Humanities and Social Sciences Colloquium - Laura Rupp

And then that went out of window: the fate of dialect features

While traditional English dialect forms have been declining, this has not led to a wholesale shift to Standard English. New dialect forms have also emerged, such as supraregional varieties or contemporary urban dialects. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we can demonstrate another innovative process whereby dialect speakers in fact maintain traditional dialect features by using them in a new grammatical or social function. The presentation of this phenomenon will be illustrated with the English dialect features of verbal –s and vernacular determiners. This apparent dimension of dialect maintenance contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of (language variation and) change, and complements the existing documentation of traditional dialects.