The Lexical Basis Of Grammatical Borrowing: A Prince Edward Island French Case Study (current Issues In Linguistic Theory)

This book is a detailed study of French-English linguistic borrowing in Prince Edward Island, Canada which argues for the centrality of lexical innovation to grammatical change. Chapters 1–4 present the theoretical and methodological perspectives adopted along with the sociolinguistic history of Acadian French. Chapter 5 outlines the basic features of Acadian French morphosyntax. Chapter 6 provides an overview of the linguistic consequences of language contact in Prince Edward Island. Chapters 7–9 consider three particular cases of grammatical borrowing: the borrowing of the English adverb back and the semantic and syntactic reanalysis it has undergone, the borrowing of a wide range of English prepositions, resulting in dramatic changes in the syntactic behaviour of French prepositions, and the borrowing of English wh-ever words, resulting in the emergence of a new type of free relative. Chapter 10 argues for a theory of grammar contact by which contact-induced grammatical change is mediated by the lexicon. Content: THE LEXICAL BASIS OF GRAMMATICAL BORROWING; Editorial page; Title page; LCC page; Dedication; Table of Contents; List of tables; List of Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1. Introduction; Chapter 2. The sociohistorical background; Chapter 3. Origins and development of Acadian French; Chapter 4. Languages in contact:Theory and methodology; Chapter 5. A grammatical sketch; Chapter 6. The linguistic consequences of language contact: Codeswitching and borrowing; Chapter 7. The semantic and syntactic reanalysis of lexical borrowings: The case of back. Abstract: This title focuses on the Acadian French - a dialect of French which developed from French colonists of Atlantic Canada. There are studies of phonology, vocabulary, and morphology included. Read more...