The present work investigates the effects of social constraints on word order variation in particle placement in Ontario English, Canada. While previous research has documented numerous linguistic factors conditioning the choice of variant, social correlates have so far remained unexplored. To address this gap, we analyze 6,047 variable phrasal verbs from the vernacular speech of six communities in Ontario. These data were coded for length of the direct object, verb semantics, community, and the individual's education, gender, age, and occupation. Our analyses confirm previous findings that variation in particle placement is predominantly determined by direct object length. However, we also expose significant social and geographic factors, and importantly an effect of age, with younger speakers using the joined variant more than older speakers. Further analysis confirms that the latter effect is consistent across communities, indicating a change in progress, possibly due to ongoing grammaticalization of particles in the verb phrase.

中文翻译：

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句法交替的社会嵌入：安大略英语中的可变粒子放置

目前的工作调查了社会约束对加拿大安大略省英语中粒子放置的词序变化的影响。虽然之前的研究已经记录了许多影响变体选择的语言因素，但到目前为止，社会相关性仍未得到探索。为了解决这一差距，我们分析了安大略省六个社区的白话语音中的 6,047 个可变短语动词。这些数据根据直接宾语的长度、动词语义、社区以及个人的教育、性别、年龄和职业进行了编码。我们的分析证实了先前的发现，即粒子位置的变化主要由直接物体长度决定。然而，我们也暴露了重要的社会和地理因素，重要的是年龄的影响，年轻的演讲者比年长的演讲者更多地使用联合变体。