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Part of
Earlier North American Englishes
Edited by Merja Kytö and Lucia Siebers
[Varieties of English Around the World G66] 2022
► pp. 205–230

Canadian English lexis and semantics

A historical-comparative resource in contrastive, real-time perspective, 1683–2016

| University of British Columbia

This paper introduces the use of a historical dictionary as a linguistic resource. This dictionary, the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, Second Edition (Dollinger & Fee 2017) affords a new real-time perspective on the Canadian vocabulary. As it is based on an empirical, cross-variational perspective, it instills a comparative perspective into the data. The dictionary’s genesis, benchmarks and entry structure will be explained, before the vocabulary of Canadian English is sketched in four key components: typology, semantic donor domains, compounding as a key word-formation pattern and regionalisms within Canada. This study is intended as an introduction to this open access resource (www​.dchp​.ca​/dchp2) and a first step towards a more sophisticated analysis of lexis over time.

Keywords: historical linguistics, lexicography and lexicology, postcolonial Englishes, Early Modern English, Late Modern English, Twentieth-century English
Article outline
  • 1.Background
  • 2.Introduction to the Dictionary of Canadianisms
  • 3.Theory and postcolonial lexicography: Canadianisms and other ‑isms
  • 4.Principles, structure and benchmarks of DCHP-2
    • 4.1The entry structure of DCHP-2
    • 4.2Six-tiered typology plus a “Non-Canadian” class
  • 5.The structure of the Canadian English lexis
    • 5.1Typological status
      • Falsification not verification
    • 5.2Semantic domains
    • 5.3Compound formations in real-time
    • 5.4Regionalisms in Canadian English lexis
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g66.09dol
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Cited by (1)

Cited by 1 other publications

Knooihuizen, Remco
2023. So What Had Happened Was. In The Linguistics of the History of English, ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo

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