Volume 27, Issue 1

Tracing the diffusion of linguistic innovations in space from historical sources is challenging. The complexity of the datasets needed in combination with the noisy reality of historical language data mean that it has not been practical until recently. However, bigger historical corpora with richer spatial and temporal information allow us to attempt it. This paper presents an investigation into changes affecting first person non-singular pronouns in the history of Norwegian: first, individual changes affecting the dual ( vit > mit ) and plural ( vér > mér ), followed by loss of the dual-plural distinction by merger into either form or replacement of both by Danish-Swedish vi . To create dynamic spatial visualisations of these changes, the use of kernel density estimation is proposed. This term covers a range of statistical tools depending on the kernel function. The paper argues for a Gaussian kernel in time and an adaptive uniform ( k -nearest neighbours) kernel in space, allowing uncertainty or multiple localisation to be incorporated into calculations. The results for this dataset allow us to make a link between Modern Norwegian dialectological patterns and language use in the Middle Ages; they also exemplify different types of diffusion process in the spread of linguistic innovations.

This article is focused on the analysis of surnames used in the eastern part of Latvia, i.e., Latgale, the history of which to a certain extent differs from other regions of Latvia. This is due to almost 300 years (1629–1917) of isolation from the territory inhabited by other ethnic Latvians, during which this region was under Polish and later Russian rule. During this 300-year-long separation, Latgale developed its own culture, a written tradition based on the local Latvian dialect, etc. The introduction of surnames for the Latvians of Latgale also differed from other regions. As Latgale is a multi-ethnic region, the system of surnames used there reflects not only the peculiarities of the local sub-dialects in vocabulary and semantics, but also contacts with other languages – Lithuanian, Estonian, Polish, Russian, Belarusian. This article is based on research results acquired within the framework of the project “Latvian surnames in archival materials. Latgale” directed by the Latvian Language Agency. Its main objective was to systematise Latgalian surnames registered in the 1935 census. The research data were summarised in a book “Latvian surnames in archival materials. Latgale”, compiled by historian Ilmārs Mežs. This book comprises about 4000 Latvian surnames from Latgale. Each surname is provided with statistical information and a description of its historical place of origin (sometimes even a particular village). Whenever possible, one or several versions of the meaning of each surname are given.

The comitative represents a particular case in the Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula. Except for Catalan, the rest of varieties possess a redundant form inherited from the evolution of the Latin postposition plus the preposition con (‘with’). However, some authors point out a tendency that favours subject forms or even stressed object forms in persons in which the norm prohibits them. With the aim of finding the vernacular responses to this respect, this paper attempts to account for all the possibilities in the comitative in the Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula as well as the factors upon which the selection of either strategy depends.

This article analyses sub-dialects of the South-Western Kurzeme region in Latvia. The focus is on the most prominent phonetic, morphological and lexical features of these sub-dialects, and their usage in the 21st century. The sub-dialects of South-Western Kurzeme have many characteristic features found in their phonetics and morphology. In the South-Western Kurzeme sub-dialects, there are native lexemes – words from the ancient Curonian language and also borrowed lexemes, as language contact has been an ongoing fact of life in South-Western Kurzeme. This region has been influenced by several languages – both neighbouring and more distant.

The recent publication of EDD Online version 3.0 (March 2019), based on Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (1898-1905), raises the question of what this last version, again provided by an Innsbruck project team, has added or changed in comparison to the previous ones. This paper describes the main improvements, focusing on five points: (1) the integration of the Supplement , (2) the implementation of a new kwic concordance, (3) the elaboration of the sorting modes applicable on the result lists after queries, (4) the new possibilities of quantifying retrievals, and (5) the elaboration of the last-result mode allowing more parameters and filters to be compatible with each other. The last chapter sketchily refers to further assets of the new version. The paper illustrates all its points by practical examples and screen shots. In doing so, it also provides an introduction to the sophisticated search tools now available in our interface and to the enormous dialectological and lexicographic potential of the digitised version of the most comprehensive English dialect dictionary ever published.

Repetition is a natural phenomenon employed to perform a variety of cognitive, psychological, interactional, stylistic, didactic and pragmatic functions in spoken and written discourse. Adopting the method of discourse analysis, the study attempts to explore the pragmatic functions of repetitions as used in spoken dialect narrative discourse. On a propositional level, only those repetitions which establish and maintain co-reference are necessary, all other forms seem to be redundant. However, if we take into account their pragmatic functions, they are not, as the data gathered in the study show. In fact, speakers use them, deliberately or not, as an effective communication strategy in the following functions: to extend the planning time to find a suitable lexeme, to enhance the importance of a lexeme, to emphasize the length of an event, after an interruption, to eliminate uncertainty and to confirm the correctness of the co-speaker’s statement. They also reveal the speakers emotions, like his/her emotional shock, and are used as a part of the so-called conversational duet. The data include the transcripts of the interviews with 6 dialect speakers in the Brda/Collio region, western Slovenia.

This paper focuses on phonetic variation within the standard German language register of Austria. While the norm status and a high socio-symbolic value are attributed to certain lexical variants of standard language in Austria, the norm and usage status of characteristic phonetic properties remain unclear, due to lack of empirical analyses. By investigating the relation between standard language norms and “standard usage” ( Gebrauchsstandard ) in Austria, our study aims to close this research gap by using the example of unstressed ‹-ig›. The analyses are based on data gathered from 52 speakers from two generations, covering all Austrian dialect regions. Elicitation settings varied from strongly standardized tasks with a graphic or visual stimulus (reading aloud tasks, picture naming tasks) to translation tasks (translation from dialect into standard) with oral stimuli. The results demonstrate that although ‹-ig› is predominantly pronounced like [ɪk], (socio-)linguistic factors as phonetic context, part of speech, setting, gender and regional background influence the ‹-ig›-variation. In total, the data suggest that German speaking Austrians are situated in a conflict between transnationally diverging norms and intra-nationally varying model speakers of German.