This paper uncovers evidence for two linked levels of morphosyntactic change occurring in Canadian English. The more ordinary is a lexical replacement: with finite subordination after seem, the complementizer like has been overtaking all the alternatives (as if, as though, that, and Ø). On top of this, there is a broader syntactic change whereby the entire finite structure (now represented primarily by like) is beginning to catch on at the expense of infinitival subordination after seem. Drawing on complementary evidence from British English and several partial precedents in the historical linguistics literature, I take this correlation to mean that like has reached sufficient rates among the finite strategy to have instigated the second level of change, to the point that it has ramifications for epistemic and evidential marking with the verb seem. I propose that the best model of these trajectories is a set of increasingly large envelopes of variation, one inside the next, and argue that the envelope might itself be an entity susceptible to change over time.

中文翻译：

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更上一层楼：复制提升和形态句法变化的级联层

本文揭示了加拿大英语中发生的两个相关层次的形态句法变化的证据。更普通的是词法替换：有限从属关系似乎，补足者喜欢已经超越了所有的替代品（好像，好像，那个，和Ø）。除此之外，还有一个更广泛的句法变化，即整个有限结构（现在主要由喜欢) 以牺牲不定式从属关系开始流行起来似乎. 借鉴英国英语的补充证据和历史语言学文献中的几个部分先例，我认为这种相关性意味着喜欢在有限策略中已经达到足够的比率来引发第二层次的变化，以至于它对动词的认知和证据标记产生了影响似乎. 我建议这些轨迹的最佳模型是一组越来越大的变异包络，一个在下一个内部，并认为包络本身可能是一个容易随时间变化的实体。