Dialect Change

The present paper discusses gender marking, i.e. the morphological marking of masculine, feminine and neuter lexical gender in the adnominal domain, in Brabantish dialects spoken in the southern Dutch province North-Brabant. Gender markers belong to the most salient features of North-Brabantish, but with a process of dialect levelling well on its way for at least fifty years, knowledge of lexical gender is fading away. This study delves into these variation patterns. The results of a quantitative analysis of written questionnaires (mainly filled out by elderly dialect speakers, N=700) triggered us to conduct a small in-depth study of speech data from adolescents in the Eindhoven region (N=15). Based on these data, we argue that there is a high level of heterogeneity when it comes to adnominal gender marking. In this paper, we aim at describing and categorizing the various types of variation. The data includes omissions of the traditional Brabantish masculine gender marking, indicating that speakers are converging towards Standard Dutch. However, the data also reveals that in 30% of all utterances speakers apply gender marking in multiple ways. We find three types of variation: 1) masculine gender marking is only partly applied in comparison to the traditional rules of dialect grammar (compromise-constructions), 2) masculine gender markers appear in noun groups where they should not appear according to the dialect grammar (e.g. feminine, neuter, plural), so-called hyperdialectisms, and 3) speakers use innovative gender marking constructions: accumulate forms with two masculine suffixes, so-called hypermarkings. Based on previous research, we argue that typical dialect features, such as gender markers, are part of a regional speech style and play an important role in identity formation. As shibboleths of such a speech style, gender markers are VOL. 72, NO. 1, 2020 TAAL EN TONGVAL 70 over-generalized by speakers who want to profile themselves as 'genuinely' Brabantish. Also, individual patterns of gender marking indicate that salience in non-canonical sentence structures (e.g. focus) might be an important factor when it comes to emphasizing a deviation from the standard language, in line with (regional) identity construction through the use of shibboleths. Future research is necessary to validate these initial findings.

Samnaun has been described as the only Bavarian-speaking municipality in Alemannic-speaking Switzerland on the basis of a study done in 1924. Hints in the literature about the presence of other varieties for everyday communication – an intermediate variety on the dialectstandard-axis as well as an Alemannic dialect – have not resulted in more recent research. This paper describes the research agenda of a project that aims at the description of the current range of linguistic variation in this municipality in the extreme east of Switzerland, bordering on Austria. It contains background information about Samnaun, a description of its language history, and an overview of previous linguistic descriptions of the valley. The paper also discusses the research questions and the aims of the project as well as its methodology. The project makes a contribution to the research about language contact, change in language as well as to research about language shift. 1 0 p l u s 1 L I v I n g L I n...

An ever greater number of South Africans are relocating to New Zealand and now comprise the fifth largest group of migrants in the country. Among this group, there are first language (L1) Afrikaans speakers who bring with them qualifications, skills, and more importantly, their distinct second-language English. It appears that these Afrikaans speakers quickly adapt to the pronunciation of New Zealand English (NZE). The present study seeks to shed light on changes which occur in the pronunciation of Afrikaans-speaking South Africans living in New Zealand. The results of the present study show that there is a difference in the L2 English pronunciation between Afrikaans speakers in New Zealand and their counterparts in South Africa. The L2 English pronunciation of Afrikaners in New Zealand is shown generally to approximate towards the articulation of NZE. Several factors appeared to influence differences in pronunciation, for example gender, identity change, having a NZEspeaking partner, and exposure to the L2. Afrikaans speakers in New Zealand seem to identify more readily as Kiwis than with their South African English counterparts. The present study concludes with the suggestion that, along with other factors, a change in identity apparently facilitates a change in pronunciation toward NZE pronunciation. The findings provide a novel perspective on the Afrikaans language in New Zealand, and offer a new perspective on the influence of identity on second language acquisition.

This study investigates phonological variation and change in the base dialects of the Austrian federal state of Burgenland. The dialects of the Burgenland – often labelled »Hianzisch« – are said to contain numerous archaic language peculiarities already lost in neighboring dialect regions. However, there are no recent investigations into the dialects of the Burgenland. Based on the data of the special research programme »German in Austria« and a corpus from the town of Schattendorf this study reveals that although the dialects in the Burgenland have preserved some archaic features, most features are shared with neighboring dialects in Lower Austria and Styria. Furthermore, there is a significant amount of change which leads to the adoption of Bavarian majority variants into the traditional dialect.

Like in most European speech communities, the loss of rural dialects and the emergence of regional varieties could also be observed within the German speaking area since at least the 19 th century. Previous research on mechanisms influencing the selection process of dialect features was mainly carried out on a theoretical level. This paper aims at contributing an empirical component by presenting the results of a study with focus on selection mechanisms of phonological dialect features in southwest Germany. It will be argued that similarity to the standard, geographical spread, grammatical function and frequency are factors of major importance regarding the chance of survival of dialect features during their transition from rural dialects to regional standard contexts. Of the seven phonological phenomena analysed, in the end only one clearly remains: /s/-palatalisation. Interestingly, this feature does not necessarily possess positive social salience, but is apparently hard to abandon for speakers from the Southwest.

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.