Abstract
Investigations of the Canadian quotative system have to this point focused on mainland urban varieties where General Canadian English is considered to be the linguistic norm. The current analysis seeks to expand our understanding of this system by examining quotative usage among young girls in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where the local vernacular differs in significant ways from the national variety. Variationist methodology is employed on a small corpus of St. John’s Youth English (SJYE), revealing notable similarities in the distribution of quotatives as well as the operation of internal constraints across the paradigm between this variety and that of the mainland. At the same time, there is evidence that be like, the most recent of the quotative cohort, has grammaticalized further in SJYE than in General Canadian, raising questions about the routes by which this change is progressing. The results thus situate SJYEwithin the Canadian quotative system while at the same time highlighting the status of Newfoundland English as a unique Canadian variety.
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