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Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

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J. MARSHALL<br />

PHOVAR = 21.1 + 0.573 AGE - 5.97 SEX<br />

Predictor Coef StDev T P<br />

Constant 21.067 2.912 7.23 0.000<br />

AGE 0.57295 0.06569 8.72 0.000<br />

SEX1 -5.965 2.869 -2.08 0.042<br />

S = 11.38 R-Sq = 57.0% R-Sq(adj) = 55.5%<br />

<strong>The</strong> P value for sex is significant at the 0.05 level, show<strong>in</strong>g that SEX is a<br />

reasonable predictor variable. <strong>The</strong> r-squared value has risen slightly, show<strong>in</strong>g<br />

that the addition <strong>of</strong> SEX hasn’t improved the model much. Next we add the<br />

variable AGE x SEX.<br />

PHOVAR = 24.6 + 0.460 AGE - 13.2 SEX + 0.225 AGE x SEX<br />

Predictor Coef StDev T P<br />

Constant 24.639 3.520 7.00 0.000<br />

AGE 0.45984 0.09151 5.03 0.000<br />

SEX -13.231 5.029 -2.63 0.011<br />

AGE x SE 0.2255 0.1292 1.75 0.086<br />

S = 11.19 R-Sq = 59.1% R-Sq(adj) = 57.0%<br />

This variable is not significant at the 0.05 level, and raises the adjusted r-<br />

squared value only marg<strong>in</strong>ally. <strong>The</strong>re is no significant <strong>in</strong>teraction between<br />

AGE and SEX. Next we add the first social variable that we want to test as a<br />

predictor <strong>of</strong> PHOVAR. LIFMOD is a test <strong>of</strong> the degree <strong>of</strong> mental urbanisation<br />

<strong>of</strong> a speaker, and the hypothesis is that a low degree <strong>of</strong> mental urbanisation<br />

will predict a high degree <strong>of</strong> dialect ma<strong>in</strong>tenance:<br />

PHOVAR = 7.74 + 0.233 AGE - 11.5 SEX + 0.224 AGE x SEX + 1.02 LIFMOD<br />

Predictor Coef StDev T P<br />

Constant 7.736 3.584 2.16 0.035<br />

AGE 0.23321 0.07570 3.08 0.003<br />

SEX -11.502 3.760 -3.06 0.003<br />

AGE x SEX 0.22410 0.09638 2.33 0.024<br />

LIFMOD 1.0218 0.1475 6.93 0.000<br />

S = 8.348 R-Sq = 77.6% R-Sq(adj) = 76.1%<br />

LIFMOD is shown to be very highly significant, and its addition has greatly<br />

improved the r-squared value <strong>of</strong> the model. A low degree <strong>of</strong> mental<br />

urbanisation reliably predicts dialect ma<strong>in</strong>tenance. <strong>The</strong> earlier <strong>in</strong>dication from<br />

the correlations and plots that this was so have been solidly confirmed by the<br />

multiple l<strong>in</strong>ear regression analysis. This is similar to the tests for the other two<br />

166

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