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Part of
Urban Matters: Current approaches in variationist sociolinguistics
Edited by Arne Ziegler, Stefanie Edler and Georg Oberdorfer
[Studies in Language Variation 27] 2021
► pp. 203–226

Diminutives and their variation in spoken interaction in urban areas

The Austrian case

ORCID logo | University of Graz
| Philipps University of Marburg
| University of Graz
In order to understand the linguistic dynamics within urban language use, all linguistic levels have to be considered in empirical analyses. This paper addresses the morphological level, analysing the use of diminutives in Vienna and Graz and their surroundings. In Austria, diminutives cover a wide range of suffixes, where certain forms correlate with different degrees of formality and can tendentially be linked to diverging levels on the scale between dialect and standard. By analysing data from two corpora, the paper investigates tendencies of dialect levelling and potential differences between the two urban areas. The results point to the significance not only of the examined parameter place of residence, but also of age and gender when it comes to identifying motors of linguistic change and dialect levelling.
Keywords: diminutives, dialect levelling, variation and language change, age, gender, place of residence, dialect and standard
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Linguistic situation
  • 3.Diminutive suffixes and research questions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Corpora and analytical procedure
    • 4.2Informants
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Multivariate analyses of individual diminutive suffixes
    • 5.2Diatopic view: Vienna and Graz and their surroundings
    • 5.3Diastratic view: Distribution by gender
    • 5.4Diastratic view: Distribution by age
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 16 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.27.09zie
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