On the distinction between preposition stranding and orphan prepositions

Abstract

Poplack, Zentz and Dion (PZD; Poplack, Zentz & Dion, 2011, this issue) examine the often unquestioned assumption that the existence of preposition stranding (PS) in Canadian French is linked to the presence of a contact situation with English in the North American context. Although this issue has been the topic of previous research from a syntactic perspective (Bouchard, 1982; Vinet, 1979, 1984), to my knowledge, it has never been explored using variationist sociolinguistic methods applied to a large corpus of spontaneous speech, with emphasis on code-switchers as potential agents of contact-induced change.