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Linguistic change in El Pont de Suert: The study of variation of /3/

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Nuria Alturo  and
Ma. Teresa Turell
Nuria Alturo
Affiliation:
Universitat de Barcelona
Ma. Teresa Turell
Affiliation:
Universitat de Barcelona
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Abstract

Catalan sociolinguistics has investigated in depth the uses of Catalan and the attitudes toward it but has only analyzed very sporadically the mechanisms of linguistic change in this language. The study presented in this article is an attempt to describe an ongoing linguistic change that has been observed in a speech community (E1 Pont de Suert) of the Alta Ribagorça, a region in Catalonia (Spain) where the borderline between Catalan and Aragonese, a variety of Spanish, can be delimited. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, the article seeks to demonstrate that a gradual substitution of the autochthonous variant [t∫] by the normative [3] of the phoneme /3/ appears to be taking place in El Pont de Suert, and to determine, at the same time, the linguistic and social factors that favor this substitution. Second, its purpose is to analyze the variation of this phoneme in relation to not only geographic but also social and linguistic variables; this is because a study that considers only geographic factors would describe the characteristics that differentiate the Ribagorca speech from other Catalan speech varieties but would not account for the existing variation in the use of both the voiceless affricate and the voiced fricative.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 19 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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