Dialect Levelling, Koineisation and the Speech of the Adult Migrant

Abstract

In this article, I present part of a wider study of dialect levelling in Norway and England .. I shall discuss three questions: (1) is koineisation, or new dialect formation, a phenomenon related to the levelling of differences between adjacent regional dialects? (2) Are koineisation and levelling reflected in the simplificatory processes performed by adult migrants moving to a different dialect area? (3) Does koineisation in a new town anticipate regional dialect levelling in its own area, and if so what contributes to the time-lapse between koineisation and levelling? I shall address this issue by comparing both koineisation and levelling in two countries with rather different 'sociolinguistic structures', Norway and England. By sociolinguistic structures I mean (1) the extent of linguistic differences between varieties, (2) socio-demographic characteristics of the community, particularly in terms of urbanisation and social and geographical mobility, (3) the role of a standard variety, and (4) attitudinal factors relating to linguistic variety. Since I have treated the issue of sociolinguistic structure in these countries elsewhere (Kerswill 1996 (forthcoming)), I shall only present a brief sketch here. Norway is a highly developed country that still retains its traditional dialects, which may differ considerably from one another and from either of the two standard Norwegians, Bokmai and Nynorsk. Current attitudes towards non-standard speech are largely positive, particularly towards rural dialects, which are still very much in evidence outside the Oslo area. Tolerance of regional speech in schools has been official policy since an education act of 1878. There are certainly phonological and phonetic differences between Norwegian varieties, but the differences that most strike native speakers are in intonation and in the morpho-lexis. To give a flavor of the very extensive morpho-lexical differences, Table 1 shows differences in the noun morphology in two neighboring dialects, those of Bergen and of the rural districts outside Bergen. These dialect differences may be found over a distance of as little as five miles.

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