Name: Canadian English
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Author: Antje Matthäus
ISBN: 978-3-640-01707-2

Excerpt

Content

I. Introduction

II. Survey Analysis
2.1. British English vs. American English
2.1.1. How to read the tables
2.2 Older vs. Modern Variants
2.3 Formal vs. Informal or Standard vs. Non Standard Variants
2.4 „eh“
2.5. Surviving vs. Disappearing Variants

III. Conclusion

IV. Bibliography
4.1. Primary Literature
4.2. Secondary Literature
4.3. Dictionaries

V. Appendix
Map 1: Canadian English

I. Introduction

Morphology is the study of the morphemes - the smallest meaningful unit into which a word can be divided - and how they are combined to make words. Syntax we call the rules for the arrangements of words into phrases, sentences and texts. Unlike in the fields of vocabulary or pronunciation, in these areas we cannot find distinctive Canadian patterns of word or text formation if we compare them to British or American English. Small differences to either variety exist - in those cases, however, these do conform to the other variety. As Millard puts it: „The morphology and syntax of Canadian English is for all practical purposes identical to that of American English. At least some Canadians follow British practice...“¹ Görlach says: „Morphology is ... identical in British and American English. There are no features that could count as Canadianisms. The same is true in the field of syntax.“² This becomes plausible if we look at the settlement history and Canada’s relations to Great Britain and the United States. According to the „loyalist theory“ those „Americans“ who backed the British in the American Revolution left the county for England, the West Indies or Canada. The latter settled in the area of today’s Ontario. Appendix: Map¹ They had a great influence on the development of modern Canada, and their speech became the basis for what today we call General Canadian - the speech of the urban middle class³. Canada is also a member state of the Commonwealth which is still headed by the Queen of England. The use British English was for a long time, and at some places still is today, associated with higher education and social status. It is also a means of NOT sounding American. On the other hand, at Canadian schools and universities many American grammar- and textbooks, dictionaries etc. are used, and Canada is very much exposed to American television- and radioprograms and the American print media. „Until recently most of the books Canadians read were American or British, and the grammar and spelling reflect that.“⁴

The following paper is an analysis of the part of the Survey of Canadian English that is concerned with morphology and syntax. The methods I used do not conform with those of a statistician since neither did I have all the necessary information to do that nor am I trained well enough in the field of statistics. Nevertheless, I am certain that the results will give the reader a general idea of the English spoken in Canada. One can also draw conclusions on the direction of the development of English spoken in Canada.

II. Survey Analysis

The Survey of Canadian English was conducted in 1972 among native-born teenage students and their parents from all provinces. It concentrated on spoken English. Besides questions that were aimed at vocabulary and pronunciation, people were asked to report on the usage of certain grammatical features. I tried to arrange the 27 questions concerning morphology and syntax in the following groups for easier interpretation. One has to note, though, that the first four groups are overlapping, a clear distinction cannot be made.

- British English vs. American English
- older vs. modern variants
- standard vs. nonstandard (formal vs. informal) forms
- disappearing vs. surviving forms
- „eh“

Please note, too, that this analysis does not include all examples from the survey concerning morphology and syntax. The results from that grouping are summarized in tables. Since the grouping was done on a somewhat subjective level, the results have to be seen as rough tendencies. The numbers are not suitable to make exact quantitative statements. For that purpose the original survey has to be consulted.

2.1. British English vs. American English

When I mark the following forms as British or American, one has to consider that, of course, not every Briton or every American uses the respective forms. The marks just represent general inclinations.

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2.1.1. How to read the tables:

Two thirds of the Canadians prefer than to from except in Newfoundland, where the distribution of these two prepositions is about 50:50. Hardly anyone uses to. Students and males say different than slightly more often than parents and females respectively.

In general, 70 - 80% of the questioned subjects use the British varia nt. Male parents and female students do that slightly more often than female

parents and male students. Overall, younger people stick to BE more often than the older generation.

Here the distribution is as follows: male parents 40% BE : 60% AE female parents 55% BE : 45 % AE and students 25% BE : 75% AE, with male students having an only slightly higher percentage in AE. This is valid for all provinces.

Snuck as past tense and participle form of sneaked is only recorded in Webster’s and there as chiefly dialectal.

For the parent’s generation the country’s average use of snuck is 30% (60% sneaked). In the eastern provinces incl. Quebec, though, 15 - 25% say snuck while in the western part about 40% do so. In general, male parents use the American form slightly more often than female parents. Among the students the differences between the provinces have disappeared, about two thirds use snuck, girls slightly more often than boys. This is true for all provinces except Newfoundland where distribution is as follows: boys 40% (BE) : 40% (AE); girls: 60% 25% (AE). The remaining use both form. The group which uses forms is among the younger people bigger than among older

The answers to the nine above questions are summarized in the following table. Only when 50% or more of the population (male and female parents, male and female students are together 4 populations) uses the British or American variant in each province they get a point. In the table all points are summed up. Since we had 9 questions each cell can contain a maximum of 9 points (BE+AE). Since quite often there was no majority for either variant because some people said they use both or neither form, there are often less than 9 points in each cell. In Â (vertical) the points are summed up and we get a rough idea whether each population uses more British or more American variants. The figures do not represent an exact quantitative distribution. We should see them rather as representing a relation. In Æ the average for each generation is calculated, again the numbers should be read as a representation of general relations. In Â (horizontal) the figures for each province are summed up, and again we can see only, which variety people generally prefer. In these cells BE+AE should sum up to 36, when the figure is smaller than that it is because for some questions there was no majority for either variant. It is a sign of changes in language (maybe also indifference) when the figures there are fairly below 36. In Â (vertical) they should sum up to 90 in each row. Smaller numbers indicate lacking majorities, i.e. ongoing changes in the language or indifference.

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2.2. Older vs. Modern Variants

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2.3. Formal vs. Informal or Standard vs. Non Standard Variants

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2.4. „eh“

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This question was answered with „no“ by ¾ of the population, females did so a little more often than males. About ¼ admitted the usage of eh when asking for repetition. There were no big differences between the provinces.

Of the parents 20% said they would use a sentence as in the example, 40% do not use it and another 40% said they would use it sometimes. Men apply it slightly more often than women. Among the younger informants only 25% said they would use eh in that sense, as many

said they do not use it. 50% of the students admitted to use it sometimes. Generally girls answered „yes“ slightly more often than boys.

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2.5. Surviving vs. Disappearing Variants

The following three examples would probably fit into any of the first three categories, but they have also one feature in common. In earlier stages of the development of the English language both variants of every form were necessary because their meaning was slightly different. Now linguists observe, that one variant is disappearing and the surviving one either takes over the meaning of this one or it is not needed anymore and gets lost.

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The table is analog to the one about BE and AE.

III. Conclusion

As the examples show, morphology and syntax of English spoken in Canada is a mixture of British and

American variants with neither dominating. There are regional, age and gender differences, but we cannot say that the older generation prefers BE to AE, the eastern regions speak more modern than the westerns or that girls prefer the standard variant more than boys.

In the following I am going to show the general tendencies that can be inferred from the tables.

Among the parent’s generation the British English variants of the examples from the test are more often used than the American ones, by mothers even a little more often than by fathers. Students seem about to switch to the American variants, it is already dominating but only slightly. Boys appear to be somewhat faster than girls in this process. Due to the fairly high usage of BE by the parents the figures of the individual provinces indicate a slightly dominating usage of BE, except for Newfoundland where BE is used a lot more often than AE. It is also interesting to look at the numbers of British Columbia - the only state that has a higher figure for AE than for BE.

If we look at the older - modern version opposition, we can see the transition to the newer forms; parents still report in some cases a dominating usage of older forms, although altogether a greater part of them prefers modern ones. The majority of the students, though, does not use the old forms anymore. This is the case in all provinces.

In the category standard - non standard the standard versions are preferred in both generations but more so by the older one and also more by females. Quebec appears to be the province with the highest proportion of people using the standard variants.

The Canadian „eh“ - it must be a recent invention since only students of all provinces reported to use it a lot, twice as much as their parents and girls quite a bit more than boys.

In Canada we find evidence for the disappearance of one variant of a word or phrase that used to have (or still has) two. The older - or that variant that is supposed to disappear according to Sapir’s theory of drift to the „invariable word“ - is used by the older generation slightly more often than by the younger, but the so called „surviving variant“, which is also not always grammatically correct according to present grammar books, is used even less by both generations.

The English spoken in Canada is a mixture of British and American English, older and modern variants,

standard and non standard forms. It is a language in a process of change as any living tongue. Morphology and Syntax used by Canadians is not specifically Canadian, but the combination and the frequencies of all these various forms makes up a language that can be given a name of its own - Canadian English.

IV. Bibliography

4.1. Primary Literature

Extracts from The Survey of Canadian English 1972

4.2. Secondary Literature

M. Görlach: „The Identity of Canadian English“ in Varieties of English, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (1991)

W.S. Avis: „Canadian English“, Essay from the first edition of the Dictionary of Canadian English: The Senior Dictionary, (1967)

C.M. Millard: A Biography of the English Language, Boston (1989)

R. McCrum, W. Cran, R. MacNeil: „Canadian English“ in The Story of English, New York (1986)

4.3. Dictionaries

Advanced Learners Dictionary; Oxford University Press, Oxford (1989)

Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary; Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers Inc., New York (1993)

Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language; dilithium Press Ltd., New York (1994)

Muret-Sanders Encyclopædic English-German Dictionary; Langenscheidtsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin (1910)

Dictionary of Contemporary American English; Enzyklopädieverlag, Leipzig (1987)

Handwörterbuch Englisch-Deutsch; Enzyklopädieverlag, Leipzig (1988)

V. Appendix

Map 1: Canadian English

Source: R. McCrum, W. Cran, R. MacNeil The Story of English, New York (1986); p.246.

[...]

¹ Millard, p. 335.

² Görlach, p. 116.

³ R. McCrum, W. Cran, R. MacNeil: „Canadian English“ in The Story of English.

Frequently Asked Questions: An Analysis of the Survey of Canadian English (Morphology and Syntax)

What is the purpose of this document?

This document presents an analysis of a portion of the Survey of Canadian English conducted in 1972, focusing on morphology and syntax. It aims to understand the grammatical features of Canadian English and compare them to British and American English, as well as explore older vs. modern variants, formal vs. informal forms, and surviving vs. disappearing forms.

What is Morphology and Syntax?

Morphology is the study of morphemes, the smallest meaningful units of language, and how they are combined to form words. Syntax deals with the rules governing the arrangement of words into phrases, sentences, and texts.

What is the Survey of Canadian English?

The Survey of Canadian English was conducted in 1972 among native-born teenage students and their parents from all Canadian provinces. It aimed to collect data on spoken English, including vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammatical features.

How was the survey data analyzed?

The analysis grouped the survey questions into categories such as British English vs. American English, older vs. modern variants, standard vs. nonstandard forms, disappearing vs. surviving forms, and the use of "eh." The results were summarized in tables to identify general tendencies in Canadian English usage. The paper states that the methods used do not conform to that of a statistician.

What are the key findings regarding British English vs. American English?

The analysis suggests that Canadian English is a mixture of British and American variants, with neither consistently dominating. There are regional, age, and gender differences in the use of these variants.

What are the key findings regarding older vs. modern variants?

The data indicates a transition from older to more modern grammatical forms in Canadian English. Older generations still use older forms more frequently, but younger generations generally prefer the newer variants.

What are the key findings regarding formal vs. informal (standard vs. nonstandard) forms?

Standard versions are preferred over non-standard versions in both generations studied, particularly by older generations and females. The province of Quebec appears to have a higher proportion of people using standard variants.

What are the key findings regarding the use of "eh"?

The use of "eh" is more prevalent among students than their parents, suggesting it's a more recent development in Canadian English. Girls reported using it slightly more often than boys.

What are the key findings regarding surviving vs. disappearing variants?

The analysis indicates that one variant of a word or phrase is often disappearing as the language evolves. The older variant is used slightly more by the older generation, but both generations are using the so-called "surviving variant" less frequently.

What is the overall conclusion about Canadian English morphology and syntax?

Canadian English morphology and syntax are a mixture of British and American influences, older and modern forms, and standard and non-standard forms. It's a language in a process of change, and the specific combination and frequencies of these various forms make up a distinct variety called Canadian English.

Does the document contain a bibliography?

Yes, the document includes a bibliography listing primary literature (extracts from the Survey of Canadian English), secondary literature (books and articles about Canadian English), and dictionaries used for the analysis.