The past twenty-five years have seen an enormous growth in research into World Englishes, reflecting a new recognition of the status of the many national English dialects. Canadian English has been no exception to this trend and we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of research into this variety. The stature it is now accorded as a separate dialect of English is reflected in the number of dictionaries, thesauruses, usage guides, and other reference works published since the late 1990s that were devoted specifically to Canadian English (e.g., Guide to Canadian English usage; Canadian Oxford dictionary; Oxford Canadian Dictionary; Collins essential Canadian English dictionary and thesaurus; Fitzhenry and Whiteside Canadian thesaurus) as well as audio-visual productions (e.g., Dialects of Canadian English; Talking Canadian).

Canadian Raising, which makes allophonic variants of the low diphthongs /ai/ and /au/, is evaluated with respect to its diachronic, geographic, and synchronic status. Its origins have been established by documentary evidence from 1934. However, comparative dialect evidence from the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada pushes the origins back to the second half of the 19th century. Raising of /ai/ in the northern United States turns out to be different from Canadian Raising, though they overlap. Sociolinguistic studies of (aw)-Fronting in 1980 showed a tendency for fronted onsets to be unraised. Though this was statistically insignificant, any strengthening would threaten the existence of Canadian Raising. Subsequent research shows that the tendency was accidental.

Canadian Raising—the phonetic changes in vowel quality and quantity in the diphthongs /ai/ and/ au/ before voiceless consonants—has been of considerable importance to phonological theories ever since Joos (1975). The opaque interaction of Canadian Raising and flapping in words such as writer consitutes one of the main arguments for rule ordering in phonology (Chomsky and Halle 1968; Chambers 1975). Recently, Mielke, Armstrong, and Hume (2003) have challenged Joos’s phonemic splitting analysis and have argued that Canadian Raising, rather than being a productive phonological process, is a static lexicalized generalization implemented as a choice between allomorphic variants. A rebuttal to this allomorphic analysis is offered based on evidence that, for some speakers, Canadian Raising productively applies in novel morphological contexts, in language games, and in the phrasal phonology, none of which are amenable to an allomorphic analysis.

General properties of the Canadian English vowel space are derived from an experimental-acoustic study of vowel production underway in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Comparing the preliminary Winnipeg results with similar data from General American English confirms previously described generalizations for Canadian English: the merger of low-back vowels, the relative retraction of /æ/, and the relative advancement of /u/ and /Ʊ/. However, a similar comparison of the Winnipeg sample with comparable Southern California data disputes the accuracy of the claim that Canadian Shift (Clarke et al. 1995) is a feature of ‘general’ Canadian and Californian English. An acoustic analysis uncovers subtle phonetic distinctions that make possible a more precise characterization of Canadian Raising: rather than only adjusting the height of the nucleus, Winnipeg speakers produce a directional shift in both the nucleus and offglide of the diphthongs /aɪ, aƱ/; this process applies to all three diphthongs (including /oɪ/).

The Canadian English vowel system is undergoing a shift, and the dialect of English spoken in St John’s, Newfoundland—which for demographic and geographic reasons has remained autonomous from North American varieties—is being affected by this change. Incorporating both real-time and apparent-time data, the findings show a process of communal and generational change. The front lax vowel lowering and/or retraction that characterize Canadian Shift appear to be active in St. John’s English. Consistent with the late adoption model of language change, older speakers show ongoing changes from their early 20s through to middle age. Moreover, the older female cohort seems to lead in the adoption of supralocal Canadian English forms, and this both in apparent time and in real time. This challenges the idea that younger generations are the sole or primary locus of language change. While innovative forms are typically associated with younger speakers, this study shows that they can also be adopted, accelerated, and advanced by older speakers.

Prior studies have established that the Atlantic region of Canada constitutes a dialect zone. Data from the Dialect Topography of New Brunswick, gathered from 2001 to 2003, permit a comparison of linguistic trends in this part of the Atlantic region with those observed in the Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario. In both cases, there is a convergence towards American forms. However, at a certain point on the border between New Brunswick and Maine, where there is significant social contact between Canadians and Americans, the data suggest that Canadian youth are resisting adoption of several American forms. The present study considers this border effect in the responses of 14–19-year-olds living in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and in the adjacent town of Calais, Maine. Sixteen items identified as Canadian/American shibboleths in the Golden Horseshoe study are examined, and the results are assessed in relation to the Boberg’s (2000) claims regarding geo-linguistic diffusion.

Isoglosses do not accurately reflect linguistic usage in a region, because the isolated conservative forms they are based on do not represent actual variants extant in the population. The isograph enables researchers to find more representative dialect trends. Canadian and American data from the Dialect Topography database are submitted to isographic analysis of linguistic boundaries at the provincial, national, and cross-border levels. Topography provides a multi-dimensional picture of how variants are used. Variants occur in different proportions, so analysis is quantitative and implies the abandonment of the isogloss because the discrete datum-points of dialect geography are unavailable. The isograph compares adjacent regions, and plots potential channels for language spread. Percentage differences between neighbouring regions are calculated, and a line is drawn between neighbours with the least difference. When all lines of minimum distance have been drawn, the result is a constellation of the most similar regions.

Although the received wisdom is that English in Quebec, as a minority language, has undergone contact-induced language change, little scientific evidence has been brought to bear on this claim. We describe a project designed to assess the impact of a majority language on the structure of the minority language in a situation of long-term contact. The existence and directionality of change is assessed by comparing the behaviour of linguistic phenomena (1) over (apparent) time, (2) according to intensity of contact, and (3) against French as a non-contact benchmark and putative source. We detail the methods employed in selecting a sample and constituting a corpus, and characterize the speakers and aspects of their speech. Finally, we present an analysis of the sociolinguistic situation of the Quebec anglophone community, and offer an empirical measure of the impact of the French lexicon on Quebec English.

The French language in Alberta is evolving in a strongly minority context. An examination of three generations of speakers from the Peace River region in northwestern Alberta—the area with the highest proportion of francophones—shows the progressive effects of longstanding contact with English. While the grandparents have fluent spontaneous speech with little calquing or code switching, the father’s speech is less spontaneous and shows increased calquing and switching, and the son’s speech has extensive calquing, code switching, and lexical gaps. Despite strong external and community support, the Peace River community manifests many of the traditional indices of minority languages faced with assimilatory pressures.

We examine the diffusion of a phonological feature, namely the deletion of palatal glides in words such as news, tune, duke, and student. Within Canada, the conservative glided and innovative glideless pronunciations are no longer viewed as carrying, respectively, British versus American affiliation. One observes a steep generational decline in glide usage, with older, and especially upper-middle-class, females, resisting this change. This contrasts with broadcast media, where the overall glide usage rate is high: national media adopt the glided variant to a greater degree than their local counterparts; moreover, male media personnel display more glide retention than females. Both variants index different social meanings: the glided variant is associated with cultural erudition but is nevertheless not the formal target for all groups. Thus, the two variants hold different appeal for different segments of the population, and both are viewed as a prestige target within the same speech community.

We compare the use and function of two discourse particles that show many similarities: Canadian English eh and Canadian French hein. Surveys of anglophone students at the University of Toronto and francophone students at Université Laval reveal that these particles have similar discourse functions and that there are many parallels in their patterns of use. However, francophone students report a higher use of hein than do anglophone students of eh. Moreover, francophones have more positive attitudes towards constructions with hein than do their anglophone counterparts with respect to eh. In addition, eh—used both less often and valued less positively—has taken on additional functions as an identity marker: it is used to identify speakers of Canadian English and, in print, to evoke Canadian solidarity. In contrast, hein does not have an identity marking function. We propose that the development of an identity marking function for eh—and the lack of such a function for hein—reflects differences in how linguistic identities are constructed in English and French Canada.

Similarities between varieties of the same languages can be explained in terms of shared retentions or innovations. Conversely, differences can be explained in terms of new vocabulary items, divergent changes, language contact, and dialect contact. The latter has been challenged by proponents of monogenetic theories. Evidence for and against monogenetic hypotheses are considered on the basis of two case studies. First, I demonstrate that the dialect enclave of Lunenberg County, Nova Scotia, is a mixed colonial dialect. Second, I argue that the phenomenon of Canadian Raising is the result of dialect mixture. The Canadian English data provide evidence for a connection between dialect contact, mixture, and genesis. The data support the idea that there is a deterministic outcome in situations where the target language is not spoken by a prior-existing population, which in turn accounts for why widely separated varieties of English are similar.

The notion ‘drift’ plays an important role in the development of the modals have to and must in early Canadian English in relation to British and American English during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Have to is first found in texts that reflect informal usage, and for the period in question (1750–1849), have to is only attested with deontic readings; the data suggest that its rise was not exclusively conditioned by the defective paradigm of must. Must maintains its epistemic function in relation to its Late Modern English competitors. In early Canadian English, changes progress gradually, with individual variables following different directions. Canadian English epistemic must lags behind, while deontic have to has spread more quickly in North America, with Canadian English more progressive than British English varieties, but less so than American English. Within a more general drift towards have to, Canadian English shows independent development in successive periods.

A socially stratified sample—the Toronto English Corpus—together with the construct of apparent time (with speakers aged 10–90 years) reveal that certain features are declining, including future will, deontic have got to, possessive have got, intensifier very, and the sentence tag you know. On the other hand, some features are on the rise, including future going to, deontic have to, possessive have, intensifiers really and so, and sentences tags such as whatever, so, and stuff like that. The younger generation is pushing these changes forward more rapidly. While some developments date back hundreds of years in the history of English, they are not particular to Canada, and are consistent with research on other English corpora. Other changes appear to be progressing in a unique way in Canada, including deontic and possessive have. I argue that the broader socio-historical context is a critical factor: geographic and economic mobility as well as changes in communication technology may explain the rapid acceleration of certain types of linguistic change.