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Language Variation - European Perspectives VII: Selected papers from the Ninth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 9), Malaga, June 2017
Edited by Juan-Andrés Villena-Ponsoda, Francisco Díaz Montesinos, Antonio Manuel Ávila-Muñoz and Matilde Vida-Castro
[Studies in Language Variation 22] 2019
► pp. 85–102

Chapter 5
Language change caught in the act

A case study of Frisian relative pronouns

| Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden, Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning
| Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden
| Radboud University, Nijmegen
| Radboud University, Nijmegen
| Radboud University, Nijmegen
| Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden

This study investigates language change in Frisian relative pronouns in a corpus of Frisian radio broadcasts (1966–2015). In spite of the limitations of this corpus, we were able to catch language change in the act. The analyses show that until the 1980s the younger speakers in these broadcasts lead the rise of t-full relative pronouns, a change that was first observed in literature at the end of the 19th century. From the 1980s onwards the new younger generation reversed this change and increasingly started using the t-less relative pronouns. Additionally, the increase of t-less forms occurred mostly in non-scripted, spontaneous speech. It does not seem to play a role whether the speaker is a presenter or an interviewee/guest.

Keywords: Audience Design, scriptedness, Frisian, relative pronouns, t-deletion, radio, language change, real time, apparent time
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Omrop fryslân
  • 3.Frisian in the Netherlands
  • 4.Relative pronouns
  • 5.Method
    • 5.1The data
    • 5.2Procedure
    • 5.3Analysis
  • 6.Results
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.22.05dij
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2022. Der Geist, der stets verneint: Roger Lass’s epistemology of linguistic change. Language & History 65:1 ► pp. 39 ff. DOI logo

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