Using VADIS to weigh competing epicentral influence

Abstract

The present study sets out to explore the mandative subjunctive in Canadian English (CanE), vs. its potential epicentre American English (AmE), and its historical input variety British English (BrE) based on a quantitative variationist analysis of the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English (Strathy), the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and the British National Corpus (BNC). The relevance of this contribution primarily stems from the fact that no previous research has yet focused on a contrastive comparison between CanE and its alleged epicentres, namely ‘a model of English for (neighbouring?) countries’ (Hundt, 2013, p. 185), and that the new method of Variation‐Based Distance and Similarity Modeling (VADIS) has so far never been applied to research in this field. Key findings show that VADIS is indeed a valuable method in detecting epicentral constellations, and pinpoint fruitful suggestions regarding AmE's alleged transnational influence on its neighbor, as well as cross‐border and transoceanic dis/similarities concerning the subject under analysis.