FOS: Fw: Michigan State University Linguistics Colloquium - Derek Denis (10/11)

[Wagner, Suzanne]

________________________________
From: lin-colloq <lin-colloq-bounces at egr.msu.edu> on behalf of Nelson, Scott James <nelso672 at msu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 7, 2018 3:17 PM
To: lin-colloq at lin.msu.edu
Subject: [lin-colloq] Michigan State University Linguistics Colloquium - Derek Denis (10/11)


Good evening,

This is a reminder from the MSU Linguistics Colloquium Committee that the first colloquium of the fall semester is this Thursday, October 11th at 4:30pm, in B342 Wells Hall. Our speaker is Derek Denis (University of Toronto - Mississauga), whose talk is titled "One way to become a confirmational (plus three other sources): Confirmational variation in Canadian English" (abstract below).

The rest of the colloquium series schedule can be found on our website<http://msulinguists.weebly.com/colloquium-and-events.html>. Please do not hesitate to contact us if there are any questions or concerns. We hope to see you on Thursday!

Sincerely,


Scott Nelson and Yan Cong
MSU Linguistics Colloquium Committee Co-Chairs

nelso672 at msu.edu, congyan at msu.edu



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"One way to become a confirmational (plus three other sources): Confirmational variation in Canadian English”

Derek Denis (University of Toronto - Mississauga)


One of the most stereotypical features of Canadian English is the use of the confirmational tag eh, as in (1), despite its relatively lower frequency in comparison to other pragmatic markers that serve the same function (Denis and Tagliamonte 2015). For example, right, as in (2), accounts for upwards of 75% of confirmational tags among young people in Toronto while eh occurs only 2% of the time.


(1)We bought a truck in 1923. A Ford truck eh? Model-T Ford truck.

(2)That was what my parents wanted and parents are right, right?


In this talk, I will explore the histories and sources of confirmational tags in Canadian English. The primary focus of the talk will be on the grammaticalization of right. Using variationist methods, I draw on multiple corpora of naturalistic speech representing 100+ years of apparent time, and spanning from Ontario to British Columbia. Drawing heavily on Wiltschko and Heim’s (2016) syntax of confirmationals and the assumption that grammaticalization is upward reanalysis (Roberts and Rousseau 2004), I outline the structural aspects of grammaticalization and track right’s development along this cline. I will then highlight three other confirmationals in Canadian English, each with its own history and source: eh, which was inherited into the dialect; hey, a hypercorrection; and, ahlie, a result of language contact.

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