The unruly dialect variant [a]
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Jenny Nilsson
Abstract
We investigate the realisation of the variable (ɛ) (as either the dialect variant [a] or the standard variant [ɛ]) in the Swedish county of Värmland, with special attention to the small rural village of Torsby. Our analysis shows that dialect variants that are infrequent in recordings made in this area in the 1940s are generally absent in data from 2011. However, the dialect variant [a] deviates from this pattern. Even though it is used infrequently in some consonantal contexts in older data, it has increased significantly over the last 70 years, both language-internally as well as in the speech community. We present an acoustic analysis of the vowel pronunciation and discuss the social meaning this feature has in contemporary Torsby.
Abstract
We investigate the realisation of the variable (ɛ) (as either the dialect variant [a] or the standard variant [ɛ]) in the Swedish county of Värmland, with special attention to the small rural village of Torsby. Our analysis shows that dialect variants that are infrequent in recordings made in this area in the 1940s are generally absent in data from 2011. However, the dialect variant [a] deviates from this pattern. Even though it is used infrequently in some consonantal contexts in older data, it has increased significantly over the last 70 years, both language-internally as well as in the speech community. We present an acoustic analysis of the vowel pronunciation and discuss the social meaning this feature has in contemporary Torsby.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Plenaries
- Analytic and synthetic 3
- A case for clustering speakers and linguistic variables 23
- Dynamics, variation and the brain 47
-
Individual chapters
- Aggregate analysis of lexical variation in Galician 71
- Inter-individual variation among young children growing up in a bidialectal community 85
- The unruly dialect variant [a] 99
- Vowel raising and vowel deletion as sociolinguistic variables in Northern Greek 113
- Between local and standard varieties 125
- Syntactic doubling and variation 141
- Variation in style 157
- A corpus-based study of concessive conjunctions in three L1-varieties of English 173
- Variation in the structure of conjunctions in Luxembourgish German in the 19th century 185
- Geolinguistic documentation of multilingual areas 199
- Variation in Croatian 215
- Index 233
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Plenaries
- Analytic and synthetic 3
- A case for clustering speakers and linguistic variables 23
- Dynamics, variation and the brain 47
-
Individual chapters
- Aggregate analysis of lexical variation in Galician 71
- Inter-individual variation among young children growing up in a bidialectal community 85
- The unruly dialect variant [a] 99
- Vowel raising and vowel deletion as sociolinguistic variables in Northern Greek 113
- Between local and standard varieties 125
- Syntactic doubling and variation 141
- Variation in style 157
- A corpus-based study of concessive conjunctions in three L1-varieties of English 173
- Variation in the structure of conjunctions in Luxembourgish German in the 19th century 185
- Geolinguistic documentation of multilingual areas 199
- Variation in Croatian 215
- Index 233
