Canadian English

LING 202, Fall 2007

Dr. Tony Pi

Week 3 - Research Resources

Sounds of (Canadian) English

– Broad a• dance, half, path, pasture• far, farm, dark• mass/grass; plastic/plaster

– Loss of r• farm, court, far, core• curse > cuss; girl > gal; horse > hoss

– Relic stress pattern• secretary, millinery, obligatory, monastery

– Intonation• see p. 51

– The case of ‘khaki’

Oot and Aboot

• voiced consonants– b, m, v, d, th (as in they), n, l, r, z, j, g, ng (and

a few more)

• voiceless consonants– p, t, k, s, t, th (as in thin), k, sh, ch (and a few

more)

Canadian Raising

• ‘AW’ and ‘AY’– how, houses, housing, rowdy, loud, wide,

knives, hive, etc.

• Raised– knife, height, rice, lout, louse, house– only before voiceless consonants

Strathy Language UnitRm. 206, Fleming Hall, Jemmett Wing

• History of the Strathy Language Unit– The Strathy Language Unit was established in the Queen's English Department

in 1981. It is funded by a bequest from an alumnus, J.R. Strathy, whose business interests revolved around prospecting and mines but whose lifelong passion was the English language. The principal mandate of the Strathy Language Unit is to "study standard English usage" and to produce "an authoritative guide to correct written and oral communication in English within Canada.”

• Strathy Corpus of Canadian English– over 57 million words of written and spoken Canadian English– contains Canadian newspapers, diverse magazines, biography, history,

academic theses and journals, transcripts of university classes, Internet news, and so on

– please don't hesitate to contact us if you are willing to contribute the contents of your e-mail "sent" box or your blog to the Strathy Corpus. We need samples of every type of writing.

Resources

• Dictionaries– regional– Canadian English

• Dialect Geography Atlases– isogloss

• Databases and Corpuses

• Undergraduate Working Papers

Dialect Atlases - Isoglosses

NORM

• The usual speakers sought in dialect geography surveys– non-mobile– older– rural–males

Dialect Topography of Canada

• Dialect Topography and Dialect Geography – Similarities:

• both comparative linguistic data from individuals in a particular geographical setting

• both provide a macro-level perspective on linguistic variation• both survey people in a continuous area, making it possible to

identify and isolate gross linguistic differences among speakers from region to region.

• They can also provide thebasis for charting linguistic change in subsequent surveys.

– Differences:• representativeness

– Dialect Geography: NORMs: non-mobile, older, rural males

• time-effectiveness; mass literacy, institutionalization, communication networks, computerization

DT Questionnaire

Using the DT Database

• Database Skills– Using the View Results (Interface)– look at the online documentation for how to use the

program. • 1. Generating a Regional Report

– learn how to get a summary of a specific project region

• 2. Question by Region– learn how to produce results for a single question, by region – learn the difference between show all responses and omit null

responses– viewing line graphs– interpreting apparent time line graphs - does the graph

resemble an S-curve?

Independent Variables

• 3. Independent Variables– viewing data with respect to specific independent

variables» Age, Sex, Social Class, Education» Regionality Index, Language Use Index,

Occupational Mobility Index– reading the tables

• 4. Apparent Time Graphing Program– access this graphing program from the View Results

(Interface)– allows you to enter your own calculations and produce

an apparent time graph

Examples to do in class:

– couch and chesterfield in project regions outside of the Golden Horseshoe

• does the data in other regions support the analysis in the article?

• couch and chesterfield (show all responses and omit null responses)

• Practice– Try generating apparent time graphs for the following,

and decide if there's a change in progress for the top variants. Experiment with different regions and settings.

• question 59, sneak / snuck• question 16, mom