440 research outputs found
s-retraction in Italian-Tyrolean bilingual speakers: a preliminary investigation using the ultrasound tongue imaging technique
No full textThis paper presents a preliminary description of the articulation of /s/ in Italian as spoken by Italian-Tyrolean simultaneous and sequential bilingual speakers. The objective is to discuss whether they articulate /s/ differently. To this aim, articulatory differences across monolingual and bilingual speakers are commented upon, in particular focusing on s-retraction, which is attested to different degrees in ItalianTyrolean simultaneous bilingual speakers and in Tyrolean-dominant sequential bilinguals, but not in Italian-dominant sequential bilingual speakers
The Use of Historical Demography for Historical Sociolinguistics:the Case of Dunkirk
No full textThis chapter combines historical demographic and linguistic research to come to an understanding of language shift in seventeenth-century Northern France. The article details the Francophone immigration to the town of Dunkirk around and after its annexation to France in 1662, focusing in particular on the integration of migrants into the local community through intermarriage. The author then reports on a quantitative dialectological study of the French of Dunkirk in comparison to other French varieties. This study shows similarities in particular with varieties from the migrants' places of origin, lending credence to the suggestion that Francophone migration played an important role in the language shift. Moreover, this research signals the importance of an integrated social and linguistic perspective in the writ ing of language histories
Additional plots referenced in Ghyselen (2016)
No full textThe plots here included provide information on the linguistic repertoire structure in Ypres (Belgium) and accompany the chapter of Ghyselen (2016) in The Future of Dialects (eds.: Marie-Hélène Côté, Remco Knooihuizen & John Nerbonne)
Fishing for words: the taboo language of Shetland fishermen and the dating of Norn language death
No full textThere has been considerable debate about when Norn, the Scandinavian language formerly spoken in Orkney and Shetland, died as a community language in the islands. Arguments thus far have focused primarily on second-hand commentary from travel and census reports, sparking disputes about the credibility of these sources. Linguistic evidence, although very little survives, is seldom used systematically in the debate about when Norn died. I argue that a list of thirty Norn words collected in 1774 can tell us about the state of the language at the time, and can thus be used as evidence in this debate
Language shift and apparent standardisation in Early Modern English
No full textIt has been observed that language-shift varieties of English tend to be relatively close to Standard English (Trudgill and Chambers 1991: 2–3). An often- used explanation for this is that Standard English was acquired in schools by the shifting population (Filppula 2006: 516). In this paper, I discuss three cases of language shift in the Early Modern period: in Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Shetland. I offer evidence that the role of Standard English education was, in fact, fairly limited, and suggest that the standard-likeness of Cornish English, Manx English and Shetland Scots is most likely due to the particular socio- linguistic circumstances of language shift, where not only language contact, but also dialect contact contributed to a loss of non-standard-like features and the acquisition of a standard-like target variety. This atelic and non-hierarchical process is termed apparent standardisation
Variation in Faroese and the development of a spoken standard: In search of corpus evidence
Get PDFAlthough Faroese exhibits extensive linguistic variation and rapid social change, the language is near-uncharted territory in variationist sociolinguistics. This article discusses some recent social changes in Faroese society in connection with language change, focusing in particular on the development of a de facto spoken standard, Central Faroese. Demographic mobility, media and education may be contributing to this development in different ways. Two linguistic variables are analysed as a first step towards uncovering the respective roles of standardisation, dialect levelling and dialect spread as contributing processes in the formation of Central Faroese: morphological variation in -st endings and phonological variation in -ir and -ur endings. The analysis confirms previously described patterns of geographically constrained variation, but no generational or stylistic differences indicative of language change are found, nor are there clear signs that informants use Central Faroese. The results may in part be due to the structure of the corpus used
Shetland Scots as a new dialect: phonetic and phonological considerations
No full textThe dialect of Scots spoken in the Shetland Islands has been variously described as a language shift variety, acquired when the islanders abandoned their native Norn for Scots from the sixteenth century onwards, or a continuation of the dialects brought to Shetland by Scottish immigrants in the same period. More recently, Millar (2008) discussed the origins of Shetland Scots in a theory of new-dialect formation (Trudgill 2004), which allows for a combination of earlier explanations. In this article, I give a systematic analysis of the phonetics and phonology of Early Shetland Scots in comparison to Norn and mainland Scots dialects. The Shetland Scots data are largely consistent with theoretical expectations, lending further support to the new-dialect reading of the dialect’s diachronic development
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