M. H. Scargill. Modern Canadian English Usage (1974)

     M. H. Scargill. Modern Canadian English Usage (1974) Although the subtitle is Linguistic Change and Reconstruction, there’s precious little discussion of this topic. The book lists the results of a usage survey administered to some 14,000 English speaking Canadians, with nearly equal samples from each province. Why the scholars felt it necessary to use nearly the same number of respondents from every province is not explained. Statistically, it’s pointless. Anyhow, the samples are adequate to draw some conclusions about Canadian usages, the  best grounded being that vocabulary varies a good deal more than syntax. There were no attempts to test the statistical properties of the results. A cursory glance suggests that most of them are barely significant, if significant at all.
     The book is a nice example of what happens when mathematically naive people attempt statistics. Scargill and his committee chose not to survey recent immigrants or children of immigrants, which makes the results useful as a baseline for measuring changes in the last 30-odd years. But a survey of immigrants would I think have been useful as a possible indicator of the influence of immigrant usages. * (2007)