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The Future of Ontario French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2010

RICK GRIMM  and
TERRY NADASDI
RICK GRIMM*
Affiliation:
York University
TERRY NADASDI*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
*
Addresses for correspondence: D. Rick Grimm, Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3 e-mail: [email protected]
Terry Nadasdi, Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2E6 e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The present study is a Labovian sociolinguistic analysis of forms used to express the future tense in the spoken French of adolescents residing in Ontario, Canada. Two primary variants are examined: a) the periphrastic future (e.g. elle va partir); and b) the inflected future (e.g. elle partira). The general trend that emerges is that distribution rates of the periphrastic future are markedly higher than previous accounts of the variable and that many speakers are in fact categorical users of the periphrastic form in certain contexts. Note, too, that negation is not a strong predictor for all speakers with respect to the choice of the inflected future, a finding that is in strong contrast to previous analyses of the variable in Laurentian varieties of spoken French in Canada. After presenting the general results, we provide an in-depth analysis of the linguistic and social factors that condition variant use.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 173 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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