Frenching it up: The English future temporal reference system in a French-Canadian dominant town

Abstract This study examines the future temporal reference (FTR) system among Francophones and Anglophones speaking English in Kapuskasing, Ontario. Previous studies have shown that in Laurentian French, the go future is the preferred variant, and the strongest determinant of variant choice is polarity: negatives strongly favor the inflected future. In Canadian English, the go future has no polarity effect and there is robust variation with will , highlighting a key contrast in the underlying constraints between the French and English FTR systems. The results show that while older Anglophones pattern in tandem with known studies of English, Francophones, as well as young Anglophones, exhibit the polarity contrast of the French system, even though they are speaking English. We suggest that these results may stem from social alignment between Francophones and Anglophones driven by increasing linguistic and social symmetry in the community, as well as increasing positive affect toward French in Kapuskasing.