Morphosyntactic Variation and Language Shift in Two Franco-American Communities

Stelling, Louis E.

From the author: "Although the originally French speaking Franco-American communities of Southbridge, Massachusetts, and Woonsocket, Rhode Island, have much in common historically, language shift toward English has advanced to differing degrees in the two locations. In this dissertation, I explore morphosyntactic variation and the advance of language shift in the two locations using historical documentation, U.S. census figures and sociolinguistic interviews conducted with sixty-nine informants....After comparing and contrasting the sociolinguistic profiles of the two communities, I describe some of the linguistic consequences of the shift from French to English in these traditional Franco-American centers through a quantitative variationist analysis of two morphosyntactic variables. These are auxiliary variation in the passé composé and variation between use of the synthetic and analytic futures. Findings from Southbridge and Woonsocket provide new insight for understanding linguistic change during situations of language decline..."

Albany, New York

2008

en

Thesis/Dissertation

21st century; Southbridge, Massachusetts; Woonsocket, Rhode Island