2381/39679
Cathleen Waters
Cathleen
Waters
Sali A. Tagliamonte
Sali A.
Tagliamonte
Is one innovation enough? Leaders, covariation and language change
University of Leicester
2017
IR content
2017-04-21 10:43:29
Journal contribution
https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Is_one_innovation_enough_Leaders_covariation_and_language_change/10199366
Do the people who lead in one linguistic change, lead in others? Previous work
has suggested that they do not, but the topic has not been addressed extensively
with non-phonological, spoken data. In this paper, we answer this question
through an examination of lexical, morphosyntactic and discourse-pragmatic
changes in progress in Canadian English as spoken in the largest urban center of
the country, Toronto. Close scrutiny of the behavior of individuals across multiple
linguistic variables, i.e. covariation, and using the Pearson product-moment
correlation coefficient enables us to test the use of incoming variants both by the
community of speakers as a whole and by those who are leading change. The
innovative variants of quotatives, i.e. be like, intensifiers, i.e. really, so, deontic
modality, i.e. have to, stative possession, i.e. have and general extenders, i.e. and
stuff, demonstrate that the leaders of these multiple linguistic changes have
common social characteristics (e.g. women lead more than one change), but it is
not the case that any one individual in a community will be at the forefront of
more than one change.