Dialect levelling

It has been argued that depending on gender language is used in different ways in society, and the fact that language is surveyed differently leads to the thesis that men and women have ‘differentiated communicative competence’ (Coates, 2004). A distinct pronunciation variant that is widely used and ‘has recently been noted as spreading through non-standard accents in England’ (cf. Trudgill, 1988: 43), is that of th-fronting. The form th- fronting has become more and more integrated into the speech patterns of many speakers across the United Kingdom although it has ‘not ‘officially’ entered RP yet’ (Altendorf, 1999: 5). This study focused on whether or not gender is associated with variation in the usage of th-fronting in the urban and multicultural locality of Nottingham, United Kingdom. The analysis was undertaken in order to assess how urban youth culture in Nottingham utilizes and applies the form th-fronting in everyday dialogue such as day-to-day conversations, and whether their mode of expression varies according to gender. The study aimed to gain an insight into the relationship between spoken language and identity, and to recognise whether the social backgrounds/ cultural practices people have influence their use of ethnically and age-coded variables. From the results, it was established that th-fronting does vary according to gender and that increased formality does limit the amount of th-fronting used.

It has been argued that depending on gender language is used in different ways in society, and the fact that language is surveyed differently leads to the thesis that men and women have ‘differentiated communicative competence’ (Coates, 2004). A distinct pronunciation variant that is widely used and ‘has recently been noted as spreading through non-standard accents in England’ (cf. Trudgill, 1988: 43), is that of th-fronting. The form th- fronting has become more and more integrated into the speech patterns of many speakers across the United Kingdom although it has ‘not ‘officially’ entered RP yet’ (Altendorf, 1999: 5). This study focused on whether or not gender is associated with variation in the usage of th-fronting in the urban and multicultural locality of Nottingham, United Kingdom. The analysis was undertaken in order to assess how urban youth culture in Nottingham utilizes and applies the form th-fronting in everyday dialogue such as day-to-day conversations, and whether their mode of expression varies according to gender. The study aimed to gain an insight into the relationship between spoken language and identity, and to recognise whether the social backgrounds/ cultural practices people have influence their use of ethnically and age-coded variables. From the results, it was established that th-fronting does vary according to gender and that increased formality does limit the amount of th-fronting used.

L’objectiu d’aquesta tesi és analitzar la direccionalitat, el ritme, l’abast i la naturalesa del canvi lingüístic que, al llarg del segle XX i fins al dia d’avui, ha afectat i segueix afectant els parlars nord-occidentals d’Andorra, Catalunya i la Franja, i determinar els factors comuns i particulars, tant externs com interns, que han propiciat les diferents evolucions d’aquests parlars en aquests tres àmbits administratius. Per fer-ho, es parteix d’un corpus del català nord-occidental contemporani dissenyat i recollit específicament per a aquesta finalitat, que permet captar el dinamisme del canvi lingüístic en temps aparent a partir de les dades de 320 informants —dividits en quatre franges d’edat— dels 20 caps de comarca i 20 poblacions petites de les 20 comarques de parla nord-occidental. En total, el corpus utilitzat consta de 113.739 ítems, i s’analitza mitjançant una combinació de mètodes quantitatius de tipus dialectomètric —la distància de Levenshtein i el mètode COD— i qualitatius. Més enllà de l’estudi de cas sobre el català nord-occidental, però, aquest treball vol aportar llum sobre determinats aspectes avui encara controvertits de la teoria general sobre el canvi lingüístic. Cal aclarir, per exemple, si les fronteres polítiques internes dels estats també poden desencadenar —talment com fan les fronteres interestatals— processos de convergència i divergència lingüístiques entre parlars tradicionalment similars. Com es veurà, aquesta tesi conté la primera descripció sistemàtica d’un cas d’efecte-frontera intraestatal. Un segon aspecte que ha generat controvèrsia és la possibilitat que determinades categories lingüístiques es vegin afectades pels processos de canvi lingüístic per raons de prestigi abans que unes altres. Al llarg d’aquest treball es revisen les jerarquies universals d’estabilitat de les categories lingüístiques postulades fins ara i se’n proposa una de nova en base als resultats obtinguts. En tercer lloc, alguns autors han lamentat que hi ha pocs casos documentats de difusió de les innovacions per contagi i han criticat que la majoria d’estudis dialectals recents encara parteixin de corpus relativament antics. Aquesta tesi conté un exemple empíricament contrastat d’aquest patró de difusió de les innovacions i ho fa en base a dades d’un corpus actual elaborat ad hoc. En quart lloc, també s’ha considerat que les situacions en què diverses varietats similars es troben sota la influència d’estàndards de llengües diferents són poc freqüents; l’anàlisi de la situació a la Franja, on la varietat-sostre —això és, de prestigi— és l’estàndard espanyol —en contraposició a la resta de comarques nord-occidentals— proporcionarà un nou exemple contrastat de l’impacte que aquesta situació produeix en les tendències evolutives de parlars tradicionalment contigus en el contínuum dialectal. Analitzats tots aquests aspectes s’ha optat, finalment, per defugir el positivisme mitjançant la inclusió d’un darrer apartat on es proposa una interpretació del canvi en termes sociolingüístics. Es tracta, al capdavall, no només de determinar els factors que donen compte de les diferents evolucions detectades, sinó també d’avaluar fins a quin punt poden haver influït en aquestes evolucions les discontinuïtats socioculturals i ideològiques fruit de l’escapçament polític de l’àmbit lingüístic català. Des del nostre punt de vista, la reducció de la variació interna i l’augment de l’efecte-frontera no es poden desvincular de la compartimentació autonòmica de les polítiques lingüístiques, d’una banda, i de la poca atenció envers la diversitat que s’ha donat en els plans de normalització lingüística, de l’altra. A la fi, doncs, es planteja la conveniència de reorientar les polítiques lingüístiques vigents perquè, desregularitzant la llengua en determinats àmbits i incidint especialment en les ideologies dels parlants, aquestes apostin per afavorir la consolidació d’un estat d’opinió favorable al manteniment a llarg termini de la diversitat dialectal de la llengua catalana.

This thesis investigates several linguistic changes which have been ongoing in the north-western Catalan dialects of Andorra, Catalonia and the Franja (Aragon) during the XXth century, and tries to determine the internal and external factors which account for the different evolutions of these dialects in these three territories. To do so, we take advantage of a range of qualitative and dialectometric methods —namely the Levenshtein Distance and the COD method— that allow us to calculate and analyze the linguistic distance between varieties in apparent time from an aggregate perspective. The dataset used in this thesis has been conceived as a corpus of contemporary north-western Catalan and covers the whole area where this dialect is spoken. It contains 113.749 items both from rural and urban areas. Specifically, we pay attention to the process of structural dialect loss due to linguistic advergence to standard and eastern Catalan in many north-western Catalan dialects located in Catalonia and Andorra. We also provide evidence that the dialect leveling taking place in these two areas strongly contrasts with the relative stability of the Catalan dialects on the other side of the Catalan-Aragonese border in Spain, where Catalan is not an official language. These opposite sociolinguistic situations (Catalonia and Andorra have strong language policies to support Catalan, whereas Aragon does not) have triggered a twofold process of vertical advergence between the Catalan spoken in Catalonia and Andorra towards the prestigious varieties, on the one hand; and of horizontal divergence between these dialects and those located in Aragon, on the other hand. This situation has notably strengthened the border differences between Aragon and Catalonia during the last 80 years. Beyond this case study, this thesis also wants to shed light on some controversial aspects of the language change theory. First, it is one of the first attempts to study the border effects not only between regions belonging to different countries, but also between different administrative regions within the same country. Second, we investigate the different roles of urban versus rural areas, providing support for the view that the spatial and hierarchical diffusion patterns are complementary. Third, we attempt to shed light on the debate of which language components are more susceptible to the influence exerted by standard languages. Therefore, we analyze the different evolutions of the morphological and the phonological components of these varieties throughout four generations —the discrimination between them being achieved by means of a generative analysis of the corpus— and we conclude that, at least in north-western Catalan, the hierarchy of instability of linguistic elements is clear: morphology has leveled faster than phonology. As a result, most of these varieties have undergone a process of accentualization. Finally, we try to explain the reasons for these changes, paying attention to the different language policies in Andorra, Catalonia and Aragon, on the one hand; and to the ideological and attitudinal factors that have strengthened the processes of linguistic advergence and divergence and the border effect between traditionally close varieties, on the other hand. As one of these factors might be the spreading of the standard language ideology in Catalonia and Andorra, we suggest some changes in the current language policies of these two territories that might help preserve the internal variation of the Catalan language.

Whilst differences in British English accents can be traditionally evidenced through variances in pronunciation, syntax and lexical choices, justification for these preferences are more complicated and contentious (Cheshire et al, 1989; 1999; Kerswill, 2002). Over the past 40 or so years sociolinguists have systematically observed accents throughout the British isles, and have attempted to document and provide explanations for regional differences and distinct varieties. The present study examined the speculation by Wells (1982a, b) that the happY vowel in use in working-class Nottingham differs from the rest of the United Kingdom and can be realised as approaching [ɛ] of the DRESS lexical set instead of the more common KIT [ɪ] or FLEECE [i]. In addition to documenting the variable, the subsequent study also looked into whether there is a relationship between usage of the innovation and age, gender or formality. From the results, it was established that the happY vowel in use in a working-class native Nottingham accent can be realised approaching [ɛ] of the DRESS lexical set and that even though all speakers have a high usage of the variant the form is formality driven; as well as being both age and gender-specific.

Whilst differences in British English accents can be traditionally evidenced through variances in pronunciation, syntax and lexical choices, justification for these preferences are more complicated and contentious (Cheshire et al, 1989; 1999; Kerswill, 2002). Over the past 40 or so years sociolinguists have systematically observed accents throughout the British isles, and have attempted to document and provide explanations for regional differences and distinct varieties. The present study examined the speculation by Wells (1982a, b) that the happY vowel in use in working-class Nottingham differs from the rest of the United Kingdom and can be realised as approaching [ɛ] of the DRESS lexical set instead of the more common KIT [ɪ] or FLEECE [i]. In addition to documenting the variable, the subsequent study also looked into whether there is a relationship between usage of the innovation and age, gender or formality. From the results, it was established that the happY vowel in use in a working-class native Nottingham accent can be realised approaching [ɛ] of the DRESS lexical set and that even though all speakers have a high usage of the variant the form is formality driven; as well as being both age and gender-specific.

Resum. En aquest treball s'analitzen una vintena de trets propis de la fonètica i la fonologia del lleidatà per delimitar, des d'una perspectiva qualitativa -tret per tret-, l'abast del procés d'accentualització a què s'han vist abocades en els darrers anys les varietats nord-occidentals de Lleida i la seva àrea d'influència. L'anàlisi permet diferenciar entre aquells trets que es mantenen, aquells que retrocedeixen per convergir amb l' estàndard de la llengua catalana i aquells que ho fan per convergir amb l' estàndard de la llengua castellana. Finalment, es constata de nou que l'impacte de la frontera autonòmica en l' evolució divergent de les varietats del Segrià i el Baix Cinca ha contribuït a afeblir el contínuum nord-occidental.

Abstract. In this paper we pay attention to twenty-one phonetic and phonological features of lleidatà to delimit, from a qualitative perspective -feature by feature-, how far the accentualization of these northwestern varieties of Catalan has reached. The analysis allows us to distinguish among features that are still commonly used, features that are converging towards standard Catalan and features that are converging towards standard Spanish. Finally, we provide new evidence that the Catalan-Aragonese border has an impact on the divergent evolution of the Segrià and Baix Cinca varieties, which is clearly weakening the traditional northwestern continuum.

Aquest treball ressegueix, mitjançant una combinació de mètodes quantitatius i qualitatius, el canvi lingüístic experimentat pel català nord-occidental, en general, i pel lleidatà, en particular, al llarg de quatre generacions de parlants. Els resultats mostren que les varietats lleidatanes —juntament amb les pallareses— segueixen les tendències evolutives generals del nordoccidental —pèrdua de trets propis per anivellament amb l’estàndard i distanciament de les varietats de la Franja— a un ritme més accelerat, especialment en el cas de la ciutat de Lleida.


This paper uses a range of both quantitative and qualitative methods to approach linguistic change in north-western Catalan —in general— and lleidatà —in particular— across four generations of speakers. The results show that lleidatà —as well as pallarès— has undergone the same processes of change —i.e. loss of dialect features due to convergence with the standard and increase of distance with respect to the Catalan varieties spoken in Aragon— undergone by the rest of north-western Catalan varieties, but at a faster rate —especially in the city of Lleida.

Resum. Aquest treball constata que el procés d’advergència del lleidatà del Segrià amb l’estàndard sociològic de la llengua catalana que anteriorment s’ha descrit per als àmbits de la fonètica, la fonologia i, molt especialment, la morfologia, es produeix també en el nivell lèxic. Aquesta tendència contribueix a eixamplar la fractura geolectal entre els parlars del Segrià i les varietats lleidatanes del Baix Cinca, que al seu torn estan convergint amb la varietat de prestigi del conjunt de la Franja, l’espanyol, mitjançant l’adopció d’una gran quantitat d’interferències que estan desplaçant bona part del lèxic nuclear autòcton entre les generacions de parlants més joves. Aquesta recerca situa la volatilitat del lèxic i el desprestigi secular de les varietats nord-occidentals lleidatanes com a causes principals del procés de desdialectalització, i proposa diverses iniciatives polítiques que podrien ajudar a revertir la situació descrita.

Abstract. This investigation confirms that the advergence process towards standard Catalan undergone by lleidatà in Segrià (Catalonia), which has been previously described at the phonetic, phonological and morphological levels, is also taking place at the lexical level. This tendency contributes to broaden the linguistic distance between the North-western Catalan varieties spoken in Catalonia and those spoken in Baix Cinca (Aragon), which in turn are converging lexically with the prestigious variety of the whole region, standard Spanish. In this research we argue that the higher volatility of lexicon and the traditional lack of prestige of lleidatà in both sides of the border are the two main reasons that explain these two dedialectalization processes. Finally, we also outline some political initiatives that might be applied to revert this situation.

This paper examines the role of dialect contact in the emergence of Namdeutsch (i.e. a variety of German spoken by about 20,000 Namibians today). In order to show that German speakers of different regional origins interacted with each other in the former colony of German South West Africa, a concrete setting is reconstructed on the basis of historical sources and information on geographic distributions of surnames. Subsequently, it is shown that phenomena can be found which are usually regarded as the result of dialect contact and thus contribute to the emergence of new varieties: levelling, interdialect developments, reallocation and focusing. It is argued that dialect contact is a third cause of language change which is central to German in Namibia along with borrowings from the main contact languages English and Afrikaans and the elaboration of internal tendencies of German.

A number of phonetic and phonological changes have lately been observed in most geographical varieties of British English (e.g. Trudgill 1986 ; Foulkes & Docherty 1999 ; Britain 2002b ; Kerswill 2003 ; Stuart-Smith et al. 2004, 2007). This phenomenon seems to have been accelerated in the past decades by increasing social and geographical mobility (e.g. Kerswill 2003 ; Britain 2002a, 2002b ; Stuart-Smith et al. 2004).
Based on a corpus mainly composed of recordings of spontaneous conversations between native North West Yorkshire (NW Yorkshire) speakers divided into age groups, this paper identifies and analyses a number of segmental and suprasegmental innovations observed in apparent time in both urban and rural settings. It discusses the sociolinguistic motivation behind some of these innovations and addresses the question of whether the same factors and principles operate in suprasegmental change – especially in the fields of intonation and voice quality – as in the diffusion of non-traditional segmental phonetic/phonological features. It also tackles the nature and status of diffusing intonational patterns such as the innovative use of rising tones in association with statements. The semantic/pragmatic value of these patterns is taken into consideration as well as that of a number of articulatory and phonatory adjustments characterising adolescent speech. It is suggested that the changes observed occur as a result of koineisation and supralocalisation processes (Siegel 1985 ; Kerswill and Williams 2000 ; Britain 2005, 2009), and that they testify to the emergence of new supralocal dialect areas in the north of England.

Traditional data collection methods in dialectology and variationist sociolinguistics have difficulty in gathering sufficient quantities of data from a sufficient range of localities to map variation at a national scale: dialectological surveys typically sample few informants per locality; sociolinguistic interview corpora typically sample a relatively low number of localities. By contrast, online surveys, whether browser-based or in the form of smartphone apps, allow researchers to gather much larger quantities of data very quickly. Such methods also typically achieve very different samples of the population than traditional methods: where traditional methods are often biased towards NORMs, or at least to non-mobile individuals, digital survey respondents are typically younger, more mobile and more educated than the population at large.
We present results from data collected through such a smartphone app, the 'English Dialects App' (EDA; Leemann, Kolly, Britain 2016), which surveyed English speakers in the British Isles. In the model of previous apps and websites for other language areas such as Leemann & Kolly (2013), Katz & Andrews (2013) and Leemann et al. (2015), EDA asks the user 26 questions about their language use and uses their responses to predict their locality of origin. Users are then invited to submit their actual locality of origin and other metadata to accompany these data; EDA gathers richer metadata than any previous comparable survey, asking respondents about their and their parents' education, mobility, age, gender and ethnicity. The EDA prediction function was originally based on the Survey of English Dialects (SED; Orton & Dieth 1962) and later updated to reflect the distribution of usage in the first 30K responses.
Using these data, we will present findings on sound change in modern British English. Phonological and phonetic variables are more resistant to levelling than morphosyntatic features but show different rates of levelling in different broad regions. Variants associated with the south west and south coast are highly levelled, with the majority of respondents typically reporting SSBE usage. Salient variants which distinguished the English of the north of England from the south show a more mixed picture, with the FOOT-STRUT split isogloss moving northwards (see Figure 1), for example, but the TRAP-BATH split isogloss robustly maintained (see Figure 2). The north east of England, especially the conurbations of Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough, show especially high rates of non-standard forms, with traditional local variants consistently found to be the modal response across many variables.
We link these regional trends to demographic differences. In the south, where levelling is most dramatic, geographical mobility is relatively high, and there has been a major process of de-urbanization over recent decades. We propose that this mobility is key to explaining regional differences: levelling takes place in urban areas where dialect contact takes place, and de-urbanization transports these levelled varieties back to rural areas which once maintained distinct dialects.

References
Katz, Josh & Wilson Andrews. 2013. How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html.
Leemann, Adrian & Marie-José Kolly.. 2013. Dialäkt Äpp. IOSDe. https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/dialakt-app/ id606559705?mt=8.
Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly, David Britain. 2016. English Dialects App (iOS and Android), www.englishdialectapp.com
Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly, M. Brupbacher, T. Grossenbacher & D. Wanitsch. 2015. Grüezi, Moin, Servus: Wie wir wo sprechen. De. http://www.spiegel.de/static/happ/wissenschaft/2015/sprachatlas/v2/dist.
Orton, Harold & Eugen Dieth. 1962. Survey of English dialects. 5 vols. Leeds: Published for the University of Leeds by E.J. Arnold.

This paper presents the results of the first study within a perceptual dialectology framework in the Greek-speaking community in Cyprus. Thirty participants from three age groups of equal size took part in a sociolinguistic interview. As part of the language module component of the interview, they discussed their beliefs about regional variation in Cyprus and completed the so-called 'draw-a-map task'. All participants were residents of urban areas of Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. The Greek-speaking community in Cyprus is diglossic: Standard Modern Greek is the High variety, while Cypriot Greek-the mother tongue of Greek Cypriots-is the Low variety. The latter is currently undergoing levelling of marked local basilect features and subvarieties. A quantitative analysis of the maps demonstrates that some areas in Cyprus (mainly in the periphery) have a stronger sociolinguistic salience than others. At the same time, the participants' own way of speaking is perceived as unmarked, neutral and one that enjoys wider acceptance over other regional dialects. This study also shows a clear preference for characterizing a (presumed) dialect area with linguistic characteristics, rather than with evaluative commentary contra many similar studies in the literature and suggests a number of reasons why this may be so. Overall, this research shows how studies on language perception can inform and complement studies on language production in a given community. The participants drew an average of just four regional areas on their maps and viewed the different cities and their districts, or combinations thereof, as the different regional dialect areas they perceive to exist in Cyprus. It is argued in this paper that the small number of areas drawn and the emphasis on urban sites are consistent with regional dialect levelling. Consistent with regional dialect levelling is also the finding that the participants' linguistic description of regional variation, while mainly accurate, is superficial and lacks detail. Interestingly, many of the participants also seem to be well aware of regional dialect levelling in their community. Other studies in the literature do not really discuss speakers' awareness of levelling and this should be further explored in future studies.

In Valls et al. (2013), we investigated several linguistic changes which are ongoing in north-western Catalan using a contemporary corpus. We took advantage of a range of dialectometric methods that allowed us to calculate and analyze the linguistic distance between varieties in apparent time from an aggregate perspective. Specifically, we paid attention to the process of structural dialect loss due to linguistic advergence to standard and eastern Catalan in many north-western Catalan dialects located in Catalonia (Spain) and Andorra. We also provided evidence that the dialect leveling taking place in these two areas strongly contrasts with the (apparent) relative stability of the Catalan dialects on the other side of the Catalan-Aragonese border in Spain, where Catalan is not an official language. We proved that these opposite sociolinguistic situations (Catalonia and Andorra have strong language policies to support Catalan, whereas Aragon does not) have triggered a twofold process of vertical advergence between the Catalan spoken in Catalonia and Andorra towards the prestigious varieties, on the one hand; and of horizontal divergence between these dialects and those located in Aragon, on the other hand. As a consequence, this situation has notably strengthened the border differences between Aragon and Catalonia during the last 80 years. This paper was one of the first attempts to study the border effects not only between regions belonging to different countries, but also between different administrative regions within the same country. In addition, we investigated the different roles of urban versus rural areas, providing support for the view that the spatial and hierarchical diffusion patterns are complementary.

In this paper, we will focus on the Catalan varieties spoken in Aragon to more closely examine whether the border effect is also due to the (less important in quantitative terms) evolution of the local dialects. We hypothesize that these varieties might have evolved simultaneously as a result of internal and external factors. As these varieties are not being influenced by standard Catalan, several intrasystemic changes might be taking place. At the same time, the pressure of standard Spanish, which is perceived as the prestigious model as a result of the diglossic situation, might also be favouring a second process of vertical advergence (see Auer & Hinskens 1996) between the Catalan spoken in this region and standard Spanish which might be irreversible.

References

Auer, Peter & Frans Hinskens (1996), «The convergence and divergence of dialects in Europe. New and not so new developments in an old area», in Sociolinguistica 10 (1), 1-30.

Valls, Esteve; Wieling, Martijn & John Nerbonne (2013), «Linguistic advergence and divergence in north-western Catalan: A dialectometric investigation of dialect leveling and border effects», Literary and Linguistic Computing 28 (1).

L’objectiu d’aquest treball és demostrar, mitjançant una combinació de mètodes quantitatius —dialectomètrics— i qualitatius, que en les darreres dècades els parlars de la Franja han estat immersos en diversos processos de canvi lingüístic que n’han modificat la fesomia a un ritme força accelerat. Concretament, s’aborden, en primer lloc, dos fenòmens que es poden considerar clarament processos de reorganització interna de la llengua: l’expansió dels increments velar i palatal i la simplificació de les combinacions de clítics pronominals. També es constata, tanmateix, que al nord de la Franja el canvi en les combinacions de clítics es deu a un factor essencialment extern, la pressió de la llengua castellana, i s’aporten dades que demostren que aquesta pressió és també el principal motor del canvi lingüístic en els nivells fonològic i lèxic entre els parlants de les generacions més joves.

Aquest treball vol, doncs, ser un reflex de la complexitat del panorama sociolingüístic franjolí, unes comarques on fa menys de dues dècades el català era la llengua d’ús habitual de la majoria de la població i que ara, en canvi, es troben immerses en l’inici d’un procés de substitució lingüística a causa dels canvis en la composició demolingüística de les noves generacions. L’objectiu de fons és alertar del risc que, malgrat que avui el coixí de parlants encara és prou important com perquè la llengua evolucioni de manera autònoma, la llengua castellana es podria acabar convertint en el principal motor del canvi lingüístic a mesura que minvi la vitalitat etnolingüística de la llengua catalana. En darrer terme, doncs, es reclama una política lingüística activa en favor de les varietats locals de català per part de les administracions públiques, atès que la principal amenaça per als trets idiosincràtics dels parlars franjolins no és pas la difusió de la varietat estàndard de la llengua catalana, com s’ha defensat tradicionalment des del secessionisme lingüístic aragonès, sinó la influència de la llengua espanyola.

The paper On linguistic competences and linguistic behaviour of young Belarusians and Ukrainians compares linguistic skills and the choice of linguistic codes in the two post-soviet countries which are usually described as bilingual, either Belarusian-Russian or Ukrainian-Russian. Russian dominated in both areas for more than 100 years. In addition, in both countries very widespread forms of mixed speech have emerged. In post-soviet times, only the Ukraine has reinforced the role of the language of the titular nation. The observations presented are based on self-judgements of younger speakers, in contrast with corresponding ones by older people. Last not least, we will illustrate how problematic it is to gain comparative insights into the language situation in the two countries if data are only available from specific surveys and not from comparative ones with common concepts and questionnaires.
Key Words: Bilingualism, language conflict, mixed speech, linguistic skills and choice of language, Russian out of Russia, language policy, Belarus, Ukraine

Traditional data collection methods in dialectology and variationist sociolinguistics have difficulty in gathering sufficient quantities of data from a sufficient range of localities to map variation and study patterns of historical change at a national scale. Dialectological surveys typically sample few informants per locality; sociolinguistic interview corpora typically sample a relatively low number of localities. By contrast, online surveys, whether browser-based or in the form of smartphone apps, allow researchers to gather much larger quantities of data very quickly. Such methods also typically achieve very different samples of the population than traditional methods.
We present results from data collected through such a smartphone app, the ‘English Dialects App’ (EDA) (Leemann, Kolly & Britain 2017). By asking users to self-report which variants they use in casual speech, we have collected data for 26 variables from over 40k speakers in the UK. Since 25 of these variables were also examined in the Survey of English Dialects (SED) (Orton & Dieth 1962), comparison of the EDA and SED datasets may be able to throw a light on patterns of dialect change in England over the past century. There are substantial differences between these two datasets, especially in certain regions. For example, most SED respondents in the south-west of England and along the south coast exhibited rhoticity, whereas in the EDA rhoticity has become a minority variant throughout this region. In this paper, we will investigate aggregate linguistic difference between the SED and the EDA across all 25 variables and try to disambiguate possible interpretations of these differences. In principle, linguistic difference between the two datasets could be the result of:
    • a difference in the sample populations of the two surveys;
    • a difference in the data collection methods used by the two surveys;
    • historically typical dialect change via isogloss movement;
    • or historically atypical dialect levelling, irrespective of the positions of isoglosses.
We will examine predictions from each of these hypotheses to distinguish between them. For example, if differences between the SED and EDA do not reflect historical change but merely a difference in sample populations, we should see smaller linguistic differences in the demographic subset of the EDA that most closely resembles the SED. If differences are due to the discrepancy in data collection methods, they should apply equally in all locations. If differences are due to isogloss movement, we should see them concentrated along historical isogloss bundles.
The result of such tests is that linguistic differences between the SED and EDA cannot be attributed solely to the difference of methods or sample populations, but must at least to some extent reflect historical change. This change does not, for the most part, appear to be driven by isogloss movement, but nor is it strongly associated with the socially or geographically mobile populations expected to drive levelling.

References
Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly & David Britain. 2017. The English Dialects App: The creation of a crowdsourced dialect corpus. Ampersand. doi:10.1016/j.amper.2017.11.001. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2215039017300589 (27 November, 2017).
Orton, Harold & Eugen Dieth. 1962. Survey of English dialects. . 5 vols. Leeds: Published for the University of Leeds by E.J. Arnold.

Durant les IV Jornades d’Estudi del Segrià vam presentar la comunicació “Què se n’ha fet, del lleidatà dels padrins?” (Valls en premsa), en què s’analitzava, des d’una perspectiva quantitativa i utilitzant sistemes d’anàlisi dialectomètrica, l’evolució dels parlars nord-occidentals, en general, i del lleidatà, en particular, al llarg de quatre generacions de parlants.

La present contribució vol aprofundir en l’estudi del canvi lingüístic en lleidatà des d’una òptica qualitativa, és a dir, parant atenció als principals trets que tradicionalment s’han utilitzat per caracteritzar els parlars lleidatans (Veny 1982, Veny i Massanell 2015), amb l’objectiu d’avaluar quin grau de vitalitat presenten avui en dia i determinar si hi ha diferències substancials entre categories lingüístiques pel que fa al ritme de manteniment o de pèrdua dels trets dialectals autòctons. Concretament, en la comunicació d’enguany l’interès se centrarà en l’evolució dels aspectes fonètics i fonològics del parlar lleidatà del Segrià (la nostra previsió és abordar la morfologia i el lèxic en les Jornades de l’any vinent); uns aspectes que, malgrat que sabem que tenen un comportament més conservador que els trets morfològics o lèxics (Valls 2013), també es troben en recessió. Finalment, analitzarem si aquests canvis també s’estan produint en la comarca veïna del Baix Cinca per determinar si es tracta de canvis interns o bé externs, motivats pel prestigi de la varietat estàndard de la llengua catalana. Si fos així, esperaríem que la frontera actués de dic de contenció del canvi (o, fins i tot, que afavorís un doble procés de convergència vertical dels parlars del Segrià i del Baix Cinca, respectivament, a les varietats estàndard catalana i espanyola).

Referències bibliogràfiques

Valls, Esteve (en premsa): «Què se n’ha fet, del lleidatà dels padrins?», Shikar 4.
Valls, Esteve (2013): «Canvi morfològic vs. canvi fonològic en català nord-occidental», Treballs de Sociolingüística Catalana 23, pàg. 57-79.
Veny, Joan (1982): Els parlars catalans (síntesi de dialectología). Palma: Moll.
Veny, Joan i Mar Massanell (2015): Dialectologia catalana. Aproximació pràctica als parlars catalans. Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona / Alacant: Publicacions de la Universitat d’Alacant / València: Publicacions de la Universitat de València.

From countryside dialects to Vaasa Swedish. Indications of dialect levelling and enregisterment of a town variety in four steps.

The aim of the study is to discuss changing indexicality and enregisterment of a Swedish dialect in western Finland. Indexicality is studied for the variety as a whole, rather than for individual dia-lectal traits. Fifteen women and 15 men born 1936-1997 from the town Vaasa and the neighboring municipality Korsholm were interviewed. The theoretical and methodological framework for the study was taken from sociolinguistics and perceptual dialectology. The informants show a collision of different indexical orders: while older informants tend to link Vaasa Swedish (VS) to the working class, younger ones tend to associate the variety with the whole town. In the first case, VS seems to index modesty and certain poverty, while in the second case, it indexes toughness, courage , aggression and self-confidence. The question of whether a moderate use of VS simply may index authentic Vaasa Swede is discussed. This would explain why women and younger people use the dialect less, perhaps being unwilling to be associated with toughness and aggression, while still wanting to be associated with the town and to call their own variety VS. The variety seems to be enregistered for younger informants, whereas older informants pick out certain working-class neighborhoods as bearers of a distinct dialect. The enregisterment of VS can be described as a four-step gradual movement from countryside dialects to working-class speech, and then from working-class speech in a certain neighborhood to a town dialect.

Keywords: enregisterment, indexicality, dialect levelling, perceptual dialectology, interviews, Swedish, Vaasa.
Språk & stil NF 26, 2016

Italy is home to one standard and many regional dialects. The standard variety, Italian, has enjoyed a relatively recent and widespread proliferation, yet until about 1950, most Italians grew up speaking regional dialects (many of which are mutually unintelligible). Here, I present an examination of how Italians evaluate their country’s dialects in terms of beauty, prestige, and similarity to codified Italian. Specifically, I ask how respondents’ age and region of residence shape their perception of dialects. To answer this question, 530 respondents from three regions of Italy (Veneto, Tuscany, and Campania) performed a map-coloring task based on methodology pioneered by Preston (1989) in language attitude research in the United States.
The results of my research showed that 1) respondents did not always rate their local region positively for judgments of beauty and/or prestige 2) linguistic judgments reflected North-South socio-economic divides and cultural stereotypes, and 3) younger respondents associated more strongly with Italian than with their local dialect.
I did not expect the dialect of Tuscany to be rated so overwhelmingly positively by the majority of respondents, even at the expense of their own local dialect. These results led me to conclude that the linguistic situation of Italy warrants a different paradigm than the “correct” vs. “pleasant” one used by Preston in United States, and that these data can be best understood within the context of the changing relationship between Italian and the regional dialects.

Intonational change studies in the literature only amount to contact-induced change. A seek for universals may only proceed through extensive example drilling and comparative research, since triggers of distinct outcomes usually show phonetic (thus, language-specific) differences. The most natural candidate to be a universal, non language-specific, factor influencing change is pragmatics, and answers may come from intonational phonology, which analyses the correspondence between phonetic form and pragmatic function. However, it is not easy to find minimal pairs only differing in pragmatics (sentence-type) undergoing different evolutions in time. To complicate the picture, iconicity (Givón 1990), namely a tendency to one-to-one form-function correspondence, is highly disrespected in intonational phonology, especially in situations of bilingual or multiple repertory and systems show, on one side, different contours associated to the same pragmatic sentence type (intonational allophony, or redundancy, often a product of bilingualism) and on the other side, different pragmatic functions represented by the same contour (polysemy, ambiguity). As to the distribution of allophonic variation in multiple repertories, Chambers and Trudgill (1998) distinguish two kinds of systems: whilst mixing systems have 2 well distinct phonetic forms in the repertory, each one associated to a language of origin, fudging systems show intermediate phonetic patterns with characteristics of both original patterns. Accommodation Theory (Giles et al. 1991) is based on the claim that long-term convergence of patterns is the result of extensive short-term accommodation of speakers, and Trudgill (2014) suggested that long-lasting change is gradual and happens " below the level of conscious awareness ". In a study on the evolution of the intonation of two groups of bilingual speakers in Majorca, Romera and Elordieta (2013) observe that the contour used for statements and that of questions evolved in two different ways, in that the two groups' original patterns would phonetically converge to an intermediate form and their shape gradually approach one another only in the case of questions. Dealing with different allophonic distributions, the authors did not ascribe the different behaviour to the pragmatics of questions vs statements but to the difference in saliency of the contours' shape, that is, a (contingent) characteristic of the phonetic form. Our work starts from the analysis of the phonological system of the variety of Italian spoken by two age groups from Pescara (eastern Italy). Studying the intonational contours associated with 35 sentence types we found, by the elder speakers, the same allophonic variety of pitch accents associated to 2 different sentence types, contrastive statements and information-seeking yes-no questions, consisting (figure 1) of 2 main pitch accents, A) a " pretonic peak " fall, transferred from the local language, Pescarese, with a high peak aligned at the end of the pretonic syllable, and B) a " tonic peak " late fall with a peak fully inside the tonic wowel, influenced from Rome Italian, together with a minority of intermediate patterns, being either overlapping patterns (a " double " pretonic+tonic peak (C1) pattern and its " extended peak " variant (C2), with the two peaks joined by a plateau) or a midway pattern (a single " midway peak " (D) usually aligned between the onset and the nucleus of the tonic syllable. When coming to the youngsters, however, the evolution of this common distribution proves to be sensitive to sentence type: when associated to contrastive focus, the main, well distinguished, pitch accents A) and B) keep prevailing in number, in a predominatly mixing system, and the number of intermediate patterns, being especially overlapping patterns, mildly increases, whereas in information-seeking questions the midway fudged type D) outnumbers A) and B). Dealing with the same range of phonetic shapes undergoing change across the two sentence types, and having different outcomes, this difference in change type can only depend on sentence-type (and not on the phonetic shape itself) and is compatible with the hypothesis that questions, being more interactive, listener-oriented sentence types, may trigger change " below the level of consciousness " and therefore are more prone, as a long-term effect, to gradual phonetic convergence of contours to midway fudged forms, more than contrastive statements, which are a more speaker-oriented, type, favoring maintainance.

L’objectiu d’aquest article és analitzar si el procés de desdialectalització de les varietats nord-occidentals de Catalunya i Andorra afecta amb intensitats diferents els aspectes morfològics i fonològics de la llengua. La discriminació entre els elements impredictibles —o morfològics— i predictibles —o fonològics— es du a terme mitjançant una anàlisi generativa del corpus. D’aquesta manera, és possible calcular per separat la distància en els àmbits de la morfologia i de la fonologia i visualitzar —mitjançant tècniques d’anàlisi multidimensional— les diferents evolucions d’aquests dos nivells de llengua al llarg de quatre generacions de parlants nord-occidentals. Es tracta, al capdavall, d’aportar una mica més de llum al debat sobre la major permeabilitat dels diferents components de la llengua en els processos de canvi lingüístic per raons de prestigi. La conclusió és que, si més no en català nord-occidental, la jerarquia d’estabilitat dels elements lingüístics és clara: la morfologia s’ha anivellat a un ritme més ràpid que la fonologia, la qual cosa ha comportat una progressiva accentualització de la majoria d’aquests parlars.

Traditional dialectology has focused primarily on questions concerning the classification of the dialects within today’s Croatian territory. Even though the considerable amount of shared features between southeast čakavian and štokavian-ikavian dialects spoken in Dalmatia is repeatedly mentioned by dialectologists and would suggest to look at the dialect situation of this region as a case of dialect leveling, no attempt has been made to investigate this potential regiolect on an empirical base.
It has to be expected that recent developments led (and will lead) to further leveling, namely between urban vernaculars and idioms of smaller towns and villages. Based on the assumption that the speech of young speakers best reflects the dynamics of (recent) dialect change, the speech of one exemplary informant is analyzed in this paper with regard to the occurrence of selected dialect features and compared with traditional descriptions of local idioms of the region as well as with the urban vernacular of the city of Split.

This article is a contribution to the debate about the primacy of internal versus external factors in language change (Farrar and Jones 2002; Thomason and Kaufman 1988). Taking Labov's Principles of Vowel Shifting (Labov 1994) as representing internal factors, we examine a vowel shift in Ashford, south-east of London. F1 and F2 measurements of the short vowels suggest a classic chain shift, largely following Labov's Principles II and III (though Labov's assumption that London short front vowels are rising is shown to be wrong). However, corresponding data from Reading, west of London, evidence no signs of a chain shift. The two datasets show identical targets for the changes in each town. Thus, there has been convergence between the two short vowel systems – from different starting points. We argue that a dialect contact model is more explanatory than internal factors in  this case of regional dialect levelling in the south-east of England.

In Valls et al. (2013), we proved that the north-western Catalan varieties of Catalonia and Andorra (in contrast to those located in Aragon) have undergone a process of dedialectalization due to linguistic advergence to standard Catalan. In this paper, we intend to analyze whether this process affects the morphological and phonological components of language differently. To do so, we have performed a generative analysis of the corpus that has allowed us to discriminate the unpredictable (i.e. morphophonological) elements from the predictable (i.e. strictly phonological) components of language . Therefore, we have been able to calculate the morphological and phonological distance among the north-western varieties separately and to visualize (by means of multidimensional analysis) the different evolutions of the morphological and the phonological components of these varieties throughout four generations. We attempt to shed light on the debate on which language components are more likely to the influence exerted by standard languages. We conclude that, at least in north-western Catalan, the hierarchy of instability of linguistic elements is clear: morphology has leveled faster than phonology. As a result, most of these varieties have undergone a process of accentualization.

Speakers’ psycho-social orientation and social knowledge have often been identified as having an important role in linguistic change. We know, for example, that speakers’ adoption of linguistic features from a neighbouring region often correlates with their positive social orientation towards that
region (Llamas 2007), and that their social orientation can be discussed with reference to their interpretation of physical, political and social ‘boundaries’ (Llamas 2010).

Southport, located 17 miles north of the large industrial city
of Liverpool, is historically an independent borough but was absorbed into Merseyside in 1974. Southport and Liverpool are well connected by frequent transport links and, given the high levels of contact between people, it has been predicted that phonetic features of the Liverpool accent will diffuse into the traditional Lancashire accent of Southport (Grey & Richardson 2007). However, a complicating factor is Liverpool’s negative stereotype (Montgomery 2007), which may be predicted to act as a barrier to the diffusion of Liverpool features.

This paper aims to analyse the diffusion of two local Liverpool features – the lenition of intervocalic and word-final /t/ and /k/ – in speech from a corpus of 39 speakers stratified by age, gender and socio-economic status. I show that despite the links between the two locations, the features of Liverpool are not diffusing into Southport speech as rapidly as originally hypothesised. The second aim is to investigate whether there is a correlation between speakers’ language use and their spatial mobility patterns by mapping their external (contact) and extra-linguistic (attitudinal) behaviour onto their linguistic production. I show that varying patterns of contact could provide an explanation for the reduced level of diffusion of Liverpool features.

In conclusion, I argue that understanding speakers’ psycho-social orientations and social awareness, in conjunction with correlative patterns of speech production is crucial for explaining language change.

This is a sociolinguistic investigation of regional dialect levelling and the role that standardised language plays for this particular type of dialect change. This study combines a quantitative variationist investigation of linguistic variation and change in East Norwegian cities Hønefoss and Oslo with experimental and qualitative studies of attitudinal data in Hønefoss. The aim of the study is to shed light on the role that standard language ideologies play for loss of localised dialects. Varieties of East Norwegian spoken in the small city Hønefoss and the capital city Oslo are becoming increasingly alike. Oslo speech is an influential factor in the loss in Hønefoss of local linguistic variants in variables 3pl personal pronouns and <rd>. The force behind the regional dialect levelling is not the Oslo dialect only, however. Overt and covert attitudinal data show that the influence is twofold and that the codified written variety of Norwegian, Bokmål, largely influences speakers’ usage of local variants for linguistic variables stress in loanwords and plural definite article suffixes. The investigation considers linguistic ideals that speakers link to codification of language (correctness), education or the capital city and attest that language that can be linked to all these ideals is becoming more widely used in the East Norway region. Speech that can be linked to the codified variety Bokmål is an overt as well as a covert ideal to speakers in Hønefoss. Covert positive attitudes towards speech from Oslo are also found. This study shows that the social and political context of language must be taken into account in the study of loss of linguistic features. The social meaning of language is crucial in informing us about the social mechanisms behind dialect change.