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Germanic Heritage Languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change
Edited by Janne Bondi Johannessen † and Joseph C. Salmons
[Studies in Language Variation 18] 2015
► pp. 283–298

Changes in a Norwegian Dialect in America

In this article I investigate dialect variation in the old Norwegian settlement around Coon Valley and Westby in Vernon County, Wisconsin, with a focus on how the Norwegian dialects spoken here have changed over time. The language in this community is well documented; the oldest recordings are from 1931, the most recent ones were done in 2014. By comparing such recordings from different times, I point to some tendencies of how different Norwegian speech varieties have changed in the settlement towards the formation of a koiné.
Keywords: change in morphology, change in phonology, heritage language, koiné, koinéization, language change, Norwegian dialects
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Published online: 20 August 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.18.13hje
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[no author supplied]
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