ERIC Number: EJ969036
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Apr
Pages: 3
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1366-7289
EISSN: N/A
Benchmark Varieties and the Individual Speaker: Indispensable Touchstones in Studies on Language Contact
Elsig, Martin
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, v15 n2 p230-232 Apr 2012
The authors of "Phrase-final prepositions in Quebec French: An empirical study of contact, code-switching and resistance to convergence", Poplack, Zentz & Dion (2011, this issue), henceforth cited as PZD, make a strong case for showing that, in spite of surface similarities, preposition stranding in Canadian French relative clauses cannot be qualified as a case of grammatical convergence due to language contact with English, but that it rather turns out to be a result of analogical extension of a native French strategy, preposition orphaning, to a new context. The application of a particularly sound and accountable methodology, the comparative method of variationist sociolinguistics (Poplack & Meechan, 1998; Tagliamonte, 2002), allows them to invalidate the hypothesis of a causal relationship between contact and the phenomenon under study.
Descriptors: Linguistic Borrowing, Sociolinguistics, Form Classes (Languages), Foreign Countries, French, Code Switching (Language), Hypothesis Testing, Correlation, Language Variation, Convergent Thinking, Grammar, Native Language, Phrase Structure, English, Language Research, Attribution Theory, Benchmarking
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A