Our programme of research builds on recent work concerning variation and change in varieties of Atlantic Canada Acadian French by expanding along both temporal and spatial axes. Our previous research has focused on the grammatical structure of twentieth century Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland varieties. Here we examine the evolution of Acadian French through systematic comparison of usage in diachronic and synchronic corpora; further, we widen the scope of our investigations to the Acadian diaspora by comparing the Atlantic Canada varieties with Cajun French. Our study of the evolution of Acadian French, thus broadly conceived, will also involve comparison with the parallel evolution of Quebec French.

Many morphosyntactic features which we recognize today as "Acadian" were actually widespread in northern France, such as the traditional Acadian verbal morphology je...ons (e.g. je parlons "we speak") and ils...ont (e.g. ils parlont "they speak"). We will trace the the evolution of such features over the centuries in France and in Acadia and also examine their fate in Quebec French in order to further our understanding of morphosyntactic change in Acadian French, and in the French language more generally. Given that Atlantic Canada Acadian and Cajun French have a common ancestor and that there are clear similarities in their sociohistorical circumstances, systematic comparison of Atlantic Canada and Louisiana varieties is likewise of vital importance to our understanding of the evolution of North American French.

This programme of research involves the correction and/or construction for various synchronic and diachronic corpora for relevant language varieties, including correction of existing synchronic Nova Scotia and Louisiana sociolinguistic corpora and construction of Atlantic Canada and Louisiana diachronic corpora. (For comparison with Quebec French, our research is linked with complementary research involving diachronic corpus construction currently in progress.) As our various corpora are completed, we can begin morphosyntactic analysis, comparing both the present-day structure of Atlantic Canada Acadian (for varieties spoken in all four Atlantic Provinces) and Cajun French, and the separate evolutions of Quebec French and the geographically distant Acadians. As in our previous work, we will employ variationist methodology and theory, complemented by a generativist approach to morphosyntax. Thus far we have selected the following variables for study, most of which are suggested by our prior research on verbal and pronominal systems: auxiliary selection, morphosyntactic status of subject pronouns, first person plural verbal morphology, third person plural verbal morphology and use of the simple versus the periphrastic future. We will also compare the linguistic consequences of French/English language contact in Atlantic Canada and Louisiana. Additional variables will be added during the course of the project since our involvement in corpus construction and correction will allow us to refine the set.