Subject NP Doubling, Matching and Minority French
Abstract
Our study presents a variationist analysis of subject doubling in the French of
Ontario, Canada. Two principal variants are distinguished: a non-doubled variant
and a doubled variant containing a clitic agreement marker. In our analyses,
both linguistic and social factors are taken into account and analyzed using
GOLDVARB2. It is proposed that subject clitics are marked for default features,
and that the doubled variant is favored when the clitic's default features match
those of the subject NP; lack of matching favors the non-doubled variant. Discussion
of linguistic factors for the present study, therefore, is limited to those
factors which can be explained in terms of matching. The principal social factor
studied is restricted language use (cf. Mougeon & Beniak, 1991). Our results
show that the greater the restriction, the fewer doubled subjects one finds.
Ontario, Canada. Two principal variants are distinguished: a non-doubled variant
and a doubled variant containing a clitic agreement marker. In our analyses,
both linguistic and social factors are taken into account and analyzed using
GOLDVARB2. It is proposed that subject clitics are marked for default features,
and that the doubled variant is favored when the clitic's default features match
those of the subject NP; lack of matching favors the non-doubled variant. Discussion
of linguistic factors for the present study, therefore, is limited to those
factors which can be explained in terms of matching. The principal social factor
studied is restricted language use (cf. Mougeon & Beniak, 1991). Our results
show that the greater the restriction, the fewer doubled subjects one finds.
Citation
Language Variation and Change; 7: 1-14Collections
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