This article describes the compilation of three new spoken language corpora designed to address the acquisition of variation and change in English by second language (L2) learners. The first corpus represents L2 English recorded from native Canadian francophones in the Canadian National Capital Region. A second corpus of vernacular English recorded from native anglophones in the same region furnishes a local baseline variety of the target language (TL). A third corpus of local Canadian French represents L2 speakers’ first language (L1). These corpora are used to determine the extent to which L2 variable patterns approximate those in the TL. Comparison of L2 variable features with structural analogues in speakers’ L1, French, additionally affords a window on possible L1 transfer effects. We present a case study exploring the L2 acquisition of quotative variation and change in the local TL benchmark variety. Results point to the close approximation of higher-proficiency L2 speakers to TL community norms, challenging the prevailing notion that L2 acquisition typically involves incomplete mastery of TL patterns and constraints.

This squib discusses a construction heard during weather reports on CBC Radio One in Manitoba whereby personal pronouns appear as the subjects of weather predicates. We show that the use of we/you in statements like we are minus 15 degrees and Brandon, you are sunny is unlike other non-prototypical uses for personal pronouns that have been noted in the literature and argue they index place rather than person. We note that the deictic coordinates of the utterance that are spelled out by these pronouns are necessary for a felicitous interpretation of weather statements, even though they are typically implicit. This implicit deixis, in turn, sheds light on a long-standing claim that weather-it, in contrast to a true expletive, is ‘quasi-argumental’ (Chomsky 1981). That is, we suggest that the deictic coordinates of an utterance are ‘quasi-arguments’.

Linguistics faculty are sometimes reluctant to provide explicit writing instruction in their courses. One major point of hesitancy is that there is not enough time to “add” writing to the curriculum. We argue, in contrast, that spending strategic time on writing reinforces and enriches the linguistics curriculum, rather than detracting from it. When students apply linguistics to the real world through relevant writing assignments, linguistics becomes more meaningful, which increases student engagement and improves the perception of linguistics. Explicit writing instruction is beneficial for all students, but especially marginalized students. Teaching students how to write also provides them with transferable skills that they can take with them to their future careers.

The multilingual landscape of Canada creates opportunities for many heterogeneous bilingual communities to experience systematic phonetic variation within and across languages and dialects, and exposes listeners to different pronunciation variants. This paper examines phonetic variation through the lens of an ongoing sound change in Cantonese involving word-initial [n] and [l] across two primed lexical decision tasks (Experiment 1: Immediate repetition priming task, Experiment 2: Long-distance repetition priming task). Our main question is: How are sound change pronunciation variants recognized and represented in a Cantonese-English bilingual lexicon? The results of both experiments suggest that [n]- and [l]-initial variants facilitate processing in both short and long-term spoken word recognition. Thus, regular exposure to Cantonese endows bilingual listeners with the perceptual flexibility to dually and gradiently map pronunciation variants to a single lexical representation.

Aoun and Li (2003) argued that whether the head of Chinese relative clauses can reconstruct at Logical Form is determined by its phrasal category. When the head is a noun phrase, it can reconstruct; but when it is a quantifier phrase, it cannot. This paper uses a sentence-picture matching experiment to investigate this claim. The results showed that a quantifier phrase can reconstruct. Thus, we do not need to stipulate a noun phrase/quantifier phrase distinction for the reconstruction of heads in Chinese relative clauses. Both types of phrases can reconstruct, predicted by the head-raising analysis of relative clauses.

Most people working in the field of linguistics in the US and Canada have an intuitive sense of who the “major players” are among PhD-granting linguistics departments. Our analysis demonstrates that the frequently-perceived hierarchy of linguistics programs is indeed correct. Drawing on publicly available information from Winter/Spring, 2019 on faculty at all PhD-granting linguistics programs across the US and Canada, we use social network and heat map visualizations to demonstrate the existence of an extraordinarily strong and relatively stable hierarchy of programs whose graduates dominate the linguistics academic job market. A secondary finding is that many of the top programs are characterized by gender imbalances. We argue that the top programs’ tremendous influence on the job market as a whole affords these programs the ability – indeed, the responsibility – to take the lead in effecting positive change in the field's hiring patterns more broadly.