scholarly journals The internal TR clusters of Acadian French

Author(s):  
Monik Charette
Keyword(s):  
2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Comeau

This paper integrates aspects of both generative theory and variationist sociolinguistics. To compare the structure of two varieties of French (Acadian French and Laurentian French), I adapt the comparative sociolinguistics approach to compare the syntactic structure of these varieties. Specifically, I focus on the effects of a single linguistic constraint across multiple sociolinguistic variables. I argue that such a comparison provides insights into the underlying grammatical structures of the varieties under comparison, differences that may have remained hidden otherwise. To illustrate the approach, I focus on a single constraint, sentential polarity, and I analyze its effects on two sociolinguistic variables, yes/no questions and future temporal reference. Results show that the polarity constraint is operative in Laurentian French for both variables, but inoperative in Acadian French. To account for this difference, I argue that Laurentian French negative structures involve a negative head above the tense phrase while Acadian French does not.


Author(s):  
Patricia Balcom ◽  
Louise Beaulieu ◽  
Gary R. Butler ◽  
Wladyslaw Cichocki ◽  
Ruth King

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (10) ◽  
pp. 49-61
Author(s):  
V. A. Kozhemyakina

The analysis of sociolinguistic situation in the Canadian province of New Brunswick is offered in the article. The history of the settlement of this territory by representatives of different linguistic cultures — the French and the British — is considered. An overview of the demo linguistic situation in the province is given. The statistical data of the latest population censuses are presented. Particular attention is paid to the use of the minority French language in various social and communicative spheres in New Brunswick at the present stage: in the legislative and executive branches, in the main sphere of the language functioning — in the sphere of education, in the spheres of services, trade and the media. The author dwells on the problem of variation of the Acadian French language in a situation of institutional bilingualism, when the French language is constantly under the influence of the dominant English language. The relevance of the article is due to the attention of the Russian and world community to the position of minority languages in a multilingual society and the problem of their preservation. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the ongoing language policy is considered simultaneously with the analysis of existing laws on language, since only adopted laws can allow members of the linguistic minority to assert and defend their rights.


Author(s):  
Béatrice Rea

This chapter provides an overview of various auxiliation patterns that occur in French since many dialectological and sociolinguistic studies suggest that in various parts of the Francophonie (in Laurentian and Acadian French, and in certain regions of France and Belgium) native speakers employ both auxiliaries, être BE and avoir HAVE, in the spoken language with the twenty-or-so intransitive verbs that, prescriptively, require the exclusive use of être. The chapter also provides new evidence from a 2016 corpus of spoken Montréal French, which will be contrasted with syntactic/semantic theories of auxiliary selection, and shows that these theoretical approaches are inadequate to account for the Canadian French patterns.


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