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Phonological Individuation in a Former Danish Settlement in South Dakota, USA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2018

Jan Heegård Petersen
Jan Heegård Petersen*
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
*
Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, Emil Holms Kanal 120, Building 22.4.40, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark, [[email protected]]
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Abstract

The article describes the manifestation and distribution of 15 phonological variables in a rural heritage language community in South Dakota, USA. I discuss to what extent dialect convergence has occurred in this former Danish settlement. The data sample encompasses speakers born in Northwest Jutland in Denmark, as well as speakers born in South Dakota to parents who emigrated from Northwest Jutland. The analysis shows that dialectal convergence has not occurred to any significant degree, in spite of what may be expected; speakers born in South Dakota have significantly more dialectal features in their speech than the speakers born in Denmark. The analysis also reveals a sizeable degree of inter-speaker variation within both groups, as well as a considerable variation between the variables with respect to how likely they are to be realized dialectally versus nondialectally. The results are discussed in relation to theories of shared linguistic repertoire and individuation in small speech communities.*

Keywords

Danish dialectNorthwest Jutishheritage languagemulti-factorial regression analysisinter-speaker variation
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 97 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2018 

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