STEPHEN LEVEY
survey of regional differences in morphosyntactic variation (Dollinger 2008: 33), the standard inference, based on extant information, is that there is little which is distinctive about the morphosyntax of Canadian English either within Canada (barring certain enclave varieties described below), or between Canadian and other varieties of English (Brinton and Fee 2001: 431).
Much of the literature dealing with morphosyntactic features displays a marked concern with documenting either the recessiveness of regionally circumscribed constructions such as he complains a lot any more, where ‘positive’ any more can be semantically glossed as ‘nowadays’ (Brinton and Fee 2001: 432), or morphological alternations in past temporal contexts, such as she has drunk versus she has drank; preterite sneaked versus snuck; and dived versus dove (De Wolf 1990; Chambers 1998b).
Early studies of morphosyntactic differentiation (e.g. De Wolf 1990), relying mainly on frequency data generated by postal surveys, uncovered evidence of social and regional variation in the use of structural variants such as have you/have you got/ do you have? Regional and social differences in usage are also implicated in the com- petition between sneaked/snuck and dived/dove. De Wolf (1990) discusses differences in the social embeddedness of sneaked/snuck variation in Ottawa and Vancouver, and observes that snuck is overwhelmingly preferred by the young in both cities. Chambers (l998b: 23-4) documents a similar age-related change in the use of snuck, and dates acceleration in its use to the 1940s. The rise of dove over dived, a long-standing variable in Canadian English (Chambers 1998b: 19), has followed a similar trajec- tory of change, which appears to have been well advanced by the 1930s (Chambers 1998b: 21).