Morphological reduction in Aromanian
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Maria Maglara
Abstract
This paper presents the findings of a study examining the extent of linguistic attrition in Aromanian. In particular, the study focuses on derivational morphology and it examines reduction in the use of a group of suffixes by three age groups in the small town of Philippiada as well as loss in the allomorphic variation and in the range of semantic functions these suffixes perform. The results manifest a steady decline in the awareness of known items amongst the youngest members of the community, thereby showing that Aromanian is used progressively less and less by the speakers. The findings also demonstrate that functions which these morphemes originally performed are dying out, especially among the youngest segment of the population examined, while other functions are gradually being replaced by analytical forms.
Abstract
This paper presents the findings of a study examining the extent of linguistic attrition in Aromanian. In particular, the study focuses on derivational morphology and it examines reduction in the use of a group of suffixes by three age groups in the small town of Philippiada as well as loss in the allomorphic variation and in the range of semantic functions these suffixes perform. The results manifest a steady decline in the awareness of known items amongst the youngest members of the community, thereby showing that Aromanian is used progressively less and less by the speakers. The findings also demonstrate that functions which these morphemes originally performed are dying out, especially among the youngest segment of the population examined, while other functions are gradually being replaced by analytical forms.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Clefts in Cypriot Greek 13
- Lexical change, discourse practices and the French press 27
- Arbitrary subjects of infinitival clauses in European and Brazilian Portuguese 47
- Modal verbs in long verb clusters 59
- Changing pronominal gender in Dutch 71
- Meaning variation and change in Greek morphology 81
- Syntactic variation in German-English code-mixing 91
- Sources of phonological variation in a large database for Dutch dialects 103
- Broad vs. localistic dialectology, standard vs. dialect 119
- Intonational variation in Swiss German 135
- Morphological reduction in Aromanian 145
- Greek dialect variation 157
- Using electronic corpora to study language variation 169
- Language attitudes and folk perceptions towards linguistic variation 179
- Salience and resilience in a set of Tyneside English shibboleths 191
- New approaches to describing phonological change 205
- Variation and grammaticisation 215
- Towards establishing the matrix language in Russian-Estonian code-switching 225
- Index 241
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Clefts in Cypriot Greek 13
- Lexical change, discourse practices and the French press 27
- Arbitrary subjects of infinitival clauses in European and Brazilian Portuguese 47
- Modal verbs in long verb clusters 59
- Changing pronominal gender in Dutch 71
- Meaning variation and change in Greek morphology 81
- Syntactic variation in German-English code-mixing 91
- Sources of phonological variation in a large database for Dutch dialects 103
- Broad vs. localistic dialectology, standard vs. dialect 119
- Intonational variation in Swiss German 135
- Morphological reduction in Aromanian 145
- Greek dialect variation 157
- Using electronic corpora to study language variation 169
- Language attitudes and folk perceptions towards linguistic variation 179
- Salience and resilience in a set of Tyneside English shibboleths 191
- New approaches to describing phonological change 205
- Variation and grammaticisation 215
- Towards establishing the matrix language in Russian-Estonian code-switching 225
- Index 241
