This study is conducted in the Karak area (Jordan) to investigate linguistic variation in the speech of the Fallahis who migrated to the area in 1948. Three variables are considered to investigate this variation. These are the (Q), (Vki) and (K). The study shows that young Fallahis have abandoned the variants of their native dialect in favour of the local variants, or sometimes the urban variant. Young Fallahis have abandoned the [k] variant of the variable (Q) in favour of the local variant [g] or [?] and the [ik] variant of the variable (Vki) in favour of the local variant [ki]. They also appear to have abandoned the variant [C] of the variable (K) in favour of the [k] variant. The study also shows that while none of the young males abandon the non-local variant [k] in favour of the urban variant [?], a considerable proportion (50%) of young females appear to have abandoned the non-local [k] variant in favour of the urban variant [?]. The young, thus, appear to prefer the local variants of the investigated variables whether this variable is stereotype like (Q) or a marker like (Vki). A considerable proportion of the middle age-group also show a tendency to accommodate to the local variant [g] as well as the local variant [ki). The old appear to preserve the variant [k] and the variant [ik] of their native dialect. The variant [C] of the variable (K) is categorically abandoned by the young and used in a very low ratio by the middle-age group (6%), but rather more frequently by the old age group (430/0). In this regard, we can report a sound change which is near completion in the Karak area in the speech of the Fallahis.

No description available.

No description available.

Although Italo-Romance varieties continue to be documented, classified, and analyzed by dialectologists, many are at risk of not being recorded thoroughly and systematically before their imminent extinction. While considerable attention has been devoted to the phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon of the more archetypal Romagnol dialects spoken in the Po Valley, dialectologists have largely overlooked peripheral Romagnol varieties such as Sammarinese. The present dissertation begins to fill this lacuna in Italian dialectology by providing an historical and synchronic study of Sammarinese phonology and morphology based on the examination of old and modern texts as well as copious oral data. The main purpose of the thesis is to delineate diatopic variation within the tiny Republic through comparative analysis, while also addressing the need for a more complete and precise definition of Sammarinese‘s position in the Romagnol linguistic group. In addition to confirming Sammarinese‘s status as a Borderline Romagnol variety, the dissertation offers evidence that Sammarinese is divided geographically into two main dialectal groups: Northeastern and Southwestern. The secondary intent of the thesis is to provide systematic, comprehensive, and phonetically precise documentation of the phonology and morphology of a moribund language. iii The dissertation consists of five chapters. The Introduction includes a brief linguistic history which relates diatopic variation to geopolitical factors. The first chapter also contributes an assessment of the status of scholarship dedicated to Sammarinese dialectology. Chapter 2 examines diachronic phonetics, emphasizing the dichotomy between the traits which link Southwestern Sammarinese to Borderline Romagnol and those which join Northeastern Sammarinese with the Romagnol varieties of the Po Valley. Chapter 3 treats synchronic phonetics and proposes a generative phonology which aims to identify the diasystem underlying phonetic variation within the Republic. Chapter 4 analyzes historical declensional morphology, underscoring diatopic variation in internal flexion configurations as further evidence of the division between Northeastern and Southwestern Sammarinese. Chapter 5 examines diachronic verb morphology. The dissertation concludes with an assessment of linguistic aspects meriting further research and analysis.

Although Italo-Romance varieties continue to be documented, classified, and analyzed by dialectologists, many are at risk of not being recorded thoroughly and systematically before their imminent extinction. While considerable attention has been devoted to the phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon of the more archetypal Romagnol dialects spoken in the Po Valley, dialectologists have largely overlooked peripheral Romagnol varieties such as Sammarinese. The present dissertation begins to fill this lacuna in Italian dialectology by providing an historical and synchronic study of Sammarinese phonology and morphology based on the examination of old and modern texts as well as copious oral data. The main purpose of the thesis is to delineate diatopic variation within the tiny Republic through comparative analysis, while also addressing the need for a more complete and precise definition of Sammarinese‘s position in the Romagnol linguistic group. In addition to confirming Sammarinese‘s status as a Borderline Romagnol variety, the dissertation offers evidence that Sammarinese is divided geographically into two main dialectal groups: Northeastern and Southwestern. The secondary intent of the thesis is to provide systematic, comprehensive, and phonetically precise documentation of the phonology and morphology of a moribund language. iii The dissertation consists of five chapters. The Introduction includes a brief linguistic history which relates diatopic variation to geopolitical factors. The first chapter also contributes an assessment of the status of scholarship dedicated to Sammarinese dialectology. Chapter 2 examines diachronic phonetics, emphasizing the dichotomy between the traits which link Southwestern Sammarinese to Borderline Romagnol and those which join Northeastern Sammarinese with the Romagnol varieties of the Po Valley. Chapter 3 treats synchronic phonetics and proposes a generative phonology which aims to identify the diasystem underlying phonetic variation within the Republic. Chapter 4 analyzes historical declensional morphology, underscoring diatopic variation in internal flexion configurations as further evidence of the division between Northeastern and Southwestern Sammarinese. Chapter 5 examines diachronic verb morphology. The dissertation concludes with an assessment of linguistic aspects meriting further research and analysis.

This study documents and accounts for maintenance and change in dialectal features of Salvadoran Spanish in the United States, especially voseo, as opposed to tuteo, terms signifying the use of the second person singular familiar pronouns vos and tu, with their corresponding verb forms. It compares two distinct Salvadoran populations, one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Houston, Texas. Salvadorans constitute the largest Hispanic group in the nation's capital, while in Houston they are outnumbered by other Hispanics, particularly Mexicans. It was predicted that Salvadorans in Washington, D.C. would maintain voseo more and employ tuteo less than those in Houston. This sociolinguistic phenomenon is accounted for by Accommodation Theory. Based on previous studies, it was also predicted that male participants would maintain voseo more than females due to the covert prestige of this form. To test these hypotheses, data were gathered using three protocols. The first was a questionnaire, with over 100 respondents in each city, on second person singular address forms and social variables. In the second protocol, 10 pairs of subjects in each city engaged in different verbal activities aimed at eliciting direct forms of address. The third protocol involved unstructured home visits with two married couples to observe spontaneous speech. The results supported the hypotheses in some regards more than others. When considering all the protocols, the levels of voseo were much lower and those of tuteo much higher in both cities than what had been predicted. As expected, voseo usage rates in Washington, D.C., were higher than in Houston in the second and third protocols, but voseo claiming rates in the first protocol were slightly higher in Houston. Also as expected, in both the first and second protocols there was a significantly higher rate of accommodation to tuteo among women than men. The most salient finding from the home visit participant observations was that while there was voseo use in Washington, D.C., there was none in Houston, even among those who had previously used it.

This study analyzes the accommodation strategies of Arabic-speaking Sudanese immigrants to Cairo toward the dominant Cairene Arabic variety. Accepted wisdom across much of variationist sociolinguistics views phonology in dialect contact scenarios as highly mutable and readily altered, while imputing to morphology a far greater degree of “staying power;” however, analysis of the Cairo-based fieldwork reveals a situation in which speakers freely accommodate to morphological forms, while adapting in only minimal and restricted ways to phonological differences. This finding, discussed in relation to both structural and social motivating factors, has the potential to inform conceptions of both the synchronic mechanics of dialect interaction and diachronic understandings of inheritance and stability across linguistic domains. / text

Most discussions of English phonology argue that rhoticity and r-sandhi are necessarily in complementary distribution, citing the diachronic path that led to the loss of rhoticity and the resulting synchronic r ~ Ø alternations in non-rhotic dialects. However, some accounts suggest that ‘it would not be surprising to discover cases of intrusive-r in rhotic dialects’ (Harris 1994, see also Carr 1999, Uffmann 2007). In order to investigate how non-rhoticity and r-sandhi could be transmitted by dialect contact, this thesis uses data from speakers in five communities in Greater Manchester and East Lancashire. The locations are equally spaced along a twenty-mile route from Prestwich (a suburb of Manchester, where speakers are non-rhotic) to Accrington (a post-industrial mill-town which is on an ‘island of rhoticity’ (Britain 2009)). I show that individual speakers have variable levels of both rhoticity and r-sandhi, which matches research on early New Zealand English (Hay & Sudbury 2005). Beyond this key fact, I discuss several other aspects of the relationship between r-sandhi and rhoticity, including the phonological and dialectological significance of the patterns in the data. First, linking-r and intrusive-r have different distributions in my data, despite the typical claim that they are synchronically the same process. This supports the idea that speakers are sensitive to a difference between words with and without an etymological r: I attribute this to the influence of orthography and to sociolinguistic salience of intrusive-r. Second, the nature of my sample population allows me to consider both change in apparent time and variation across geographical space. An apparent time comparison of the distribution of non-rhoticity and intrusive-r in the five Lancashire locations shows that these features are spreading by wave diffusion: they reach nearby locations before they reach locations further away. However, there is also a pattern of urban hierarchical diffusion in which the most isolated and rural location, Rossendale, lags behind Accrington in its loss of rhoticity. This is examined in the light of local patterns of travel for work and leisure, which suggest that although Accrington is further than Rossendale from the non-rhotic ‘sea’ of surrounding speakers, socially constructed space is more significant than Cartesian distance in determining the amount of linguistic contact between speakers from different locations. Third, I show that levels of rhoticity are increasing for some young speakers in Rossendale, which supports the hypothesis that a local linguistic feature can have a ‘last gasp’ under pressure from a competing non-local feature before its eventual loss. However, the same speakers are also adopting intrusive-r more quickly than speakers from neighbouring areas and this is significant: while earlier research has suggested that the presence of hyperdialectal non-etymological r (e.g. lager [laôg@~]) can be an indication of a loss of rhoticity in progress, the East Lancashire data show a different situation, where non-etymological r is for the most part restricted to sandhi contexts. This shows that rather than r-colouring becoming part of the realisation of certain vowels (e.g. sauce [sO:ôs]), intrusive-r is becoming adopted as a hiatus-filling strategy: a phonological process is being used by some rhotic speakers independently of the loss of contrasts (e.g. Leda ~ leader) which caused it to emerge in non-rhotic dialects. I discuss these results in terms of sociophonology, which I use to convey the idea that the phonological process of hiatus-filling r-sandhi can spread through dialect contact, with a mixed phonological system emerging as a result. Although the data suggest a correlation between the loss of rhoticity and the development of r-sandhi, the nature of the overlap means that a phonological model must allow for speakers to have both features, even if rhoticity is eventually lost completely. Hay & Sudbury (2005) argue that the gradual development of linking and intrusive-r leading to their convergence to a single synchronic phenomenon ‘is not a process that can be well described by any categorical, phonological grammar’. I show that the current situation in East Lancashire speech can be described by existing phonological models with underlying representations and associated surface forms. These existing models do not rule out a parallel distribution for rhoticity and intrusive-r, in which individual speakers can have both features. This thesis provides some new dialectological data for an under-researched area of North West England, a discussion of phonological means of accounting for patterns in these data, and a discussion of the influence of socio-cultural spatiality on linguistic behaviour.

No description available.

Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.