the influence of linguistic factors on the expression of futurity

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NICHOLAS S. ROBERTS
remove those tokens with an indeterminate temporal reference and analyse only those tokens
associated with some temporal indication. The outcome <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> multivariate run on <strong>the</strong>
GoldVarb platform (not displayed) reveals that although <strong>the</strong> range for grammatical person
decreases from 62 to 48, <strong>the</strong> ranges for temporal distance and adverbial specification remain
stable at 63 and 40 respectively. In essence, <strong>the</strong> ranking <strong>of</strong> constraints does not change. This
effectively means that those tokens without a specific future reference do not seem to have an
impact on <strong>the</strong> overall model.
Recall that a number <strong>of</strong> claims are made in <strong>the</strong> literature concerning <strong>the</strong> role <strong>of</strong>
grammatical person. A chi-square test (χ 2 =0.197, p=0.699) shows that no relationship was
detected between vouvoiement and <strong>the</strong> IF in Martinique French. Also, claims that <strong>the</strong>
periphrastic future is more subjective and <strong>the</strong>refore more likely to occur with first person
subjects were not substantiated by <strong>the</strong> data (χ 2 =0.149, p=0.657). The only significant
conditioning effect exerted by a personal pronominal form was that <strong>of</strong> impersonal il
constructions (χ 2 =47.079, p < 0.001), an example <strong>of</strong> which is provided in (4a). The results in
Table 2 show that <strong>the</strong> impersonal il subject strongly favours <strong>the</strong> selection <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> inflected
future (F.W.=0.19) yet <strong>the</strong> periphrastic construction is preferred with o<strong>the</strong>r subject pronouns
(F.W.=0.81).
The results in Table 2 reveal that non-specific adverbials favour <strong>the</strong> IF inflected future
(F.W.=0.30). This result echoes Poplack and Turpin’s (1999: 151–2) findings for Ottawa-Hull.
Specific adverbials, on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand, are shown to have a favouring effect on <strong>the</strong>
periphrastic constriction (F.W.=0.70) whereas <strong>the</strong> absence <strong>of</strong> adverbial modification has a
neutralising effect (F.W.=0.49). These findings are somewhat unexpected, since it is <strong>the</strong> PF
that is traditionally preferred in unmodified contexts (Poplack & Dion 2009: 573, Comeau
2011: 228–9). Moreover, this factor group is not identified as significant in an isolated chisquare
calculation (χ 2 =5.400, p=0.670). However, when I examined <strong>the</strong> ‘no modification’
category more closely (see Table 3), I noticed that a number <strong>of</strong> informants display higherthan-expected
rates <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> periphrastic future (e.g. LUJ: 100%, N=8 and KAG: 90%, N=9).
Likewise, some speakers use <strong>the</strong> inflected future comparatively more (e.g. NOR: 77.8%,
N=14 and MAE: 54.5%, N=12).
Table 3: Cross-tabulation <strong>of</strong> future variants unmodified adverbially by speaker
Adverbial specification: No modification
Speaker
Inflected future Periphrastic future
ID
% N % N
Total
LUJ 0.0 0 100.0 8 8
KAG 10.0 1 90.0 9 10
MYR 13.3 2 86.7 13 15
ELN 20.0 3 80.0 12 15
MAE 54.5 12 45.5 10 22
NOR 77.8 14 22.2 4 18
Note that, although <strong>the</strong> fixed-effect model in Table 2 has accounted for between-group
effects, it also assumes that <strong>the</strong>re is no variation above <strong>the</strong> level <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> token and thus
‘individual-speaker and individual-word variation do not exist’ (Johnson 2010: 7). As Table 3
illustrates, this assumption is not warranted. Mixed-effect regression models, on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r
hand, are capable <strong>of</strong> taking random effects, such as speaker variability, into consideration.
Mixed models only identify a factor group as statistically significant when it is ‘strong
enough to rise above <strong>the</strong> inter-speaker variation’ (Johnson 2009: 365). I <strong>the</strong>refore decided to
return to Rbrul to run a mixed model with individual speaker as a random effect. Table 4