ab st rac t Our article presents a variationist analysis of future verb forms in Acadian French. The main variants considered are the inflected future (e.g. je partirai) and the periphrastic future (e.g. je vais partir). The purpose of this study is twofold: a) it will determine the distribution of these variants and their linguistic correlates; b) it will compare the use of future verb forms with other varieties of French. Our results reveal that the inflected future is used with greater frequency in Acadian French than in other Canadian varieties and that the factors that condition the variable in Acadian are not the same as in other varieties. i nt roduc t i onThe present article examines the expression of future temporal reference in Acadian French. Two principal variants are used with this function, namely, the periphrastic (aller 'to go' + infinitive, also known as the futur proche or 'near future') and the inflected (also known as the futur simple or 'simple future') future. The variable has been the subject of a number of studies of both European and Canadian French. For Quebec and Ontario French in particular, the case has been made that the inflected future has lost considerable ground to the periphrastic future including in contexts where traditional grammars prescribe the former. In our study we determine the overall distribution of the two variants in three varieties of Acadian French and consider the factors that influence variant choice. Our results show robust use of the inflected future and choice of variant correlated with a number of factors traditionally associated with such use, providing evidence of the conservative nature of the Acadian varieties. the variableThe two variants that have been the object of quantitative analysis in our study are presented in examples 1a) and 1b):323

This paper synthesizes research on the acquisition of linguistic variation by learners of French as a second language-an overview that, to our knowledge, is the first of its kind. It also presents a case study on French immersion students' acquisition of the pronouns nous and on "we," an alternation in many varieties of spoken French. The study shows that the students use the mildly marked variant on slightly more often than the formal variant nous but much less often than native speakers (who use it almost categorically) and immersion teachers (who strongly favor it). Female and middle-class students favor nous, students with greater extracurricular French language exposure favor on, and students who speak a Romance language at home favor nous. Various explanations are proposed for these correlations. Finally, the students, like L1 Francophones, favor on in linguistic contexts in which the referent is both nonspecific and unrestricted.We would like to thank the following people for their comments on a previous version of this paper:Our study presents a variationist analysis of the alternation between the subject pronouns nous and on, both of which designate two or more individuals including the speaker. This case of variation has been documented in many varieties of contemporary spoken French. The objective of our study is twofold. First, we seek to determine whether French immersion students use both pronouns nous and on to mean "we" (e.g., Ma soeur et moi nous allons à la même école and Ma soeur et moi on va à la même école, both of which mean "My sister and I, we go to the same school"). Second, we seek to determine whether the immersion students' usage of these pronouns is conditioned by the same linguistic and extralinguistic constraints that have an impact on native speaker usage as well as by independent variables that are specific to second language (L2) learners-for example, the amount of exposure to native French outside school and the learners' first language (L1). As such, this study belongs to a strand of SLA research that investigates the learning of sociolinguistic variation by L2 learners. Within this strand of research, numerous studies have focused on French as a second language (FSL), but no synthesis of these studies' findings has yet been attempted. Thus, our paper will include such a synthesizing overview. RESEARCH ON VARIATION IN SLAL1 sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that native speakers' alternation between two or more linguistic elements (variants) expressing the same meaning (referred to hereafter as L1 variation) is an integral part of spoken language competence (Labov, 1966(Labov, , 1972. It affects all components of language (syntax, morphology, lexicon, etc.). It is highly frequent in L1 discourse and constrained by both linguistic factors (e.g., factors pertaining to the linguistic context in which the variants are used) and extralinguistic factors (e.g., gender, social status or group identity, and register or style).However, the bulk of research on SLA has focused on as...

This study on the learning of sociolinguistic variants by 41 adolescents from a French immersion program in Toronto, Canada, synthesizes the ¢ndings of our research on this topic. This article provides answers to the following questions. First, do the immersion students use the same range of sociolinguistic variants as do speakers of Quebec French, who are used in our research as a ¢rst language (L1) benchmark? Second, do they use variants with the same discursive frequency as do L1 speakers? Third, is their use of variants correlated with the same linguistic constraints observable in L1 speech? Finally, what are the independent variables in£uencing their learning of variants, for example: treatment of variants by immersion teachers and authors of French language arts materials used in immersion programs; interactions with L1 speakers; in£uence of the students' L1(s); in£uence of intra-systemic factors^marked-ness of variants; and in£uence of the students' social characteristics^social standing, sex?

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In this paper we present a methodological approach that can be used to determine the likelihood that innovations observed in a minority language are the result of language contact. We then use this methodological approach to frame a discussion of data concerning eight innovations that can be attributed to transfer from the majority language (English) The theoretical concept of INTERFERENCE has attracted more than its share of criticism. In our view, the generally 'bad press' it has received is not due to a flaw in the theory that languages in contact may influence one another -no serious linguist would deny this fact -but rather to the lack of an adequate methodology (and to some extent also to ideological bias). For instance, in the fields of historical linguistics, minority languages, pidgins and Creoles and second language learning, one can find studies that have hastily and erroneously attributed instances of language change or interlanguage errors to language contact and that have downplayed or ignored alternative internal explanations. As a result, the factor of language contact has come to be held with much suspicion by many linguists and some have even elected to demonstrate that it plays only a marginal role as a source of variation and change in situations of societal bilingualism and language contact. While such a demonstration may be motivated on theoretical grounds, it may also reflect a hidden bias on the part of some linguists, because of the stigma that is attached to contact-induced innovations especially when they are documented in minority speech varieties. In the words of Klein-Andreu (p.c.): "the reason for [neglecting contact] is a kind of covert purism: the results of transfer are considered undesirable or 'bad'; therefore they are ignored or seriously downplayed, as a kind of courtesy to the population under study". We believe that there has been an overreaction against the notion of contact phenomena in linguistics and one of the goals of the * We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer of a previous version of our article for his/her useful comments. More specifically, we will draw on a large body of comparative sociolinguistic data and present a methodological approach that can be used to determine the likelihood that innovations observed in a minority language are, indeed, the result of language contact. We will then use this methodological approach to frame a discussion of data concerning eight innovations that can be attributed to transfer from the majority language of English to the French of Francophones residing in the province of Ontario in Canada. This discussion will show, notably, how systemic and extra-systemic factors play a role in the emergence of these innovations. We will also demonstrate that there are interesting differences in the extent to which these innovations are used across speaker groups and communities and that such differences suggest that there are thresholds of level of language contact associated with the emergence, or lack thereof, of particular tra...