| This thesis investigates lexical variation between three dialects of French in various stages of language death. Those dialects are Pedagogical French, an international language, Cajun French, an obsolescing language, and Mississippi Gulf Coast French, an extinct language. In order to determine the degree of variation, thirty-two lexical items or phrases that display variance with Pedagogical French are selected from Mississippi Gulf Coast French. They are then compared with counterparts in Pedagogical French and Cajun French to determine the amount of variance between dialects.;I hypothesized that there is a larger degree of variation between the Gulf Coast dialects and Pedagogical French than between the Gulf Coast dialects themselves. This proved not to be the case. While Mississippi Gulf Coast French does display more similarities with Cajun French than Pedagogical French based on the biased sample, Cajun French demonstrates more similarities with Pedagogical French than with Mississippi Gulf Coast French. This, coupled with the large number of English loan words that has made their way into the Mississippi Gulf Coast French lexicon, leads to the conclusion that Mississippi Gulf Coast French has undergone significant language change during its last years. Due to the declining number of speakers, and the fact that those final speakers were bilingual, English heavily influenced Mississippi Gulf Coast French in its final years of use. As this did not occur with Cajun French, it remained closer to Pedagogical French. |
