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Dialect Acquisition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

J. K. Chambers
J. K. Chambers*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada M5S 1A1
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Abstract

Immigrants from one dialect region to another acquire features of the new dialect with varying degrees of proficiency. In modern societies regional mobility is commonplace, and for modern dialectology, involved as it is with variability, mechanisms of change, and adaptation, it is a rich source of hypotheses. This article postulates eight general principles by which immigrants adapt dialectologically to their new surroundings, based mainly on results of a developmental study of six Canadian youngsters in two families who moved to southern England in 1983 and 1984, with supporting evidence from several other studies. The principles provide a set of empirically testable hypotheses about the determinants of dialect acquisition.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 673 - 705
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

This article is the result of a long association with the Department of Linguistic Science at the University of Reading, with the research for it occupying many hours of two different sabbatical years and an intervening summer. I am very grateful to the heads, Frank Palmer and his successor David Wilkins, for countless professional and personal courtesies, and to all the departmental staff. The research on Canadian youngsters in England was partly supported by grants from the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council of Canada, and the University of Toronto. Some of the results were presented in seminars at Reading University, Stockholm University, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Debrecen University, and Queen’s University of Belfast. Numerous people made helpful comments, especially Ellen Cowie-Douglas, Paul Fletcher, Mike Garman, Arthur Hughes, John Kirk, Paul Kerswill, Miklos Kontra, Caroline Mac Afee, Gunnel Melchers, Jim Milroy, Lesley Milroy, Bengt Nordberg, Tope Omoniyi, Andrea Remenyi, and Mats Thelander. (Also see n. 1.)

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