Drawing on findings from an ethnographic study of the writing practices of three plurilingual writers in Toronto, Canada, this article focuses on the translingual practices that these writers engaged with and discusses how these practices enriched their writing processes and products both in English and in their mother tongues. The author explains…

"Ouh que c'est laid!" "Oh this is ugly!" is one of the comments among the 11,800 hits on Google for the sequence "la fille que je sors avec" [the girl I go out with]. Often the comments include the idea that the whole expression has been taken from English as a direct calque. The authors of the present keynote…

Prepositions can be found with and without adjacent complements in many forms of popular spoken French. The alternation appears in main clauses ("il veut pas payer pour ca [approximately] il veut pas payer pour" "he doesn't want to pay for [it]") and, though with a more restricted social and geographic distribution, in relative…

In their keynote contribution, Poplack, Zentz & Dion (henceforth PZD; Poplack, Zentz & Dion, 2011, this issue) propose an interesting "scientific test of convergence" (under section heading: "Introduction") which contains criteria to check whether a particular feature in a given language in contact with another one is…

The variety of English spoken by about half a million people in the Canadian province of Quebec is a minority language in intensive contact with French, the local majority language. This unusual contact situation has produced a unique variety of English which displays many instances of French influence that distinguish it from other types of…

The authors of "Phrase-final prepositions in Quebec French: An empirical study of contact, code-switching and resistance to convergence", Poplack, Zentz & Dion (2011, this issue), henceforth cited as PZD, make a strong case for showing that, in spite of surface similarities, preposition stranding in Canadian French relative clauses…

American Sign Language (ASL) is the natural and preferred language of the Deaf community in both the United States and Canada. Woodward (1978) estimated that approximately 60% of the ASL lexicon is derived from early 19th century French Sign Language, which is known as "langue des signes francaise" (LSF). The lexicon of LSF and ASL may…

In this study, we investigate whether preposition stranding, a stereotypical non-standard feature of North American French, results from convergence with English, and the role of bilingual code-switchers in its adoption and diffusion. Establishing strict criteria for the validation of contact-induced change, we make use of the comparative…

This paper discusses the language contact situation between Algonquian languages and French in Canada. Michif, a French-Plains Cree mixed language, is used as a case study for linguistic results of language contact. The paper describes the phonological, morphological, and syntactic conflict sites between the grammars of Plains Cree and French, as…

Gives some examples of linguistic borrowing in translatin Quebec statutes from French to English. (AM)

Describes the inroads made into Canadian French by English phonology, vocabulary, and syntax, and argues for a "refrancisation" which will preserve the unique flavor of Canadian French. (AM)

Discusses government intervention in language matters in Quebec, particularly in the area of terminology. A language planning model developed by the "Office de la langue francaise" consists of internal neologistic planning followed by the extension of these efforts to other francophone communities, particularly those in Europe.…

Presents examples of vocabulary items and expressions which can be found in Canada, particularly in Quebec, and which would be misunderstood, or not understood at all, by the average Frenchman. (AM)

A linguistic survey indicates that despite variations by region and social group, the French spoken by Saskatchewan francophones preserves traces of the history of the language, including anglicisms and older French expressions not much in use today. (MSE)

A study of 15 fathers and their 16 sons in an italophone community in Montreal (Canada) focused on the usage of Italian, French, and English in communication between generations and in a variety of activities. Data were drawn from 45 hours of taped conversation in home and work settings, which included 4,848 instances of language contact. Of the…