Language Shift in Southern New England
Morphosyntactic Variation in Franco-American French
Summary
Author Louis Stelling explores morphosyntactic variation and the advance of language shift using historical documentation, U.S. census figures and interviews conducted with sixty-nine informants. By comparing the state of Franco-American to the other major varieties of North American French, this book completes the portrait of French on the continent. The distinction made between qualitative and quantitative variation will also be useful for those investigating other cases of language contact and shift.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Halftitle
- Title
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Language shift
- Chapter 2 Southbridge, Woonsocket, and la Franco-Américanie
- Chapter 3 The sociolinguistics of language use in Southbridge and Woonsocket
- Chapter 4 Qualitative variation: Auxiliaries in the Passé Composé
- Chapter 5 Quantitative variation: Synthesis and analysis in the future
- Conclusion
- Appendix A: Questionnaire
- Appendix B: Translation task
- Appendix C: Characteristics of the informants
- Works Cited
- Other Works Consulted
- Index
Contents
Tables
Table 2.1. Growth of the French Canadian-born population in New England by state 1860–1900
Table 2.2. Growth of the Franco-American population in New England by state 1900–1930
Table 2.3. Decline in Percentage of French Canadian Immigrants in New England by state 1930–1970
Table 2.5. Decline in percentage of New Englanders speaking French in the home by state 1990–2000
Table 3.4. Frequency of French by number of generations in the U.S.
Table 3.6. Frequency of French by French as a past medium of instruction
Table 4.2. Contribution of significant factors to the use of avoir
Table 4.3. Effect of frequency of French use on the use of avoir
Table 4.6. Effect of number of generations in the U.S. on use of avoir
Table 4.7. Effect of socioeconomic status on the use of avoir
Table 4.8. Effect of schooling in French on the use of avoir
Table 4.9. Effect of transitive homonyms on the use of avoir
Table 4.10. Verbs which produced 20 tokens or more by frequency and percent avoir
Table 5.1. Translation task: synthesis and analysis by community
Table 5.2. Conversation data: synthesis and analysis by community
Table 5.3. Contribution of significant factors to use of the analytic future
Table 5.7. Effect of the presence of quand on use of the analytic future
Table 5.8. Effect of adverbial specification on use of the analytic future
Acknowledgments
I must express profound gratitude to Professor Cynthia Fox (University at Albany) for putting her corpus at my disposition, as well as for the expertise and diligence with which she has guided my research.
Details
- Pages
- X, 142
- Publication Year
- 2026
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433138911
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781433138928
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781453908174
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433115226
- DOI
- 10.3726/b24291
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2026 (October)
- Keywords
- Sociolinguistics contact linguistics language contact language shift language death obsolescence Franco-American French morphology syntax morphosyntactic North American French New England variation immigration immigrant languages Graduate students scholars researching language contact and/or language shift scholars researching North American French
- Published
- New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2026. x, 142 pp., 33 tables.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
