New-Dialect Formation in Canada

This book details the development of eleven modal auxiliaries in late 18th- and 19th-century Canadian English in a framework of new-dialect formation. The study assesses features of the modal auxiliaries, tracing influences to British and American input varieties, parallel developments, or Canadian innovations. The findings are based on the Corpus of Early Ontario English , pre-Confederation Section, the first electronic corpus of early Canadian English. The data, which are drawn from newspapers