On phonological variability in Canadian English in Ottawa and Vancouver

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7865638
AutoresGaelan Dodds de Wolf (University of Victoria, autor de correspondencia)
Año1988
Volumen18
Número2
Páginas110-124
Fecha de publicación1988-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of the International Phonetic Association (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0025-1003 • E-ISSN: 1475-3502
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0025100300003728
OpenAlexW2020090474
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas29

A uniform dialect of Canadian English (CE) encompasses a wider territory than that of any other regional variety (Priestley (1951); Woods (1979); cf. Scargill and Warkentyne (1972) for suggested subdivisions; cf. also Bernard (1969) versus Horvath (1985) for the scope of Australian English, another widespread variety). This is a result of converging influences in Canada of varieties of British English and of Northern and Midland American (von Baeyer 1977; Woods 1979). The components of CE are a distinctive body of lexical items marked foremost by compounding, with many borrowings from French and the native Indian languages (Avis 1973; Harris 1975; Gregg 1979), certain minor syntactic features along with the stereotypical use of ‘eh’ (Avis 1978; Bailey 1982; Chambers 1986), and a ‘General’ Canadian accent, recognized as urban and educated, spreading westward from Ontario to the Pacific, and affecting even eastern Maritime speech (Gregg 1984a; Avis 1986; cf. Kinloch 1983). Within this broad framework (Avis 1973, 1986; Gregg 1984a), however, certain social and regional distinctions appear when phonological variability is considered within the Labovian model of sociological co-variation (e.g. Labov 1966, 1972; Trudgill 1974; Milroy 1987). A comparison of phonological items from two recent and concurrent sociodialectal surveys, one in eastern Canada for Ottawa (Woods 1979) and the other on the Pacific Coast for Vancouver (Gregg 1984b), reveals certain points of phonetic divergence socially and regionally, together with differential rates of sound change (de Wolf 1988

British English · Geography · Linguistics · Phonology · Sociology · Stress (linguistics · Variation (astronomy · Variety (cybernetics · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research