Acadian French in Time and Space

Acadian French in Time and Space is a study of a set of closely related minority language varieties spoken by a subset of French Canadians. Most research on this topic has appeared only in French; this volume makes recent scholarship on the evolution and history of this unique set of dialects accessible to anglophone audiences for the first time. Of particular interest to sociolinguists who focus on grammatical variation and change and to dialectologists engaged in comparing geographically dispersed but closely related language varieties, it will also interest specialists in other North American varieties, such as Quebec French, and specialists in sociosyntax and language contact. Ruth King explores the preservation of rich verbal morphology, mechanisms involved in the spread of particular grammatical changes, and the relationship between discourse phenomena and grammar. This publication furthers the study of language varieties that preserve and illuminate rare features of the French of the early Canadian settlers while advancing the field of sociolinguistics.