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Part of
Exploring Future Paths for Historical Sociolinguistics
Edited by Tanja Säily, Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin and Anita Auer
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 7] 2017
► pp. 239–274

A lost Canadian dialect

The Ottawa Valley 1975–2013

| University of Toronto

Ottawa Valley English (OVE), a rural regional dialect enclave in Ontario, Canada, is under threat from social change, including urban sprawl and the encroachment of standard Canadian English. Using a trend study with two samples collected 30–35 years apart, we conduct a variationist sociolinguistic analysis of two vernacular features found in many varieties of English, including OVE: verbal -s with third-person plural NP subjects (My eyes is failing), and preterite come (They come here in nineteen-and-seven). The findings have implications for models of dialect “dissipation” and “concentration” (Schilling-Estes & Wolfram 1999). For both variables, internal constraints are concentrating. Verbal -s, however, is dissipating, while preterite come is retained and shows evidence of age-grading.

Keywords: Canadian English, Ottawa Valley English, language change, dissipation, concentration, trend study, age-grading, verbal -s , preterite come
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: The Ottawa Valley dialect in historical perspective
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Case Study 1: Verbal -s with third person plural subjects
    • 4.1The variable context
    • 4.2Conditioning factors and hypotheses: Distributional analysis over time
    • 4.3Logistic regression analysis
    • 4.4Summary and conclusions
  • 5.Case Study 2: Preterite come
    • 5.1The variable context
    • 5.2Conditioning factors and hypotheses
    • 5.3Logistic regression analysis: Summary
    • 5.4Conditioning factors and hypotheses: Age-grading vs. lifespan change
  • 6.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.7.10jan
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