Files
Abstract
This dissertation describes a study in linguistic geography conducted in Colorado using the methodology of the Linguistic Atlas of the Western States. As such, the goals of this dissertation are threefold: 1) to provide a description of Colorado English with respect to select lexical, phonetic, and syntactic features; 2) to compare the results of work in Colorado with previous work conducted in the eastern states as well as in Colorado and other western states; and 3) to use inferential statistics to show correlation between the distribution of specific linguistic variants and the social characteristics of those informants who use these variants. The major findings of this study include the observation that linguistic variants are distributed according to a power law, that numerous variants have statistically significant social correlates at all levels of the grammar, and that the relative effect of social variables differ at each linguistic level.