Regional variation in English in British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Within-region geographical variation in Canadian Englishes has rarely been investigated on a large scale. This is at least in part due to claims of Canadian “Englishes” being largely geographically homogeneous (Chambers, 2004; Boberg, 2010; Denis, 2020), despite evidence of regional variation (Dollinger, 2019). Here, we build on older literature that documented regional variation in English spoken in British Columbia (BC). We focus on two regions in BC—the Okanagan and the Lower Mainland—examining four phonological patterns: pre-velar raising of kit , dress , and trap , and Canadian Raising of price . Using Generalized Additive Mixed Models, we find regional differences in vowel pronunciation patterns for pre-velar raising of the examined front vowels and for Canadian Raising of price . Both regions engage in Canadian Raising and pre-velar raising. From that lens, the regions are homogeneous. However, the patterns are produced in regionally specific ways, providing further evidence that regional variation exists within smaller geographical areas in Canadian English. Overall, this challenges the claims of homogeneity for English spoken in Canada and more generally invites an interrogation of what homogeneity means.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".