This project consisted of an acoustic analysis of sound recordings of American Norwegian speech between 1942 and 2010. Results show that over the course of approximately 80 years based on speaker birth year (1879–1957) more English-like r’s occur over time at the expense of the Norwegian ‘rolled’ or ‘tapped’ r. An analysis of where these changes occur (i.e. before or after vowels, in combination with other consonants, etc.), however, shows that this increase only occurs with r before the consonants t, d, s, n, l. This suggests that although there is an English effect on Norwegian, it is constrained and, in fact, limited to an environment where there is a Norwegian sound alternation: t, d, s, n, l are often produced with the tongue bent up and back (or ‘retroflex’) after r, creating a type of sound similar to English r. It is like using an English tool to complete a Norwegian job.
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.
