Vowel raising and vowel deletion as sociolinguistic variables in Northern Greek
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Panayiotis A. Pappas
Abstract
The research reported here is part of a longitudinal case study into the linguistic effects of de-urbanization, which is occurring in Greece due to severe economic recession. The overall aim of the analysis is to explore the way in which de-urbanization is affecting the evaluation and production of dialects in rural communities. In this paper, I present evidence that the features of unstressed vowel deletion and vowel raising are socially embedded in Northern Greek. Even though the usage of standard variants is very close to categorical, a quantitative comparison of the linguistic patterns of urban in-migrants who have returned to the rural community against the usage of speakers who have never left reveals that the use of standard variants indexes more advanced education and an orientation towards the urban lifestyle.
Abstract
The research reported here is part of a longitudinal case study into the linguistic effects of de-urbanization, which is occurring in Greece due to severe economic recession. The overall aim of the analysis is to explore the way in which de-urbanization is affecting the evaluation and production of dialects in rural communities. In this paper, I present evidence that the features of unstressed vowel deletion and vowel raising are socially embedded in Northern Greek. Even though the usage of standard variants is very close to categorical, a quantitative comparison of the linguistic patterns of urban in-migrants who have returned to the rural community against the usage of speakers who have never left reveals that the use of standard variants indexes more advanced education and an orientation towards the urban lifestyle.
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
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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
