variation shows that polarity, previously considered to be the main factor, continues to exert a powerful influence on the distribution of forms. The article concludes that the methodological approaches in apparent- and real-time should complement one another for the study of language variation and change
A B S T R A C TWe investigated the French of the first generation of Montreal Anglophones who had had access to French immersion schooling. Our aim was to determine the extent to which these Anglophones had acquired the variable grammar of their Francophone peers and how that was related to the type of French instruction received and to the types of exposure to French. In Montreal French, a subject NP may be "echoed" by a pronoun without emphatic or contrastive effect. Because this is not a feature of standard French, Anglophones who learned French primarily in school were not expected to exhibit it. On the other hand, Anglophones who frequently spent time with Montreal Francophones were expected to have picked it up. To test this hypothesis, we used a database of speech from 29 speakers, varying in their quantity and type of exposure to French. Multivariate analyses determined the degree of correlation of several linguistic and social factors (related to type and quantity of exposure to French) to the presence of a doubled subject. These data were then compared with that for L1 French. Speakers who were more nativelike with respect to the rate of subject doubling and effects of linguistic factors were those who had had more contact with native speakers, especially as adults.Our goal was to determine the extent to which Montreal Anglophones acquire the variable grammar of their Francophone peers and how that is related to the type of French instruction they have received and the amount of exposure to French they have had. For this study, we examined speech recorded from 29 second
Based on the results of three variationist studies on personal pronouns used in Montreal French, this article shows how real-time data can shed light oǹ apparent time interpretation' and increase our understanding of morphosyntactic changes. Longitudinal data for a 24-year period from three corpora of spoken French are used to discuss cases of variation: variation between the clitics on and nous, alternation between on and tu/vous, and variation among non-clitic plural pronouns. While the ®rst case illustrates a change occurring over a long period of time, the other variables show changes observable in the 24-year time span under study. In particular, analysis of the variation among non-clitic pronouns suggests a socio-stylistic specialization of the variants at a certain stage in the grammaticalization of compound forms. In sum, this article uses longitudinal evidence to show how the variables are involved in a process of restructuring the paradigm of the French pronouns.
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