Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 13:54:00 -0500

From: "J. Chambers" chambers[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EPAS.UTORONTO.CA

Subject: Re: A Query



Sheepishly, Ihave to suggest that you might check an article of mine

on the retention and loss of dialect features. The article is called

"Dialect acquisition," Language 68 (1992): 673-705. Based on an

emoirical study of the children of 2 Canadian families who moved to

the south of England, and supported by everything comparable I could

find in the literature, I formulated 8 principles of dialect

acquisition. Most of them seem directly relevant to Tom's queries. (1)

Lexical reppalcements are acquired faster than pronunciation and

phonological variants; and (7) eliminating old rules occurs more

rapidly than acquiring new ones. The principles are stated as

explicitly as possible and should be testable by further studies.

Jack Chambers