Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AmNorSSC (American Norwegian Sound Systems and Language Contact)
Berichtszeitraum: 2019-09-01 bis 2021-08-31
By focusing on American Norwegian this project aims to advance the fields of language contact and language variation and change with a comprehensive study of bilingual sound patterns. In particular, this project investigates the extent to which American Norwegian speakers adopt speech sounds from English, and, if so, how those patterns change over time as these communities became more English-dominant. The results inform debates on the composition of bilingual grammar and the extent to which structures in one language, in this case sound systems, may or may not remain intact under intense contact with another. It thus contributes to the understanding of the human capacity for language in a broader sense.
American Norwegian speakers are typically elderly individuals who adopted English as a primary mode of communication during childhood or early adolescence. Accordingly, their speech patterns in both Norwegian and English provide critical evidence that enriches our understanding of the ways in which the language can and does change over the course of an individual’s lifespan. By building on theoretical approaches that unify phonological and language contact theories, this project constitutes a significant contribution to the field and facilitates future research on language acquisition and bilingualism, language processing, and language maintenance/attrition over the lifespan.
The overarching objectives of this project are to investigate the effects of Norwegian-English bilingualism on the American Norwegian sound patterns, and to what extent those effects are constrained by each language system.
In addition to an analysis of language variables, this project undertook an investigation into whether potential changes in social patterns contributed to increased English use in traditionally Norwegian-speaking communities in the American Upper Midwest. This research is in the framework of the Verticalization model of language shift, that posits that minoritized language communities undergo shift to the majority language when they become more dependent upon community-external social and economic structures. By drawing on US Federal Census records, rates of reported language use can be correlated with various verticalization metrics (e.g. who was monolingual in which language, what kind of work did they do, what institutions used which language(s), etc.) to examine trajectories social and linguistic changes over time. This work is still in progress, but as continued investigations on the social histories of these communities develops it will enrich not only our understanding of the social forces that contribute to community-wide patterns of language maintenance and shift, but also the social context for linguistic changes in the American Norwegian speech corpus.