Inter-relation of canadian dialects and standard english

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Introduction

This final qualification work aims to describe the current linguistic situation among English speaking population in Canada. In other words, the interaction of Standard Canadian English and nonstandard English dialects in Canada will be described here.

In general, the English language varies from place to place, from one social group to another, or even from a situation to situation. In this work, we will try to give a present-day situation in Canadian English in terms of its variation.

Moreover, when we talk about inter-relation of dialects and standard language in modern linguistics, we talk about it not only from the dialectological aspect but also from a sociolinguistic point of view. This means that not only will we try to explain what types of variation exist in Canada, but also why and where a certain variation of Canadian English occurs.

In the first part of the work, we will use historical facts in order to describe how first migrations to Canada influenced the current linguistic situation there. It will be defined what are the territories and social groups where standard and non-standard Canadian English is spoken today. In the second part of our dissertation, we will try to give certain features of both, standard and non-standard English language in Canada in terms of phonology and grammar, and to explain differences among them.

The relevance of the topic: The present-day stage of any language, especially English language, is characterized by a high degree of variability, both at the regional and the global level. Any modern language is a dynamic picture of linguistic variability, which gives a possibility of continuous research and discussion, as the language is a living and constantly changing phenomenon. The topic of inter-relation of dialects and standard in the English language is often an area of study since it is this interaction that is to some extent involved in describing the national mentality, especially in the bilingual society as exists in Canada.

Scientific novelty of the dissertation: The novelty of our work is the description of the status of relations between different variations of English language in Canada. We will try to show the situation in standard and non-standard Canadian English at the moment when it is influenced by cultural, political and social factors.

Aims and objectives: The aim of the dissertation is to define and describe the nature of the relationship between the Standard Canadian English language and social and regional dialects in Canada.

The goal is to solve the following tasks:

1. To identify the features of the Standard Canadian English language, which is studied in schools and which is supported by the state and institutions of culture;

2. To describe the regional and social variability in Canadian English;

3. To determine the linguistic character of dialectal variation in terms of grammar and phonology;

4. To show how the standard Canadian English language was formed through history, and what linguistic situation was created as a result in the twenty-first century.

Methods used for the research: The following research methods are used in the work: the analytical method of linguistic works of Canadain authors, the method of transcription of phonetic records, and the method of comparison.

Material used for the research: Our research is based on linguistic descriptions that already exist, as well as on texts written in dialects, and phonetic records of both, representatives of the Standard Canadian English, as well as representatives of social and regional dialects in Canada. In the theoretical part of this research, we used dialectological works (Boberg C., Chambers J. K., Clarke S., Pringle I., Padolsky E., Lougheed W. C.), as well as sociolinguistic works (Trudgill P., Falk L., Harry M., Scargill M. H.). In the practical part of the dissertation, we consulted phonological works of the following authors: Ayearst M., Bailey R. W., Emeneau M. B., Joos M., Kinloch A. M., Lйon P. R., Rouillard C. D., Baligand, R. A., Martin P., Warkentyne H. J., Woods H. B., Yerastov Y., as well as sociolinguistic works of Trudgill P., Falk L., Harry M., and Scargill M. H..

The structure of this paper includes a table of contents, an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, and a bibliographic list.

Scientific use of our work: The results of the research may be used in the courses and lectures on Social and territorial variability of the English language, as well as on History of English dialects.

Practical significance of the research: our dissertation can help in analyzing texts in the lectures of Language and culture and Regional studies. Moreover, in the same courses, the theoretical part of our research can also be useful in explaining the history of Canadian English language.

1. Dialect Areas in Canada and Their Origins

grammatical phoneme dialect

1.1 Historical Development of Canadian English

The vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation of any language, or any variety of it, are rarely the product of chance. This is true for Canadian English, which is a product of the numerous events and peoples who have made Canadian English of today. Contemporary Canadian English is a product of different people who immigrated to Canada over the years. These are: settlers, who arrived to Canada from Ireland, Scotland, and England in the nineteenth century or even earlier, French and English fur traders, colonists of Upper Canada, and `homesteaders' of the West (Lougheed, 1986:71).

First settlers that come to Canada were English speaking people who arrived in 1783 and 1784, right after the Revolutionary War. These settlers, known as United Empire Loyalists, fled the United States to stay under the rule, law and order of the British Crown. Some of them moved from New England and further south to the coastline of Nova Scotia, a region that was later named the Maritimes, or the Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. However, many of these Loyalists later moved from Nova Scotia to Upper Canada seeking better climate and soil conditions. Others settled in Quebec City and Montreal. United Empire Loyalists of a more adventurous background moved from Vermont, up-state New York and western Pennsylvania to Sorel, Quebec. There, they were given food and shelter in a refugee camp for two years while the initial land survey was being conducted. Afterward, these Loyalists settled along the northern shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie in what is today Ontario. Their number at that time was only around 10,000 people (Woods, 1999:23).

A decade or two later, a somewhat larger number of settlers from the northern states, now known as the Late Loyalists, received land concessions in Upper Canada through a program sponsored by the Crown. The number of the Loyalists and the late Loyalists in Canada by 1812 was 100,000 and linguistically, they were the most important settlement in the British North America. This would come to form the province of Ontario, which is now a rich and densely populated heartland of Canada (Woods, 1999:23).

After 1850, immigration from Britain and the United States continued as southern Ontario and Montreal continued to grow in prosperity. These new immigrants increasingly chose to settle in Western Canada, and in particular, three major English-speaking groups were settling the prairies and influencing the language there. These were composed of the Americans and the British, but also for the first time Canadians, mostly Ontarians. Here, it was noted for the first time that the Canadian style of English exists and prevails, and this pattern continues as Canada expands westward and northward. At that time, southern Ontario continued to grow and dominated the rest of Canada industrially, commercially and politically and consequently, it set the linguistic standard (Woods, 1999:23).

This desire for more immigration in Canada was born out of warfare, after the Americans invaded Canada in 1812, Canadian British leaders became aware of the possible imperialistic tendencies of the United States, since the number of American descendants in the country became large. That is why between 1830 and 1860, roughly 300,000 people from Scotland and Ireland were relocated to Upper Canada (Clarke, 1993:3). Consequently, in areas where these new immigrants formed a majority, the influence of Irish and Scottish dialects became so powerful, that even to this day, the variety of English which differs from Standard Ontarian English can be heard there. This is the situation of the rural speech of Elgin County on the north shore of Lake Erie, of the Peterborough area, up to the north of Lake Ontario, and in the Ottawa River valley (Chambers, 1975) all the way from the St. Lawrence River to Pembroke (Clarke, 1993:5).

Farmers that were moving west from Ontario, the American Mid-West (mainly Northern and some Midland speakers), the Great Plain states, and from Britain, settled the prairies. Moreover, there also were numerous Ukrainians, French Canadians, Germans and Scandinavians. However, educated Englishmen often obtained positions of authority and prestige as administrators, clergy, officers, educators, civil servants, etc. This is probably one of the most significant differences between the linguistic situation of Canada and the United States today: the variety of British English enjoys position of prestige and respect through Canada (Woods, 1999:23).

In the West, the Coastal and Okanagan regions of British Columbia had a much larger number and proportion of settlers from Britain than did the Prairies, but even here, many Canadians from the Maritimes, Ontario, and the Prairies arrived and later assimilated into British Colombia. One part of interior British Columbia was settled by miners from Utah and Idaho whose ancestors came from Midland areas. These miners were later assimilated, too (Woods, 1999:23). Soon after Confederation, the Canadian Pacific Railway linked southern Ontario to the western frontier. Thanks to that, Ontarians directed the westward expansion participating in it in large numbers. In many western settlements, they dominated the first white-collar class: they were doctors, teachers, bankers and merchants in agricultural communities. As was already mentioned, their rise broke up the old-Ontario hegemony socially within a generation or two and left its mark linguistically. The accent of western Canada remained the accent that the Ontario founders had imported there (Lougheed, 1986:9, 11, 12).

In summing up the development of Canadian English in those early years from 1782 to 1850 before Canada existed as a country with established political boundaries, it is important to state the following:

1. American and British settlement contributed jointly to development of modern Canadian English;

2. the British and American dialects must have been less divergent than they are today;

3. both American and British dialects of the English language must have been spoken in Canada by hundreds of thousands of speakers respectively;

4. Canadian English was developing independently of the two dialects by picking and choosing what was preferred and by innovating it.

1.2 Linguistic domination of Upper Canada in Inland Canada

Knowing the history of the Anglophone colonists who first arrived to Canada, it is clear that the language of Upper Canada (nowadays known as Ontario) is widely considered to be a linguistically dominant variety of the English language in modern English-speaking Canadian society (Clarke, 1993:2). However, this dominance requires a more detailed explanation.

It is important to make clear that the westward expansion of Canada, which happened after 1867, was the first reason for the Upper Canada linguistic dominance to occur. This expansion was done by mostly white English-speaking Protestants from Upper Canada. The emigration of Ontarians was carefully managed by Sir John A. Macdonald who followed the example of the Riel Rebellions of 1870 in Manitoba and 1885 in Saskatchewan who moved to submerge the French-speaking Catholic Mйtis population after they demanded the protection of their civil rights including linguistic and religious rights, following the Canadian annexation of these provinces.

Macdonald encouraged the mass movement of Ontarians to form the new majority in the west, offering them new pieces of land at rock-bottom prices to provide the necessary number of people. Consequently, Macdonald's policy isolated Quebec as a French-speaking province. Also, Macdonald's actions exported to the west the English variety which at that time was spoken in Upper Canada and which developed from the United Empire Loyalists and post-Loyalists (Clarke, 1993:3).

The second reason for the linguistic supremacy of Upper Canadian English in the territory of inland Canada was the social, political and economic domination of Ontario after Confederation in 1867. As usual, the language of the socially, politically and economically dominant territory was considered prestigious (Clarke, 1993:3). With this in mind, it becomes clear why English spoken by the urban middle-class society of Ontario is today's Standard Canadian English, and that its status of being standard is historically connected with pre-Confederation Upper Canada. With the passing of time, it has become evident that Canadian English spread over a territory larger than Europe and has undoubtedly become diversified, so researchers in every province have started to study dialectological aspects of Canadian English (Lйon, Rouillard, Baligand, & Martin, 1979:1).

1.3 Standard Canadian English

It was already explained that what is now called Standard Canadian English was originally formed by English-speaking people who moved north to Canada after the War of Independence in order to live in a territory that was under the control of the British Crown. This means that Standard Canadian language was formed partly by Loyalists and Late Loyalists from Western New England and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, some Old World Immigrants who arrived from Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland and settled in Upper Canada brought with them a non-southern English variety. From this, it can be concluded that Ontarian English (which is nowadays considered to be standard) after the War of Independence was a mix of the New England, Scottish, Irish, and Northern English dialects. The gradual detachment of these settlers' ties to Britain or the United States resulted in the development of their own unique variety of the English language (what is today considered to be Standard or General Canadian English) (Clarke, 1993:153).

Lougheed (1986) argues that the Standard Dialect in Canada is the grammar and the pronunciation of educated Canadians. Some of the grammatical variants that occur in Canada are undoubtedly too regional or too colloquial (or both) to warrant a place in standard Canadian English (Lougheed, 1986:8).

Clarke (1993) states, that Standard Canadian English is spoken among middle-class Canadian society in the inland towns and cities of Canada.

Woods (1999), on the other hand, rather than using the term “standard”, uses “general”. In his words, General Canadian refers to a standard dialect which is spoken in most parts of Canada from the Ottawa River to the Pacific:

“It is roughly the dialect of broadcasters on the national networks and of the university educated. Increasingly, it is the majority dialect of all Canadian cities.” (Woods, 1999:51) Clarke (1993) supports the idea of Woods:

“The General Canadian is defined as the standard dialect of educated speakers from the Ottawa River to the Pacific.” (Clarke, 1993:273)

Here we see that in their try to define what is Standard or General Canadian English, Lougheed, Clarke and Woods explain that it is a dialect which occurs among educated middle-class Canadian society in most parts of Canadian territory. In our work we do agree with the above statement. However, in order to give a more specific definition of what is Standard Canadian English, it is necessary to first explain what is a dialect.

Trudgill (2000) states, that: “The term dialect refers to differences between kinds of language which are differences of vocabulary and grammar as well as pronunciation. The term dialect can be used to apply to all varieties, not just to nonstandard varieties”, (in his words, variety is a natural term to apply to any kind of language) while: “the term accent refers to differences of pronunciation”.

According to this, a standard variety of English language in Canada is clearly a standard dialect of Canadian English, since it is the variety of the language that differs from others in its grammar and pronunciation.

In addition to this, since language is a social phenomenon that is closely connected with the social structure and value systems of a society, different dialects are evaluated in different ways. In Canada, the standard variety of Canadian English is the dialect which is normally spoken by the most educated and politically powerful members of the population. Here it is important to make clear that the term Canadian English refers to the National Canadian English that comprises Standard or General Canadian English and all territorial variations.

In this work, for the standard variety of Canadian English we will use the term General Canadian English as a synonym to Standard Canadian English since General Canadian refers to the dialect which is spoken in most parts of Canada, but it is important to mention that its status is not officially standardized by any institution. What makes it standard is the attitude of the speakers that the General Canadian is the most prestigious, and consequently dominant form of English in Canada because it is spoken by university educated people in most parts of the country. Additionally, it is spoken in Ottawa by the people of the middle-class society who are directly connected to the Federal Government.

General Canadian English is uniform over the vast territory of Canada. On the other hand, nonstandard regional dialects of Canadian English occur in certain territorial enclaves. These enclaves are: an area from Kingston to Edmonton on the northeast, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and the Canadian American border on the south; Ottawa Valley (which includes: Glengarry County, Lanark County, Renfrew County, Pontiac County); Elgin County; the Red River Valley; Amber Valley; the areas to the south and west of Pembroke; rural areas in Saskatchewan; Lunenburg; Cape Breton; Fredericton; Saint John, Sydney, Charlottetown, and the area of Newfoundland and Labrador. Moreover, the nonstandard dialects of Canadian English are not only territorial variations, but at the same time they characterize Canadians in terms of their social status.

1.4 Dialect Areas and Social Differences in Speech

Even though Warkentyne (1971) claims that: “Canada may be divided into three main dialect areas: Newfoundland, Eastern Canada (excluding Newfoundland, but including Ontario), and Western Canada” (noting that the division between Eastern and Western Canada is not nearly as clear-cut as the distinction between Newfoundland and the rest of Canada and that in pronunciation, Ontario shows a distribution similar to that of the Prairie provinces), it will be more precise to define that Canadian English today displays considerable regional cohesiveness from Ottawa to Vancouver, with certain “enclaves of variation” (“pockets”).

In addition to this, Woods (1999) argues that it is more likely to detect linguistic diversity within a Canadian city and across class boundaries than in traveling 3,142 kilometers from Ottawa to Vancouver, staying within the same class.

However, English of the Heartland Canada dialect, especially its vowel system, is a large supposedly homogeneous dialect triangle bounded by an imaginary line from Kingston, Ontario, to Edmonton, Alberta, on the northeast, the Rocky Mountains on the West, and the Canadian-American border on the south (Lйon, Rouillard, Baligand, & Martin, 1979:15).

Homogeneity of the Canadian language really holds only for urban, middle-class speech. Interestingly, some rural accents from Ontario westwards differ sharply from the standard accent, in such places as the Ottawa Valley, Peterborough County, Elgin County, all in Ontario, and the Red River Valley, Manitoba, and Amber Valley, Alberta. Also, in the large cities from Ottawa to Victoria, working-class accents often differ not only from the standard speech but also from one another (Lougheed, 1986:9, 11, 12).

It is natural that the longer a place has been settled, the more linguistically diverse it becomes, and vice-versa. The effects of this natural law are clearly seen in Canada. In the Atlantic provinces and Quebec, where the founding populations settled in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we find much more varied accents both in English and in French than we find elsewhere in the country. Ontario's founding population did not arrive until the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the influx of Loyalists and late Loyalists from the American middle states, and the western provinces waited for another half-century before receiving a sizeable, non-migratory population (Lougheed, 1986:9, 11).

In explaining the present situation in the diversity of Canadian English, the capital of Canada will be analyzed first.

Ottawa (Ontario)

Ottawa, Ontario is the political capital of Canada and its fourth largest city. The Ottawa population is growing rapidly and at the moment there are almost a million inhabitants (2016 Canadian Census). Ottawa is situated on the Ontario-Quebec border on the south bank of the Ottawa River where the Rideau River joins it, some 100 miles west of Montreal, and 220 miles northeast of Toronto. Ottawa, Hull and neighboring suburbs on both sides of the Ottawa River form the area of Ottawa-Gatineau, also known as the National Capital Region due to the Government of Canada having its federal offices on both sides of the river. Bytown was the first name for today's Ottawa and it was a construction site for the building of the Rideau Canal and a centre for lumber trade. It was selected by Queen Victoria to be the capital of Upper and Lower Canada in 1857 over the larger cities of then York (now Toronto) and Montreal precisely due to its location as the `centre-point' between English and French Canada. Since then, its capital status has been its main characteristic ever since. This fact has important linguistic consequences.

First of all, since World War II, thousands of people with specialized education and skills have been hired annually from across Canada to take on responsibilities within the Federal Government, and consequently, the numerous political representatives and their staffs come from all regions of Canada. This movement to Ottawa has brought about a linguistic mixing which tended to decrease the importance of the local speech. Additionally, the fact that these people held important positions had linguistic importance.

Second of all, Ottawa was a goal for in-migration and commuting from the surrounding rural area. It is important to highlight that within the city of Ottawa the socio-economic differentiation is not as clearly a west-to-east gradation of rich to poor as in a city such as Vancouver. Personal income and salaries are some of the highest in the nation. Furthermore, Ottawa, among Canadian cities, has by far the highest percentage of university graduates. However, the English speakers of the rural area around Ottawa are not representatives of General Canadian (Standard Canadian) English that is spoken among urban Ottawans (Woods, 1999:15).

Ottawa Valley

The Ottawa Valley, the agricultural region of the Ottawa River watershed in Quebec as well as Ontario, is the region that forms one of the most distinctive rural dialect areas in Canada, even though it is tightly connected with the city of Ottawa which serves as a cultural, trade, and employment centre for much of the Ottawa Valley (Woods, 1999:16).

Is interesting that there are at least ten distinct varieties of English in this relatively small area. The Loyalist-based dialects of the north shore of the St. Lawrence Valley constitute the first type. They represent a survival of the kind of English brought to the area by United Empire Loyalists and so-called late Loyalists who migrated to Canada from the United States at the time of the American Revolution, and shortly thereafter. Linguistically, these varieties of English are distinguished from adjacent varieties of English most noticeably by the fact that, unlike both the widespread variety sometimes called General Canadian English or Central/Prairie Canadian English and also the Ottawa Valley varieties to their north and northwest, they, for example, have not merged the vowels of cot and caught (Pringle, & Padolsky, 1983).

Around the city of Ottawa, the dialects of the English-speaking areas of the north of Glengarry County can be heard. These represent the kind of English spoken by what was originally a predominantly Gaelic-speaking community of settlers from the Hebrides and the Scottish Highlands, who learned their English from the Loyalist settlers to the south and west of them.

Also, there are two quite distinct pockets of Scottish settlement in Lanark County and Renfrew County to the west of Ottawa. At these territories, the former Scots settlement left their linguistic marks.

In addition, there are two areas which are now predominantly English speaking but where the original settlement was not Anglophone. The first is the originally German-speaking settlement of the areas to the south and west of Pembroke, Ontario, with offshoots in Pontiac County, Quebec (Pringle, & Padolsky, 1983).

English in rural regions of Quebec is almost non-existent except for the Eastern Townships and Pontiac County. This is mostly because the Eastern Townships were settled by Loyalists and Late Loyalists from western New England and up-state New York. In this area, French is replacing English due to demographic changes and strict linguistic laws imposed by the Province of Quebec. However, Pontiac County is part of the Ottawa Valley and has speech characteristics which conform to that region. As for Anglophone Montrealers, they sound very much like speakers from the rest of Canada (Woods, 1999:24, 25).

Toronto and Vancouver

Next in line of important cities in Canada are Toronto and Vancouver. Socially, culturally and politically, Toronto and Vancouver have a lot in common: they are the two largest cities in their regions and consequently, each is the cultural, industrial and economic centre of those regions. Also, both are significantly more cosmopolitan than other cities around them. However, despite the territorial distance between these two cities, it is documented by various studies that the English spoken in Toronto and in Vancouver is highly homogeneous (Clarke, 1993:25,251).

Anyhow, that is not the case in the Maritimes. The Maritime provinces still retain a style of speech substantially different from that of the rest of Canada. This is a result of the influx of settlers from coastal New England since the 1760's and of continuous cultural and economic ties with New England ever since (Woods, 1999:24, 25).

Newfoundland and Labrador

As for Newfoundland and Labrador, it is a part of Canada that has a unique style of English formed mainly under the influence of the speech characteristics of settlers from Ireland and from the southwest of England. The speech of individuals who live in the outports is the most different from General Canadian that one will encounter in Canada. The speech heard in the cities, however, resembles more and more the speech heard across Canada. In fact, the language of young people is becoming more similar to this in Toronto or Ottawa. This change is also very noticeable not only in the Maritime provinces but also in rural dialect pockets across Canada (Woods, 1999:24, 25).

In the vast territory of Newfoundland it is hard to hear the standard variety of Canadian English. This can be explained by the fact that Newfoundland joined the Confederation only in 1949, but linguistic links with the rest of Canada are not as readily as political, commercial and cultural. Perhaps they will come, after another generation or so of traffic between the island and the mainland, because political, commercial and cultural exchanges involve people, and people carry their accents with them and generally keep them while they are there (Lougheed, 1986: 11, 13).

Rural dialects of Canadian English are especially important in Saskatchewan. A large portion of Saskatchewan's urban population is increasing while rural population is decreasing. Small, but growing population of grain farmers today make their permanent residence in cities and towns, and others live at their farms only for short periods of the year. Thus, in Saskatchewan, many rural residents are very mobile and are not isolated from urban centers and from urban speech. However, given the fact that the rural population of Saskatchewan used to be larger than those in urban areas, and with modern migrations to the urban areas, rural dialects could start to influence urban Standard English there (Clarke, 1993:201).

Nova Scotia

In Nova Scotia, English is an official and a common language. The speech of Halifax, the capital of the province, is most influential, since it is also the seat of one of the colleges of the province and exerts its influence through the schools and professions (Falk, Harry, 1999:43). “Halifax Standard” is a regional variant of General Canadian and South Shore (of Nova Scotia) English is a regional variety within Nova Scotia (Falk, Harry, 1999:49). Therefore it is important to mention that the speech of Lunenburg (a city on the south of the province) differs from that of the rest of Nova Scotia. The total number of the original settlers in this city was 1453, and nowadays the number is something under 3000 (Falk, Harry, 1999:43). Also, the speakers of Cape Breton Island feel that their speech differs significantly from that of the mainland, and most mainlanders would agree with that (Falk, Harry, 1999:50).

It is also necessary to mention that in Nova Scotia there is a considerable number of “Black English speakers”. The speech of Black Nova Scotians (“Africadians”) has been represented as “dialect”, “jargon” “bad English”, “broken English”, “patois”. However, it is a fact that their speech has been a common language in the province for at least two centuries. This speech is slowly emerging as a valid and vital literary and performance form as a result of the efforts of writers and performers connected with their Cultural Renaissance which began in the province around 1983. A career of Black English in Nova Scotia has always been associated with the slave trade and was later treated as a comic deviance by white authors and performers in Nova Scotia. The tongue is presently enjoying a “Second Coming” as an important artistic device for Africadian performers and writers. Falk & Harry (1999) agree that the variety of Black English spoken in Nova Scotia descended from a tongue which was a product of the slave trade. This variety of Black English is the immediate ancestral tongue of Africadians, for the majority of them are descendants of African Americans who came to the province in two migrations of 1783 and 1815 (Falk, Harry, 1999:125).

Summing up:

1. Contemporary Canadian English is a product of the first American and British settlers who immigrated to Canada over the years. This means that the historical stages formed the present language situation in Canada.

2. The most dominant variety of English in Canada is General or Standard Canadian English. It is spoken in most parts of Canadian territory, from Ottawa on the east to the Vancouver on the west.

3. Standard or General Canadian English is a standard dialect of Canadian English which is spoken by the most educated and wealthy members of Canadian middle-class urban population. It is standardized not by authorities, but by the Canadian speakers themselves, and is considered to be the prestigious way of speaking.

4. One of the main reasons why General Canadian English is considered to be the prestigeous way of speaking is because it is spoken in Ottawa, the Capital of Canada, where politically important and wealthy people live and work.

5. Nonstandard varieties of Canadian English can be found in the specific enclaves of variation. Also, these nonstandard dialects occure among the members of the lower class society in Canada.

6. The eareas of the nonstandard dialects of Canadian English are: the area from Kingston to Edmonton on the northeast, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and the Canadian American border on the south; Ottawa Valley (which includes: Glengarry County, Lanark County, Renfrew County, Pontiac County); Elgin County; the Red River Valley; Amber Valley; the areas to the south and west of Pembroke; rural areas in Saskatchewan; Lunenburg; Cape Breton; Fredericton; Saint John, Sydney, Charlottetown, and the area of Newfoundland and Labrador.

7. The variety of Canadian English that is the most distinctive from General Canadian is the dialect of Newfoundland and Labrador. However, younger generations of Newfoundlanders more and more tend to speak General Canadian. Consequently, in the future this tendency can affect the linguistic situation there.

2. Inter-relation of Standard and Nonstandard Phonetic and Grammatical Features in Canadian English

2.1 Phonology

Phonological description of any national language, as well as dialects, can hardly be the task of master thesis. That is a voluminous and serious work, and it is not the aim of our dissertation. Moreover, it would not be possible to give a precise description of any phonological system using the present day methods for phonological analysis, since they have not yet been sufficiently developed for that.

At this point of our work, the task will be to present the existing variation both, within the General Canadian English and in terms of territorial and social variability, using the available descriptions of Canadian linguists.

By describing the phonology of the English language and its variations, using the method of phonological oppositions, the system of vocalism faces the problem of length and shortness of vowels. In the English language, this is a complex issue, since most of contemporary researchers for various reasons claim that length and shortness of vowels in English are not considered to be a phonological opposition of individual phonemes, but a characteristic that accompanies other distinctive features.

This issue is being discussed by various phonological schools. The Leningrad phonological school proceeds from the fact that the length is a feature that only accompanies the quality of a vowel, such as lifting, vowel openness, tension, and therefore in the system of phonetic notation it is not marked by any special sign of length. The theory is based upon the findings of British phoneticians and phonologists, such as Gimson, A. C., Lewis, J. W., and Jones, D.

The theory of Saint Petersburg's school of diachronic phonology puts the correlation of the syllabic cut at the first place. Kleiner Y. A. (2010) states that under the same conditions, longer vowel differs from shorter vowel not only in length but also in tension and quality. However, it still remains unclear whether the end of vowel matches with the end of a phoneme.

From the phonology viewpoint, in Canadian English, the only distinguishing feature is the quality of the vowel, not the length, because the length depends directly on the position of the vowel in a word. For this reason, the phonetic notation that we use in our work does not mark the length of a vowel. Nevertheless, length will still be mentioned in some cases.

Also, it is important to explain the difference between the terms "variable" and "allophone" which will be used in our work.

Wolfram (1991:25) defines the linguistic variable as "a basic tool to relate variation in language to social factors." Moreover, Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2000) describe the linguistic variable as "a varying linguistic structure which may correlate with social factors such as region or status, or with linguistic factors such as the linguistic environment."

In our work, we will agree with the above statements. This means that here, the term "variable" will be used to mark a linguistic unit, that regionally and socially varies in pronunciation. It will be formally represented as /x~z~y/.

The term "allophone" is defined by R. Jakobson as „a set of phones contained in the intersection of a maximal set of phonetically similar phones and a primary phonetically related set of phones." Consequently, we will use the term allophone to talk about various possible spoken sounds (phones) which occur in complementary positions in pronouncing a single phoneme in Canadian English, but which never affect the meaning. In our paper, allophons will be formally represented as [x].

Also, it is important to point out that certain elements of spelling that will be discussed in the paper, like -ing, will be used as “-ing”.

Proceeding from all above-mentioned about the length and shortness, in the second chapter, our further classification into short vowels, long vowels and diphthongs is conventional, or even traditional, since it is commonly used in traditional phonetic research to analyze British English.

Vowels

Monophthongs

Short~long vowels

In this section of our work we will describe long and short vowels in Canadian English. It is difficult to classify them as separate categories (long vowels, short vowels) because they alternate between themselves. Moreover, it is important to stress that monophtongs and diphtongs also alternate between themselves in some cases.

/?~ ?~o/ For the Vowel “o” Between Two Consonants

Clarke (1993) writes that in General Canadian English, in the pronunciation of the vowel “o” between two consonants like in words hot, shone, collar, God, or stop the lips are completely relaxed and “o” is pronounced as [?]. This feature of Canadian English occurs on the vast territory where General Canadian is spoken, including Ottawa. On the other hand, Woods (1999) states that not far from Ottawa, in the Ottawa Valley, this phoneme can be pronounced either [?] or [?]. However, the degree of lip rounding does not distinguish meaning at all.

Interestingly, Clarke (1993) gives an example which shows some variation in this feature. The word scones is pronounced as [skonz] by male and female teenagers than by adults. Also, it occurs more often among urban residents. On the other hand, the pronunciation [sk?nz] is more frequently used by adults, both male and female adults, and by rural residents, and is considered to be the standard form (Clarke, 1993:213).

According to this, we can conclude that in General Canadian English the vowel “o” is pronounced as [?] when it is in the position between two consonants. On the other side, the nonstandard way of pronouncing it is [?], and so far it is well attested in the area of Ottawa Valley. However, some examples, as the pronunciation of the word scones [skonz] show that among younger speakers of General Canadian English there is a tendency for the “o” between two consonants to even obtain the value [o] in the future.

Variable /?~ж~ ? / in the Initial Position

To describe this feature, we will use the word aunt. In Canadian English, this word has two ways of pronunciation, these are [?nt] and [жnt]. According to Lougheed (1986), the pronunciation [жnt] is common in General Canadian, while on the other hand in Eastern, Atlantic Canadian provinces, the pronunciation [?nt] rises up to 54% among male speakers, while it is only 16% elsewhere there.

On the other hand, Woods (1999) states, that aunt is pronounced as [жnt] among females of the upper middle and lower upper classes. Also, he writes, that besides [?nt] and [жnt], this word also can sometimes be pronounced as [?nt], especially in the nonstandard dialect of Newfoundland (Woods, 1999:204).

From this it can be concluded, that for “au” in the initial position, so far three ways of pronunciation are attested in Canadian English. In General Canadian English it is pronounced as [ж] (especially among females of the upper middle and lower upper classes), while in the nonstandard dialect of Eastern, Atlantic Canadian provinces this variable is [?]. Moreover, in the nonstandard dialect of Newfoundland, it is pronounced as [?].

/a~ж~?/ in Unstressed First Syllable in Words Like guarantee

Warkentyne (1971) writes that in General Canadian English the vowel in the first syllable of guarantee is a low fronted vowel [a]. On the other hand, in the speech of anglophone speakers of Quebec, the first syllable of guarantee is [ж], while in the dialect on Newfoundland it is [?].

Interestingly, this means that “au” in the first syllable when unstressed is pronounced as [a] in General Canadian English, [ж] in the English dialect of Quebeck and [?] in Newfoundland. However, we cannot completely support this, since we have not found enough examples to confirm it.

/?~u/ in words like roof

Warkentyne (1971) states that the vowel of roof is pronounced as [ruf] in General Canadian English. On the contrary, in the nonstandard dialect of Newfoundland, it is pronounced as [r?f].

To check the above statement, we anaysed a recorded speech of a 64 old male born in Ferryland (Newfoundland). In the recorded speech we found examples which confirm that in Newfoundland, roof is pronounced as [r?f]. The speech was recorded on 27. 05. 2014. Here is the part of the spoken text in which the subject pronounce the word roof. In the phonetic transcription of the pronounced text, the word roof is indeed given as [r?f]:

"Because the - the - because the house, it could, the roof would blow off the house. Goodbye Missus, thank you."

Furthermore, in order to check if, roof is pronounced as [ruf] in General Canadian English, we analyzed phonetic transcription of the recorded speech of a 19 years old female subjects from Ontario. Here is a part of the orthographic transcription of her speech:

"The letter implied that the animal could be suffering from a rare form of foot and mouth disease, which was surprising because normally you would only expect to see it in a dog or goat."

The phonetic transcription of the recorded text confirms that the word foot (which is similar to the word roof) is pronounced as [fut].

To sum up, the standard way of pronouncing the vowel of the word roof is [ruf], since it occurs in General Canadian English. On the other hand, in the nonstandard dialect of Newfoundland, it is pronounced as [r?f].

/ei~ж~жi~е:/ before /g/

In General Canadian English, the allophone of /a/ before /g/ is raised and fronted, joining the prenasal tokens in mid-front position. This raising before /g/ is phonetically distinct from raising before front nasals, arising not from tensing and raising of the nucleus but from the assimilation of nuclear height and upgrading to the high-front transition demanded by a following voiced velar consonant. This glide reverse causes a change across subsystems so that short [жg] effectively becomes long diphtong [eig] like in plague or vague.

However, the allophonic distribution [жig] occurs in nonstandard Canadian English in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Thunder Bay the Red River Valley, as well as more sporadically across the Canadian Prairies (Clarke, 1993).

In some places around Ontario, where nonstandard Canadian English is spoken, /eg/ is also involved in this development: either because the merger of [жg] and [eig] is avoided by a modifying of [eig] to [е:g], so that bag is [beig] or [bе:g] but vague is [vжg] or [vе:g]), or because /eg/ shows a similar phonetic development to that of /ag/, so that lag and leg, and bag and beg are indistinguishable, each having [-eig] or [-ж:g].

To conclude, in General Canadian English short /a/ before /g/ is pronounced either as [eig] or [жg], while in nonstandard Canadian English of Wisconsin and Minnesota, Thunder Bay, The Red River Valley, and across the Canadian Prairies it is pronounced as [жig] or [е:g].

/ж~?/ before /r/ (as in marry and merry)

Clarke (1993) states that neutralization of front and back vowels, as in words Mary, merry, and marry is confirmed by modern Canadian dictionaries which give the same transcription for these three words: [?m?ri].

However, not too long ago this merger may have been less general in Canada: it was certainly present in Ontario among some younger speakers, as well as some speakers in Ottawa, but not in western Canada among the speakers in Vancouver, like it is today. In our opinion, the reason for this feature to become widely present at all places where General Canadian English is spoken today is the tendency of younger speakers to obtain as many characteristics as possible of the dialect that is considered to be prestigious, which in this case is General Canadain English.

According to Boberg (2008), the [?m?ri] pronunciation does not occur in the areas where nonstandard dialects are spoken, especially in Montreal and Newfoundland. These regions retain the vowel sound [ж] in words like marry and carrot. Moreover, Woods (1999) writes, that in rural dialects of Ottawa Valley, speakers pronounce [ж] instead of [?]. Also, [ж] instead of [?] among women over 40 that speak General Canadian English occurs.

To sum up, in words like marry and merry, the vowel is pronunced as [?] in General Canadian English, while the nonstandard way of pronunciation is [ж], and it occurs in the nonstandard dialects of Montreal, Newfoundland, rural dialects of Ottawa Valley, as well as within General Canadian English among women over 40.

Lengthening of [?] in Homophonous Pairs Such as Cot and Caught

In the pronunciation of vowel [?], the lengthening of the vowel often results in the homophonous pair such as cot [k??t] and caught [k??t], or sod [s??d] and sawed [s??d] (Lйon, Rouillard, Baligand, & Martin, 1979:5).

Diphthongized variants of the originally short vowel, now lengthened, can also be found, as in the following words: Sam [sж?m], pool [p??l] (Lйon, Rouillard, Baligand, & Martin, 1979:5).

Thus, according to these examples, we will conclude, that in General Canadian English, we cannot talk about length and shortness of vowels, but the vowel quality tends to become the only distinctive feature.

Long Vowels~Diphtongs

/?~ ж/ before “r” in words like care, bare, fare

In General Canadian English in words such as care, bare, fare, [?] is pronounced before “r” (Lйon, Rouillard, Baligand, & Martin, 1979:15). On the other hand, Clarke (1993) states, that in some nonstandard dialects, [ж] occurs before “r”, in this type of words.

In order to check these statements, we analyzed phonetic transcription of the recorded speech of two speakers of Standard Canadian English from Ontario.

The first subject is female, that was born in Fergus, Ontario, and is 19 years old. There is a part of the orthographic transcription of her speech:

"The letter implied that the animal could be suffering from a rare form of foot and mouth disease, which was surprising, because normally you would only expect to see it in a dog or goat."

In the speech, the word rare is similar to care, bare, fare, and here, it was clearly pronounced as [r??].

The second subject that was recorded, is 20-year-old male, who was born in Oakville (outside of Toronto). Here is the orthographic transcription of the part of his speech.

"I didn't care for the scenery then. But, uh, we stayed for a, week in Whistler. We met my dad's friend. who's my godfather. And he has two daughters and his wife."

The phonetic transcription of the speech confirms that the vowel in the word care is indeed pronounced here as [?].

However, as for the nonstandard way of pronunciation, we have found the example in the speech of a 24-year-old female informant from Newfoundland, which was recorded on 08. 04. 2000. In her speech, the word care was pronounced as [kжr].

To sum up, vowel in words like care, bare, fare is pronunced as [?] in General Canadian English, while the nonstandard way of pronunciation is [ж], and it occurs in the nonstandard dialect of Canadian English in Newfoudland.

/?~?r/ in nouns with final “er”

In the nonstandard dialect of Canadian English in Halifax, in words like butter and higher, the final “er” is pronounced as [?]: [b?t?], [h?i?]. Also, “er” followed by a consonant becomes [?], as in concert or pattern [k?ns?:t], [pжt?:n] (Falk, Harry, 1999:44).

In General Canadian English butter is pronounced as [b?t?r], and higher as [h?i?r], and concert and pattern are [k?ns?rt] and [pжt?rn] (Falk, Harry, 1999:44).

To conclude, the standard way of pronunciation of the nouns with final “er” is [?r], while the nonstandard form is [?], and it occurs in the nonstandard dialect of Canadian English in Halifax.

/a~ж/ in words like calm and palm

According to Boberg (2008), in General Canadian English, words like calm and palm have the low back vowel [a].

However, the nonstandard dialect of Canadian English which is spoken in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, have [ж] instead of [a]. This means that in Newfoundland calm and palm are pronounced as [kжm] and [pжm]. Also, some research indicates that [kжm] and [pжm] can occur among some uneducated speakers of General Canadian English in Ontario.

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