Research
Recent Research Grants
Community, Contact, and Change in the Acadian French Diaspora (2021–2025)
www.acadiecontact.com
Monographs and Edited Collections
2022 Points of Convergence: Papers Selected from the 48th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 48), Toronto, 25-28 April 2018. Gabriela Alboiu & Ruth King, co-editors. John Benjamins, 274 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.360
2013 Acadian French in Time and Space: A Study in Morphosyntax and Comparative Sociolinguistics. Duke University Press, xiii + 159 pages.
2009 Media Representations of Minority Language Varieties. Ruth King, guest editor. Journal of English Linguistics 37 (3).
2000 The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowing. Philadelphia & Amsterdam: John Benjamins, xiii + 241 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.209
1991 Talking Gender. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, x + 94 pages.
Representative Publications
In press. Ruth King. “Historical Sociolinguistics.” In Yoshiyuki Asahi, Alexandra D’Arcy & Paul Kerswill, eds. The Handbook of Variationist Sociolinguistics. Routledge.
2022 Philip Comeau, Ruth King & Carmen L. LeBlanc. “Continuity and Change in the Evolution of French Yes-No Questions: A Cross-Variety Perspective.” Diachronica 39.5: 616-57. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.20029.com
2018 Ruth King, Carmen L. LeBlanc & D. Rick Grimm. “Dialect Contact and the Acadian French Subjunctive: A Cross-Varietal Study.” Journal of Linguistic Geography 6:4-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2018.2
2017 Ruth King. “Indexing Acadian Identities.” In Chris Montgomery & Emma Moore, eds. Language and A Sense of Place, 325-47. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316162477
2016 Gabriella Alboiu & Ruth King. “‘Quite’ in Acadian French: A Variety of Scalar Focus.” Isogloss 1:1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.25
2016 Philip Comeau, Ruth King & Carmen LeBlanc. “The Future’s Path in Three Acadian French Varieties.” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 22.2: Article 4.
2012 Philip Comeau, Ruth King & Gary R. Butler. “New Insights on an Old Rivalry: The Passé Simple and the Passé Composé in Spoken Acadian French.” Journal of French Language Studies 23.2:315-343. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959269511000524
2012 Ruth King. “Morphosyntactic Variation.” In Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron & Ceil Lucas, eds. Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford University Press, 445-63. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199744084.001.0001
2011 Ruth King. “Back to Back: The Linguistic Trajectory of an Old Borrowing.” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 17.2:115-23.
2011 Ruth King & Philip Comeau. “Media Representations of Minority French: Valorization, Identity and the Acadieman Phenomenon.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics 56.2:179-202. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008413100003133
2011 Ruth King, France Martineau & Raymond Mougeon. “The Interplay of Internal and External Factors in Grammatical Change: First Person Plural Pronouns in French.” Language 87.3:470-509. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2011.0072
2010 Philip Comeau & Ruth King. “Media Performances of Vernacularity: The Acadieman Phenomenon.” Papers from the Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association. St. John’s: Memorial University.
2010 Philip Comeau & Ruth King. «Variation morphosyntaxique dans deux corpus franco-lousianais.» In Sylvie Dubois, ed. L’Histoire épistolaire de la Louisiane. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 61-74.
2009 Ruth King & Jennifer Wicks. “Aren’t we proud of our language?: Authenticity, Commodification and the Nissan Bonavista Television Commercial.” Journal of English Linguistics 37.3:262-283. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424209339924
2008 Gary R. Butler & Ruth King. “The Discourse Marker Mais Dame: Past and Present Functions.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics 53.1:53-62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000841310000089X
2008 Ruth King. “Chiac in Context: Overview and Evaluation of Acadie’s Joual.” In Miriam Meyerhoff & Naomi Nagy, eds. Social Lives in Language: Sociolinguistics and Multilingual Speech Communities. Celebrating the Work of Gillian Sankoff. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 137-178. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.24.12kin
2005 Ruth King. “Crossing Grammatical Borders: Tracing the Path of Contact-Induced Linguistic Change.” In Markku Filppula et al, eds. Selected Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Methods in Dialectology. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 233-251. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.273.15kin
2005 Ruth King. “Morphosyntactic Variation and Theory: Subject Verb Agreement in Acadian French.” In Leonie Cornips & Karin Corrigan, eds. Syntax and Variation: Reconciling the Biological and the Social. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 199-229. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.265.12kin
2005 Ruth King & Gary R. Butler. «Les Franco-Terreneuviens et le franco-terreneuvien.» In Julie Auger & Albert Valdman, eds. Les français en Amérique du Nord. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 169-187.
2005 Ruth King & Terry Nadasdi. «Les deux auxiliaires qui voulaient mourir en français d’Amérique.» Français d’Amérique : approches morphosyntaxiques. Paris : L’Harmattan, 103-111.
2004 Ruth King, Terry Nadasdi & Gary R. Butler. “First Person Plural in Prince Edward Island Acadian French: The Fate of the Vernacular Variant je…ons.” Language Variation and Change 16.3:237-255. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394504163035
2003 Ruth King & Terry Nadasdi. “Back to the Future in Acadian French.” Journal of French Language Studies 13.3:323-337. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959269503001157
2002 Ruth King & Sandra Clarke. “Contesting Meaning: Newfie and the Politics of Labelling.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 6.4:537-556. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00200
1999 Ruth King & Terry Nadasdi. “The Expression of Evidentiality in French-English Bilingual Discourse.” Language in Society 28.3:355-66. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404599003024
1997 Ruth King & Terry Nadasdi. “Left Dislocation, Number Marking and Nonstandard French.” Probus 9.3:1-18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.1997.9.3.267
1996 Susan Ehrlich & Ruth King. “Consensual Sex or Sexual Harassment: Negotiating Meaning.” In Victoria Bergvall, Janet Bing & Alice Freed, eds. Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice. London: Longman, 153-172. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315842745
1994 Susan Ehrlich & Ruth King. “Feminist Meanings and the (De)Politicization of the Lexicon.” Language in Society 23.1: 59-76. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740450001767X
1994 Ruth King. “Subject-Verb Agreement in Newfoundland French.” Language Variation and Change 23.3:239-253. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394500001678
1992 Susan Ehrlich & Ruth King. “Gender-Based Language Reform and the Social Construction of Meaning.” Discourse & Society 3.2:151-166. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926592003002002
1991 Ruth King. “WH-Words, WH-Questions and Relative Clauses in Prince Edward Island Acadian French.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics 36.1:65-85. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008413100014171
1991 Ruth King. “Acadian French and Linguistic Theory.” Journal of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association 13:35-46.
1990 Ruth King & Yves Roberge. “Preposition Stranding in Prince Edward Island French.” Probus 2.3:351-369. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.1990.2.3.351
1989 Ruth King. «Le français terreneuvien: Aperçu général.» In Raymond Mougeon & Édouard Beniak, eds. Le français canadien hors Québec : Aperçu sociolinguistique. Québec : Presses de l’Université Laval, 227-244.
Representative Talks (2012-22)
2022 Philip Comeau, Ruth King & Carmen LeBlanc. “Yes-No Questions in Acadian French: A Cross Varietal Perspective.” International Conference on Methods in Dialectology XVII, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Mainz, Germany, August 2022.
2019 Ruth King. “The Indexical History of the French ‘J’avons’: A Study in Comparative Sociolinguistics.” Meaning and Indexicality Across Subfields and Theories Workshop, Université de Paris Diderot, Paris, April 2019.
2018 Philip Comeau & Ruth King. “Subject Relative Clauses and the Actuation Problem in Acadian French.” NWAV-47, New York City, October 2018.
2017 Rick Grimm, Ruth King & Carmen LeBlanc. “The Role of Dialect Contact in Mood Choice in Atlantic Canada Acadian French.” Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Austin, TX, January 2017.
2017 Ruth King & Carmen LeBlanc. “Subject-Verb Agreement in Acadian French Subject Relative Clauses:The Interplay of Linguistic and Social Factors.” International Conference on Methods in Dialectology 16, Tokyo, August 2017.
2015 Philip Comeau, Ruth King & Carmen LeBlanc. “The Future’s Path in Three Acadian French Varieties.” NWAV-44, Toronto, October 2015.
2014 Gabriela Alboiu & Ruth King. “Emphatic “QUITE” in Acadian French as a Focus Operator.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, Brock University, May 2014.
2014 Ruth King. “Convergence, Divergence and the Recent History of Acadian French.” Paper presented as part of the workshop “Dynamics of Dialectal Change in French”, Fifteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, August 2014.
2014 Ruth King. “The Life Cycles of a Vernacular Form.” New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 43, Chicago, October 2014. Plenary Lecture.
2013 Philip Comeau, Ruth King & Carmen LeBlanc. «Fragments de l’histoire sociolinguistique des Acadiens.» Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association, Université de Moncton, November 1-2, 2013.
2012 Ruth King. «Le présent explique le passé : le changement linguistique en français». Annual Meeting of the Association for French Language Studies, Newcastle, U.K., June 2012. Plenary Lecture.