Gillian Sankoff
Biographic Data
| ID | 95156 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gillian Sankoff |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gillian |
| FAMILY NAME | Sankoff |
| SIGNATURE | SANKOFF G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Université de Montréal |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1052-592X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 270 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Martha’s Vineyard study: A catalyst in twentieth century linguistics
‘The Social Motivation of Sound Change’ was the first of a string of William Labov’s publications in the 1960s, challenging the received wisdom that studying language change in progress was impossible. Documenting generational differences in Martha’s Vineyarders’ pronunciation of /ai/ as in fight and /aw/ as in about in 1961–1962 revealed an ongoing change towards increased centralization of both diphthongs, as confirmed by data from the 1930s. R…
Multivariate Analysis of Geography and Age in Dialect Vocabulary — Comprehensive Analysis of 250 Years of Language Change
In this paper, we analyze long-term changes in dialect vocabulary. By analyzing the age difference of 140 years and the regional difference of 27 survey points, we will examine historical change and geographical spread over the 250 years since the compilation of a dialect glossary. First, we present the distribution of eight representative words according to the traditional method of linguistic geography. After that, we present comprehensive maps…
The long tail of language change: A trend and panel study of Québécois French futures
A previous panel study of 59 speakers of Montreal French showed an increase in inflected futures (IF) at the expense of periphrastic futures (PF) as this population aged, running counter to the direction of historical change: reduction of IF. Matching two samples of speakers across the same time interval by age and social characteristics, the current trend study investigates whether or not this increase reflects retrograde change in the speech co…
Language change across the lifespan: Three trajectory types
This article argues that an enhanced understanding of the dynamics of language change can be gained by uniting two perspectives whose intimate relationship has not previously been subject to linguists' attention: language change as a historical process, and language change as experienced by individual speakers. It makes the case that during language change in progress, there are three possible trajectory types that can be manifested across speake…
Language Change Across the Lifespan
Understanding the relationship between language change and variation has progressed considerably over the last several decades, but less is known about how speakers at different life stages deal with ongoing change in their speech communities. Longitudinal studies of individuals and groups reveal three trajectory types postadolescence: stability (the most common), adopting (to some degree) a change led by younger people (the next most common traj…
Age grading in the Montréal French inflected future
The rise of the periphrastic future (PF) at the expense of the inflected future (IF) is an established historical trend in Québécois French over at least the past 150 years. Previous research has also found higher rates of PF among younger speakers, many displaying categorical use in affirmative contexts. Because an apparent time interpretation of the synchronic data fits the historical record, we expected concomitant speaker stability across the…
Social lives in language: Celebrating the work of Gillian Sankoff
"This volume offers a synthetic approach to language variation and language ideologies in multilingual communities. Although the vast majority of the world's speech communities are multilingual, much of sociolinguistics ignores this internal diversity. This volume fills this gap, investigating social and linguistic dimensions of variation and change in multilingual communities. Drawing on research in a wide range of countries (Canada, USA, South …
Language change across the lifespan: R/ in Montreal French
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 minor…
Language Contact in Amazonia (Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald)
Adolescents, Young Adults, and the Critical Period: Two Case Studies from “Seven Up”
The concept of “apparent time” developed in the early 1960s, was a crucial interpretive element in the study of language change in progress. As a means of slicing through the present to the past by studying the contemporary speech of people whose linguistic systems had been established in time periods increasingly removed from the present, the apparent time interpretation offered a window to a linguistic past that was especially valuable in the a…
Variation in the use of discourse markers in a language contact situation
Use of discourse markers by 17 speakers of Anglophone Montreal French (AMF) showed great variation in individual repertoires and frequency of use. Only five subjects manifested rates of usage comparable to those of native speakers or to their own LI usage in English. In decreasing order of frequency, the speakers used tu sais ‘y'know’; là ‘there’ (the most frequent among L1 Montreal French speakers); bon ‘good’, alors ‘so’, comme ‘like’, and bien…
Roger M. Keesing May 16, 1935 - May 7, 1993
Preview this article: Roger M. Keesing May 16, 1935 - May 7, 1993, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/jpcl.9.2.08san-1.gif
Focus in Tok Pisin
Determining Noun Phrases in Tok Pisin
It is well known that since neither the inflectional morphemes nor most of the closed-class items of the lexifier language survive in pidgins, grammatical distinctions are not obligatorily marked. We thus find a large number of unmodified nouns and verbs. As pidgins are elaborated, processes of grammaticalization work to regularize the marking of grammatical categories and relations, and to increase redundancy overall. This paper considers the gr…
Pidgins and Creoles, Volume 2: Reference Survey. John Holm
The grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Tok Pisin and Sranan
According to Bickerton's “bioprogram,” creole grammars from the outset contain privative oppositions in the verbal system, where zeroes can be unambiguously interpreted as contrasting with verbs bearing the marked feature. A quantitative analysis of tense and aspect in narrative texts in Tok Pisin and Sranan indicates that this is not the case in either language. Zeroes freely occur with all tense categories. Verbs occurring with no tense markers…
The Social Life of Language
David C. Gordon, The French language and national identity. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. Pp. 225
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Anything You Can Do
The Social Life of Language
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Derek Bickerton, Dynamics of a creole system. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Pp. viii + 224
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Le parallélisme dans la poésie Buang
The Origins of Syntax in Discourse: A Case Study of Tok Pisin Relatives
The structure of relative clauses has attracted considerable attention in recent years, and a number of authors have carried out analyses of the syntax of relativization. In our investigation of syntactic structure and change in New Guinea Tok Pisin, we find that the basic processes involved in relativization have much broader discourse functions, and that relativization is only a special instance of the application of general ‘bracketing’ device…
Man's Many Voices
The Ethno Semantics of Excellence
Language change across the lifespan: R/ in Montreal French
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 minor…
Variation in the use of discourse markers in a language contact situation
Use of discourse markers by 17 speakers of Anglophone Montreal French (AMF) showed great variation in individual repertoires and frequency of use. Only five subjects manifested rates of usage comparable to those of native speakers or to their own LI usage in English. In decreasing order of frequency, the speakers used tu sais ‘y'know’; là ‘there’ (the most frequent among L1 Montreal French speakers); bon ‘good’, alors ‘so’, comme ‘like’, and bien…
Quantitative Analysis of Sharing and Variability in a Cognitive Model
In their comprehensive review of various formulations of concept of culture, Kroeber and Kluckhohn (I952: Iogff) deal at some length with problem of the relationship of abstraction, culture, to concrete individuals. The issue of homogeneity, commonality, or sharedness is of considerable importance in culture theory, since analyses of a culture necessarily proceed by abstraction from observations of behavior of individuals, including their verbal …
Age grading in the Montréal French inflected future
The rise of the periphrastic future (PF) at the expense of the inflected future (IF) is an established historical trend in Québécois French over at least the past 150 years. Previous research has also found higher rates of PF among younger speakers, many displaying categorical use in affirmative contexts. Because an apparent time interpretation of the synchronic data fits the historical record, we expected concomitant speaker stability across the…
The Origins of Syntax in Discourse: A Case Study of Tok Pisin Relatives
The structure of relative clauses has attracted considerable attention in recent years, and a number of authors have carried out analyses of the syntax of relativization. In our investigation of syntactic structure and change in New Guinea Tok Pisin, we find that the basic processes involved in relativization have much broader discourse functions, and that relativization is only a special instance of the application of general ‘bracketing’ device…
Language change across the lifespan: Three trajectory types
This article argues that an enhanced understanding of the dynamics of language change can be gained by uniting two perspectives whose intimate relationship has not previously been subject to linguists' attention: language change as a historical process, and language change as experienced by individual speakers. It makes the case that during language change in progress, there are three possible trajectory types that can be manifested across speake…
Cognitive Variability and New Guinea Social Organization: The Buang Dgwa 1
Informal and public discourse on kinship and land tenure among the Buang (New Guinea) reveals marked variability in speakers' assignments of individuals and garden plots to kin groups. Discrepancies occur not only between speakers, but between assignments made by any one speaker at different times. Despite this, consensus is maintained during public discussion. Variability in claims made about kin group affiliation reflects a number of different …
Language Change Across the Lifespan
Understanding the relationship between language change and variation has progressed considerably over the last several decades, but less is known about how speakers at different life stages deal with ongoing change in their speech communities. Longitudinal studies of individuals and groups reveal three trajectory types postadolescence: stability (the most common), adopting (to some degree) a change led by younger people (the next most common traj…
The grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Tok Pisin and Sranan
According to Bickerton's “bioprogram,” creole grammars from the outset contain privative oppositions in the verbal system, where zeroes can be unambiguously interpreted as contrasting with verbs bearing the marked feature. A quantitative analysis of tense and aspect in narrative texts in Tok Pisin and Sranan indicates that this is not the case in either language. Zeroes freely occur with all tense categories. Verbs occurring with no tense markers…
Le parallélisme dans la poésie Buang
Derek Bickerton, Dynamics of a creole system. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Pp. viii + 224
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Sociolinguistic research on French in Montréal
This brief note describes a study of Montréal French presently being conducted by a group based at the Université de Montréal, and directed by Gillian Sankoff and Henrietta Cedergren. A pilot project, carried out during June, July and August of 1970, and made possible by a grant from the Ministère de l'Education (Québec), enabled us to make a series of recordings which were studied in order to identify speech variables, as well as invariant diale…
General: L'Ethnologue et son ombre. Michel Panoff and Françoise Panoff
Quantitative Analysis of Sharing and Variability in a Cognitive Model
In their comprehensive review of various formulations of concept of culture, Kroeber and Kluckhohn (I952: Iogff) deal at some length with problem of the relationship of abstraction, culture, to concrete individuals. The issue of homogeneity, commonality, or sharedness is of considerable importance in culture theory, since analyses of a culture necessarily proceed by abstraction from observations of behavior of individuals, including their verbal …
Cognitive Variability and New Guinea Social Organization: The Buang Dgwa 1
Informal and public discourse on kinship and land tenure among the Buang (New Guinea) reveals marked variability in speakers' assignments of individuals and garden plots to kin groups. Discrepancies occur not only between speakers, but between assignments made by any one speaker at different times. Despite this, consensus is maintained during public discussion. Variability in claims made about kin group affiliation reflects a number of different …
Sociolinguistic research on French in Montréal
This brief note describes a study of Montréal French presently being conducted by a group based at the Université de Montréal, and directed by Gillian Sankoff and Henrietta Cedergren. A pilot project, carried out during June, July and August of 1970, and made possible by a grant from the Ministère de l'Education (Québec), enabled us to make a series of recordings which were studied in order to identify speech variables, as well as invariant diale…
Man's Many Voices
The Ethno Semantics of Excellence
Dialectology
The Origins of Syntax in Discourse: A Case Study of Tok Pisin Relatives
The structure of relative clauses has attracted considerable attention in recent years, and a number of authors have carried out analyses of the syntax of relativization. In our investigation of syntactic structure and change in New Guinea Tok Pisin, we find that the basic processes involved in relativization have much broader discourse functions, and that relativization is only a special instance of the application of general ‘bracketing’ device…
Derek Bickerton, Dynamics of a creole system. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Pp. viii + 224
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Le parallélisme dans la poésie Buang
Anything You Can Do
The Social Life of Language
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
David C. Gordon, The French language and national identity. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. Pp. 225
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Social Life of Language
The grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Tok Pisin and Sranan
According to Bickerton's “bioprogram,” creole grammars from the outset contain privative oppositions in the verbal system, where zeroes can be unambiguously interpreted as contrasting with verbs bearing the marked feature. A quantitative analysis of tense and aspect in narrative texts in Tok Pisin and Sranan indicates that this is not the case in either language. Zeroes freely occur with all tense categories. Verbs occurring with no tense markers…
Determining Noun Phrases in Tok Pisin
It is well known that since neither the inflectional morphemes nor most of the closed-class items of the lexifier language survive in pidgins, grammatical distinctions are not obligatorily marked. We thus find a large number of unmodified nouns and verbs. As pidgins are elaborated, processes of grammaticalization work to regularize the marking of grammatical categories and relations, and to increase redundancy overall. This paper considers the gr…
Pidgins and Creoles, Volume 2: Reference Survey. John Holm
Focus in Tok Pisin
Roger M. Keesing May 16, 1935 - May 7, 1993
Preview this article: Roger M. Keesing May 16, 1935 - May 7, 1993, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/jpcl.9.2.08san-1.gif
Variation in the use of discourse markers in a language contact situation
Use of discourse markers by 17 speakers of Anglophone Montreal French (AMF) showed great variation in individual repertoires and frequency of use. Only five subjects manifested rates of usage comparable to those of native speakers or to their own LI usage in English. In decreasing order of frequency, the speakers used tu sais ‘y'know’; là ‘there’ (the most frequent among L1 Montreal French speakers); bon ‘good’, alors ‘so’, comme ‘like’, and bien…
Adolescents, Young Adults, and the Critical Period: Two Case Studies from “Seven Up”
The concept of “apparent time” developed in the early 1960s, was a crucial interpretive element in the study of language change in progress. As a means of slicing through the present to the past by studying the contemporary speech of people whose linguistic systems had been established in time periods increasingly removed from the present, the apparent time interpretation offered a window to a linguistic past that was especially valuable in the a…
Language Contact in Amazonia (Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald)
Language change across the lifespan: R/ in Montreal French
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 minor…
Social lives in language: Celebrating the work of Gillian Sankoff
"This volume offers a synthetic approach to language variation and language ideologies in multilingual communities. Although the vast majority of the world's speech communities are multilingual, much of sociolinguistics ignores this internal diversity. This volume fills this gap, investigating social and linguistic dimensions of variation and change in multilingual communities. Drawing on research in a wide range of countries (Canada, USA, South …
Age grading in the Montréal French inflected future
The rise of the periphrastic future (PF) at the expense of the inflected future (IF) is an established historical trend in Québécois French over at least the past 150 years. Previous research has also found higher rates of PF among younger speakers, many displaying categorical use in affirmative contexts. Because an apparent time interpretation of the synchronic data fits the historical record, we expected concomitant speaker stability across the…
Linguistics (18 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (17 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (6 works)