J A Walker
Biographic Data
| ID | 53869 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J A Walker |
| GIVEN NAMES | J A |
| FAMILY NAME | Walker |
| SIGNATURE | WALKER J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1262-8850 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 140 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 30 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
On the Status of English-Origin Nouns in Vietnamese Discourse
Objectives: This study determines the status of English-origin nouns in otherwise Vietnamese discourse among bilingual speakers in Australia. It examines whether these nouns function as fully integrated loanwords, nonce borrowings, or instances of code-switching. Methodology: Taking a comparative variationist approach, this study compares patterns of syntactic integration across three points of comparison: Vietnamese nouns (VN), attested English-…
Self-perceptions of ethnic markers in Toronto English
Ethnically marked ways of speaking have garnered increasing attention in sociolinguistics, although social meaning has largely been adduced indirectly through production data and perception experiments. Part of a larger project investigating ethnolinguistic variation in Toronto English, this paper presents a preliminary analysis of direct elicitation through focus groups. Participants of Italian and Chinese backgrounds provided responses to clips…
Introduction
The focus of this special issue of the Australian Journal of Linguistics is the study of perceptions of and attitudes towards English in linguistically diverse contexts, representing research condu...
Attitudes to Vietnamese/English language mixing in Australia
Language mixing (LM) in multilingual settings has cultural, social and pragmatic functions, but attitudes to LM can vary widely, influencing language use and maintenance. While Vietnamese in Australia has been studied from several perspectives, research on attitudes toward English–Vietnamese LM remains limited. This study explores how Vietnamese Australians perceive LM in their community. Adapting the matched-guise technique, we created artificia…
Do Australians hear ethnicity
Changes in migration alter the linguistic ecology of countries, giving rise to hybrid social identities and ethnically marked ways of speaking (‘ethnolects’). Studies of Australian English ethnolects focus on linguistic production, but we do not know whether Australians can identify ethnicity based on speech, the social and personal characteristics they attribute to ways of speaking, and what linguistic features they pick up on. We used stimuli e…
Freakin’ Swimming and Everythink
This original sociolinguistic ethnographic study examines social practices and (ING) variation in Aboriginal English, an indigenized variety of English spoken by First Nations people in Australia. Based on 42 hours of audio recordings and ethnographic data with 31 girls at a predominantly First Nations boarding school in the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, we find higher rates but similar linguistic conditioning of [ɪn] compared to other E…
Approaches to Greek language and identities in Melbourne
Engaging with Oral Community Language Collections in Australia
Soundin(g(k)) ethnic in Toronto
Research on ethnolects tends to focus on qualitative salient features rather than quantitative differences in variables shared across the speech community. This study examines ethnolinguistic variation in the realization of word-final velar nasals in the English of Toronto, Canada. Over 4,000 tokens were extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with 50 residents of Toronto stratified by ethnicity, generation and sex, and coded for a series of li…
Complementation and the creole continuum in the Eastern Caribbean
This article examines complement clauses in the Caribbean English spoken in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines). Despite a small population (about 5,000), physical proximity and pervasive kinship ties across villages, Bequia English is characterised by considerable inter‐group differentiation, suggesting the existence of a (post‐)creole continuum. We analyse variation in the complementisers used to introduce finite ( that , zero) and non‐finit…
How do Torontonians hear ethnic identity
More attention is being paid to the sociolinguistic consequences of urban ethnolinguistic diversity, but the origins and social meanings of ethnolects are not well understood and their role in marking ethnic identity untested. Anecdotal remarks and media attention point to Canadians’ awareness of ethnically marked ways of speaking English but despite public interest, sparse research exists on perceptions of different ways of speaking. We report t…
Pivots of the Caribbean? Low-back vowels in eastern Caribbean English
Resolving the convergence of low-back vowels in English constitutes a pivot with repercussions for the rest of the vowel system. We consider how speakers on an eastern Caribbean island co-opt the inherent variability of vowel systems to differentiate themselves. Examining the vowels of Bequia English (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) shows the main source of variation to lie in the position and duration of four low back vowels (cloth, lot, palm, t…
A tale of two cities (and one vowel)
Previous studies of language contact in multilingual urban neighborhoods in Europe claim the emergence of new varieties spoken by immigrant-background youth. This paper examines the sociolinguistic conditioning of variation in allophones of Swedish /ε:/ of young people of immigrant and nonimmigrant background in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Although speaker background and sex condition the variation, their effects differ in each city. In Stockholm t…
An existential problem
Existential constructions in a corpus of spontaneous English from Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) are used to explore a linguistic problem (Is variation in verb form in existential constructions best viewed as grammatical or lexical?) and a sociolinguistic problem (What aspects of variation change over a lifetime?). We compare “urban sojourners” (Bequians who have been away) with their home village norms. We observe differences in the fre…
Grammatical variation in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines)
Despite the publication of Aceto & Williams (2003), the languages spoken in the Eastern Caribbean remain underdescribed. In this paper, we outline a project examining language use in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines), based on fieldwork between 2003 and 2005, comprising over 100 hours of sociolinguistic interviews conducted and recorded by community-member researchers. We present quantitative analysis of three aspects of the grammatical syst…
Form, function, and frequency in phonological variation
Formal and usage-based approaches to phonology make competing predictions that can be tested with variationist methodology. This paper investigates formal, functional, and frequency effects on (t/d)-deletion in Canadian English. Although initial results suggest a correlation between lexical frequency and deletion, once interaction and lexical effects are taken into account, only phonological and morphological factor groups are significant. Previo…
Ethnolects and the city
Following recent work that questions traditional social categories, this paper examines the role of ethnicity in conditioning linguistic variation. Reporting on a large-scale project in the multicultural context of Toronto, we argue for combining emic and etic approaches to social categorization. Focusing on the Chinese and Italian communities, our analysis of two sociolinguistic variables shows that speakers may vary in overall rate, but linguis…
On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas
This article provides evidence that, just as lexical meaning is retained in grammaticization, grammatical conditioning persists in fixed discourse formulas. Despite their high frequency and formulaic status, such formulas are not completely autonomous from the productive constructions from which they emerge. This evidence comes from a variationist analysis of that and zero complementizer in a corpus of spoken Canadian English. Testing syntactic, …
The Present of the English Future
We use the variationist method to elucidate the expression of future time in English, examining multiple grammaticalization in the same domain ( will and going to ). Usage patterns show that the choice of form is not determined by invariant semantic readings such as proximity, certainty, willingness, or intention. Rather, particular instances of each general construction occupy lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic niches. While putative differences …
New-Dialect Formation in Canada
There’s bears back there”
This paper uses a multivariate analysis of variable agreement in existentials with plural reference in a corpus of Quebec English to determine the status of variable agreement as a vernacular universal. Excluding the frequent invariant form there’s from analysis, both structural and processing considerations are shown to operate. A separate multivariate analysis provides support for the hypothesis that there’s is a lexicalized form with its own s…
The persistence of variation in individual grammars
Recent work on phonological variation largely supports the apparent‐time construct, though some change across an individual's lifespan is possible. But how much change is possible in an individual's grammar ? How much is grammar affected by extended absence in a new, urban speech community? Social dialect surveys traditionally exclude individuals who have left their community for an extended period of time, under the assumption that dialect conta…
An English “like no other”
Although the received wisdom is that English in Quebec, as a minority language, has undergone contact-induced language change, little scientific evidence has been brought to bear on this claim. We describe a project designed to assess the impact of a majority language on the structure of the minority language in a situation of long-term contact. The existence and directionality of change is assessed by comparing the behaviour of linguistic phenom…
Zero Copula in the Eastern Caribbean
Zero copula is a feature of English-based creoles which has figured in the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) origins debate. While much attention has been paid to the effects of the following grammatical category, the lack of a comparative base highlights the need for more quantitative studies in the Caribbean. We analyze zero copula on the eastern Caribbean island of Bequia, where a mesolectal creole variety coexists with a nonstandard …
The ain't constraint
Studies of negation in African American English (AAE) typically focus on its most salient exponents, ain't and negative concord. Because ain't arose during the development of auxiliary- and not-contraction in Early Modern English, an interesting question is whether constraints on ain't can be attributed to more general constraints on contraction. This article examines the constraints on not-contraction in three varieties argued to be representati…
Ethnolects and the city
Following recent work that questions traditional social categories, this paper examines the role of ethnicity in conditioning linguistic variation. Reporting on a large-scale project in the multicultural context of Toronto, we argue for combining emic and etic approaches to social categorization. Focusing on the Chinese and Italian communities, our analysis of two sociolinguistic variables shows that speakers may vary in overall rate, but linguis…
The persistence of variation in individual grammars
Recent work on phonological variation largely supports the apparent‐time construct, though some change across an individual's lifespan is possible. But how much change is possible in an individual's grammar ? How much is grammar affected by extended absence in a new, urban speech community? Social dialect surveys traditionally exclude individuals who have left their community for an extended period of time, under the assumption that dialect conta…
The Present of the English Future
We use the variationist method to elucidate the expression of future time in English, examining multiple grammaticalization in the same domain ( will and going to ). Usage patterns show that the choice of form is not determined by invariant semantic readings such as proximity, certainty, willingness, or intention. Rather, particular instances of each general construction occupy lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic niches. While putative differences …
Zero Copula in the Eastern Caribbean
Zero copula is a feature of English-based creoles which has figured in the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) origins debate. While much attention has been paid to the effects of the following grammatical category, the lack of a comparative base highlights the need for more quantitative studies in the Caribbean. We analyze zero copula on the eastern Caribbean island of Bequia, where a mesolectal creole variety coexists with a nonstandard …
Form, function, and frequency in phonological variation
Formal and usage-based approaches to phonology make competing predictions that can be tested with variationist methodology. This paper investigates formal, functional, and frequency effects on (t/d)-deletion in Canadian English. Although initial results suggest a correlation between lexical frequency and deletion, once interaction and lexical effects are taken into account, only phonological and morphological factor groups are significant. Previo…
On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas
This article provides evidence that, just as lexical meaning is retained in grammaticization, grammatical conditioning persists in fixed discourse formulas. Despite their high frequency and formulaic status, such formulas are not completely autonomous from the productive constructions from which they emerge. This evidence comes from a variationist analysis of that and zero complementizer in a corpus of spoken Canadian English. Testing syntactic, …
There’s bears back there”
This paper uses a multivariate analysis of variable agreement in existentials with plural reference in a corpus of Quebec English to determine the status of variable agreement as a vernacular universal. Excluding the frequent invariant form there’s from analysis, both structural and processing considerations are shown to operate. A separate multivariate analysis provides support for the hypothesis that there’s is a lexicalized form with its own s…
S marks the spot? Regional variation and early African American correspondence
The different population ecologies of slavery-era America necessitate an investigation into the issue of regional variation in Early African American English (AAE). This article addresses this issue through the Ottawa Repository of Early African American Correspondence, a corpus of letters written by semiliterate African American settlers in Liberia between 1834 and 1866. We investigate nonstandard verbal -s and its conditioning by linguistic and…
The ain't constraint
Studies of negation in African American English (AAE) typically focus on its most salient exponents, ain't and negative concord. Because ain't arose during the development of auxiliary- and not-contraction in Early Modern English, an interesting question is whether constraints on ain't can be attributed to more general constraints on contraction. This article examines the constraints on not-contraction in three varieties argued to be representati…
Using the past to explain the present
This study reconstructs the present temporal reference system of Early African American English by investigating the linguistic factors conditioning several variables within the domain of present temporal reference in three representative varieties. Previous studies have focused only on the opposition between Ø and -s in the present tense, ignoring other morphosyntactic constructions. Expanding the variable context to present temporal reference, …
Freakin’ Swimming and Everythink
This original sociolinguistic ethnographic study examines social practices and (ING) variation in Aboriginal English, an indigenized variety of English spoken by First Nations people in Australia. Based on 42 hours of audio recordings and ethnographic data with 31 girls at a predominantly First Nations boarding school in the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, we find higher rates but similar linguistic conditioning of [ɪn] compared to other E…
An existential problem
Existential constructions in a corpus of spontaneous English from Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) are used to explore a linguistic problem (Is variation in verb form in existential constructions best viewed as grammatical or lexical?) and a sociolinguistic problem (What aspects of variation change over a lifetime?). We compare “urban sojourners” (Bequians who have been away) with their home village norms. We observe differences in the fre…
Soundin(g(k)) ethnic in Toronto
Research on ethnolects tends to focus on qualitative salient features rather than quantitative differences in variables shared across the speech community. This study examines ethnolinguistic variation in the realization of word-final velar nasals in the English of Toronto, Canada. Over 4,000 tokens were extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with 50 residents of Toronto stratified by ethnicity, generation and sex, and coded for a series of li…
Attitudes to Vietnamese/English language mixing in Australia
Language mixing (LM) in multilingual settings has cultural, social and pragmatic functions, but attitudes to LM can vary widely, influencing language use and maintenance. While Vietnamese in Australia has been studied from several perspectives, research on attitudes toward English–Vietnamese LM remains limited. This study explores how Vietnamese Australians perceive LM in their community. Adapting the matched-guise technique, we created artificia…
A tale of two cities (and one vowel)
Previous studies of language contact in multilingual urban neighborhoods in Europe claim the emergence of new varieties spoken by immigrant-background youth. This paper examines the sociolinguistic conditioning of variation in allophones of Swedish /ε:/ of young people of immigrant and nonimmigrant background in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Although speaker background and sex condition the variation, their effects differ in each city. In Stockholm t…
Variation in Interlanguage Morphology
Contents: Chinese - English as second language - Interlanguage - Morphology - Plural - Research-methods - Second-language-acquisition - Variation
Social Motivations for Codeswitching
Codeswitching may be broadly defined as the use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation. Using data from multilingual African context, Carol Myers-Scotton advances a theoretical argument which aims at a general explanation of the motivations underlying the phenomenon. She treats codeswitching as a type of skilled performance, not as the 'alternative strategy' of a person who cannot carry on a conversation in the language in w…
Using the past to explain the present
This study reconstructs the present temporal reference system of Early African American English by investigating the linguistic factors conditioning several variables within the domain of present temporal reference in three representative varieties. Previous studies have focused only on the opposition between Ø and -s in the present tense, ignoring other morphosyntactic constructions. Expanding the variable context to present temporal reference, …
The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (review)
Reviewed by: The handbook of language variation and change ed. by J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, Natalie Schilling-Estes James A. Walker The handbook of language variation and change. Ed. by J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Pp. xii, 807. ISBN 0631218033. $131.95 (Hb). This book is a welcome addition to Blackwell’s ‘Handbook’ series, which now covers not only the core areas of linguistics (Aron…
The ain't constraint
Studies of negation in African American English (AAE) typically focus on its most salient exponents, ain't and negative concord. Because ain't arose during the development of auxiliary- and not-contraction in Early Modern English, an interesting question is whether constraints on ain't can be attributed to more general constraints on contraction. This article examines the constraints on not-contraction in three varieties argued to be representati…
S marks the spot? Regional variation and early African American correspondence
The different population ecologies of slavery-era America necessitate an investigation into the issue of regional variation in Early African American English (AAE). This article addresses this issue through the Ottawa Repository of Early African American Correspondence, a corpus of letters written by semiliterate African American settlers in Liberia between 1834 and 1866. We investigate nonstandard verbal -s and its conditioning by linguistic and…
An English “like no other”
Although the received wisdom is that English in Quebec, as a minority language, has undergone contact-induced language change, little scientific evidence has been brought to bear on this claim. We describe a project designed to assess the impact of a majority language on the structure of the minority language in a situation of long-term contact. The existence and directionality of change is assessed by comparing the behaviour of linguistic phenom…
Zero Copula in the Eastern Caribbean
Zero copula is a feature of English-based creoles which has figured in the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) origins debate. While much attention has been paid to the effects of the following grammatical category, the lack of a comparative base highlights the need for more quantitative studies in the Caribbean. We analyze zero copula on the eastern Caribbean island of Bequia, where a mesolectal creole variety coexists with a nonstandard …
There’s bears back there”
This paper uses a multivariate analysis of variable agreement in existentials with plural reference in a corpus of Quebec English to determine the status of variable agreement as a vernacular universal. Excluding the frequent invariant form there’s from analysis, both structural and processing considerations are shown to operate. A separate multivariate analysis provides support for the hypothesis that there’s is a lexicalized form with its own s…
The persistence of variation in individual grammars
Recent work on phonological variation largely supports the apparent‐time construct, though some change across an individual's lifespan is possible. But how much change is possible in an individual's grammar ? How much is grammar affected by extended absence in a new, urban speech community? Social dialect surveys traditionally exclude individuals who have left their community for an extended period of time, under the assumption that dialect conta…
On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas
This article provides evidence that, just as lexical meaning is retained in grammaticization, grammatical conditioning persists in fixed discourse formulas. Despite their high frequency and formulaic status, such formulas are not completely autonomous from the productive constructions from which they emerge. This evidence comes from a variationist analysis of that and zero complementizer in a corpus of spoken Canadian English. Testing syntactic, …
The Present of the English Future
We use the variationist method to elucidate the expression of future time in English, examining multiple grammaticalization in the same domain ( will and going to ). Usage patterns show that the choice of form is not determined by invariant semantic readings such as proximity, certainty, willingness, or intention. Rather, particular instances of each general construction occupy lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic niches. While putative differences …
New-Dialect Formation in Canada
Ethnolects and the city
Following recent work that questions traditional social categories, this paper examines the role of ethnicity in conditioning linguistic variation. Reporting on a large-scale project in the multicultural context of Toronto, we argue for combining emic and etic approaches to social categorization. Focusing on the Chinese and Italian communities, our analysis of two sociolinguistic variables shows that speakers may vary in overall rate, but linguis…
Grammatical variation in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines)
Despite the publication of Aceto & Williams (2003), the languages spoken in the Eastern Caribbean remain underdescribed. In this paper, we outline a project examining language use in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines), based on fieldwork between 2003 and 2005, comprising over 100 hours of sociolinguistic interviews conducted and recorded by community-member researchers. We present quantitative analysis of three aspects of the grammatical syst…
Form, function, and frequency in phonological variation
Formal and usage-based approaches to phonology make competing predictions that can be tested with variationist methodology. This paper investigates formal, functional, and frequency effects on (t/d)-deletion in Canadian English. Although initial results suggest a correlation between lexical frequency and deletion, once interaction and lexical effects are taken into account, only phonological and morphological factor groups are significant. Previo…
An existential problem
Existential constructions in a corpus of spontaneous English from Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) are used to explore a linguistic problem (Is variation in verb form in existential constructions best viewed as grammatical or lexical?) and a sociolinguistic problem (What aspects of variation change over a lifetime?). We compare “urban sojourners” (Bequians who have been away) with their home village norms. We observe differences in the fre…
A tale of two cities (and one vowel)
Previous studies of language contact in multilingual urban neighborhoods in Europe claim the emergence of new varieties spoken by immigrant-background youth. This paper examines the sociolinguistic conditioning of variation in allophones of Swedish /ε:/ of young people of immigrant and nonimmigrant background in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Although speaker background and sex condition the variation, their effects differ in each city. In Stockholm t…
How do Torontonians hear ethnic identity
More attention is being paid to the sociolinguistic consequences of urban ethnolinguistic diversity, but the origins and social meanings of ethnolects are not well understood and their role in marking ethnic identity untested. Anecdotal remarks and media attention point to Canadians’ awareness of ethnically marked ways of speaking English but despite public interest, sparse research exists on perceptions of different ways of speaking. We report t…
Pivots of the Caribbean? Low-back vowels in eastern Caribbean English
Resolving the convergence of low-back vowels in English constitutes a pivot with repercussions for the rest of the vowel system. We consider how speakers on an eastern Caribbean island co-opt the inherent variability of vowel systems to differentiate themselves. Examining the vowels of Bequia English (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) shows the main source of variation to lie in the position and duration of four low back vowels (cloth, lot, palm, t…
Complementation and the creole continuum in the Eastern Caribbean
This article examines complement clauses in the Caribbean English spoken in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines). Despite a small population (about 5,000), physical proximity and pervasive kinship ties across villages, Bequia English is characterised by considerable inter‐group differentiation, suggesting the existence of a (post‐)creole continuum. We analyse variation in the complementisers used to introduce finite ( that , zero) and non‐finit…
Soundin(g(k)) ethnic in Toronto
Research on ethnolects tends to focus on qualitative salient features rather than quantitative differences in variables shared across the speech community. This study examines ethnolinguistic variation in the realization of word-final velar nasals in the English of Toronto, Canada. Over 4,000 tokens were extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with 50 residents of Toronto stratified by ethnicity, generation and sex, and coded for a series of li…
Approaches to Greek language and identities in Melbourne
Engaging with Oral Community Language Collections in Australia
On the Status of English-Origin Nouns in Vietnamese Discourse
Objectives: This study determines the status of English-origin nouns in otherwise Vietnamese discourse among bilingual speakers in Australia. It examines whether these nouns function as fully integrated loanwords, nonce borrowings, or instances of code-switching. Methodology: Taking a comparative variationist approach, this study compares patterns of syntactic integration across three points of comparison: Vietnamese nouns (VN), attested English-…
Linguistic Variation and Morphology (25 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (21 works) · Linguistics (20 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · History (11 works) · Variation (astronomy (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Geography (8 works) · History (8 works)