B. A. Major Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph
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- 4.3 Adverbials
- 4.4 ‘Canadian’ Eh
- 5. Spelling
4.2 VerbsAs far as verbs are concerned, Canadians are usually aware of both British and American verbal forms (providing there is a difference). Predominantly, however, they tend to follow the American usage. Already in the fifties an Americanism dove was a preferred preterite form in Ontario over the British dived, and more than a third of informants preferred the participial form drank (AmE) over drunk (BrE) as well as American bathe (transitive verb) over the British bath (Orkin 1970: 153-154). Montreal was found to lean to AmE expressions even more. A recent study undertaken in Montreal just confirmed the trend; the results for bath/ bathe usage prove that “virtually no one under 50 years of age still uses the British form” (Boberg 2004: 261) and that, together with the dive/ dove usage, the “change is nearing completion”23. Interestingly, Boberg (2004: 261) noted that the ‘younger generation’ is not the only one who moves to American usage: the tendencies of their parents’ generation are the same.
The first one, ‘ever-exclamation’, is an adverbial with a highly emphatic meaning which appears in sentences such as Does he ever drive so fast! Is he ever stupid! (Chambers 1991a: 263, italics added). Chambers (1991a: 263) clarifies the meanings of the sentences by rephrasing them into ‘Wow! He drives very fast! and Wow! He is really stupid!’. He points out that in this usage, the meaning of ever is ‘habitually, at all times’, by contrast to its standard meaning ‘at any time’, and he reminds that the inversion of the auxiliary is required. The second adverbial, in Canada a regionalism occurring in southern Ontario, is ‘positive any more’, which is usually employed in sentences like these: He complains lot any more. War, any more, is genocide. (Chambers 1991a: 264, italics added) According to Labov, ‘positive any more’ can be replaced by the temporal adverb ‘nowadays’, although not every time (qtd. in Chambers 1991a: 264). Pragmatically, as explained by Chambers (1991a: 264), sentences containing ‘positive any more’ insinuate the speaker’s disapproval of the situation, e.g. “if someone says He smiles a lot any more, she probably means that she considers his smiling excessive, or not genuine, or the like”. As for the origin of this adverbial in CanE, W.H. Eitner suggests that it entered CanE at about the same time as Pennsylvanian refugees came to Ontario (i.e. between 1783 and 1803), and thus the ‘Loyalists’24 roots can be traced in the expression (qtd. in Chambers 1991a: 265). While common to AmE and CanE, the two above-discussed adverbials can be seen as features that clearly differentiate CanE (as well as AmE) from the British variety. The adverbial phrase unique to Canada is as well – employed as a sentence connector (cf. Crystal 1985: 9), as in She warned us of the dangers. As well, she told us how to avoid them. (Chambers 1991a: 264, italics added) According to H. A. Gleason, CanE is the only variety in which as well can be found in initial position (qtd. in Chambers 1991a: 264). Therefore, this sentential adverb should be noted as it is another evidence of the distinct nature of CanE. 4.4 ‘Canadian’ EhAs Trudgill (1991: 51) remarks, the interjection eh is used in very many varieties of English, including Scottish and AmE. However, he continues, its widespread usage in Canada sometimes leads to the erroneous notion, particularly among Americans, that it is exclusively a Canadian feature. Eh can be used in many contexts with a number of different meanings, e.g. “interrogative (You liked it eh?), narrative (We had pizza, eh, and beer), greeting (How’s it going eh?), deferment (Yeah really eh?)”25, tag (You want to go, eh?) or intensifier (Do it, eh?) (McArthur 1996: 165). Additionally, eh often appears in anecdotes (McArthur 1996: 165). The ample use of eh by Canadians on many diverse occasions may be related to the use of tags in other varieties of English: it can be noted that CanE effectively substitutes a number of various tags such as ...isn’t it? ...haven’t you? ...does she? by only one interjection, which reveals outstandingly strong tendencies of CanE towards the economy of language. Employing eh in CanE is an extremely frequent phenomenon. As Jurcic (2003a: 3-4) argues, “the frequency and the context in which it occurs in Canadian speech is remarkably different from both American and British native speakers and thus it is a distinguishing characteristic26 of Canadian speech”.
As Orkin (1970: 148) remarks, Canadian spelling corresponds partly to British and partly to American usage; or, in other words, it “does not follow a consistent pattern.” Such a view invites the question of what exactly is meant by the ‘consistent pattern’. If it is either ‘purely British’ or ‘purely American’ spelling, then the truth must be given to Orkin. CanE makes use of both. Yet if either British or American spelling is ‘chosen’ for a certain phenomenon, Canadian dictionaries define clearly and consistently what the preferred spelling is. Preferred, because this is the way Canadians choose to describe their variety of English: descriptively, not prescriptively. From this point of view, CanE shows a considerable consistency. Of course, there are exceptions to the ‘rule’, such as favouring im- prefix in impanel while em- prefix is generally preferred in most other words of the kind, but if those are seen as inconsistencies, then BrE in the context of its prescriptivism could likewise be criticized as inconsistent for allowing for -ize endings as an alternative variant to its norm, -ise, and so could be in fact both AmE and BrE for many instabilities in doubling certain consonants, namely p and l. Such an approach would obviously be unwise. First, it would completely ignore the reality of language development, and second, a language is a complex phenomenon in which “the existence of tiny formal irregularities gets along quite well with great linguistic refinement”27 (Mathesius 1982: 70), which implies that certain irregularities are quite natural to language and should be tolerated – in whatever variety of language.
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