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A descriptive analysis of the grammar and variable pronunciation of 'there' and the non-standard there-tag in Bathurst English

This study is a descriptive analysis of the occurrence of the sociolinguistic variables of pronunciation associated with all forms of ‘there’ and Non-Standard There-tag (NST-tag) in Bathurst English. Participants were interviewed and the occurrences of ‘there’ were obtained through the use of sociolinguistic interviews with 15 speakers. The incidences of ‘there’ were sorted based on grammatical category and pronunciation and were subsequently analyzed based on age and gender. The results indicate that older speakers use non-standard pronunciations of ‘there’ more than younger speakers and they also use NST-tag more than younger speakers. Younger speakers mostly use standard pronunciations of ‘there’ and use NST-tag very little. This may indicate age and gender grading or a change in progress in that vernacular is giving way to more standard speech in this community.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:MWU.1993/4259
Date05 October 2010
CreatorsMitton, Trudy
ContributorsHagiwara, Robert (Linguistics), Ghomeshi, Jila (Linguistics) Soderstrom, Melanie (Psychology)
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish

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