A Historical Dialectological Approach to Convergence: Isoglosses of Balkan Convergence Area Features in Albanian Dialects
Maynard, Kelly Lynne
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/82622
Description
Title
A Historical Dialectological Approach to Convergence: Isoglosses of Balkan Convergence Area Features in Albanian Dialects
Author(s)
Maynard, Kelly Lynne
Issue Date
2003
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Hock, Hans Henrich
Department of Study
Linguistics
Discipline
Linguistics
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Language, Linguistics
Language
eng
Abstract
This dissertation is a study of the Balkan convergence area. It is also a study of Albanian dialects. The features of the Balkan convergence area which are studied are: the formation of the future, the presence or absence of stressed schwa, phonemic long vowels, phonemic nasal vowels, and sound change involving nasals and rhotics. It also studies a feature that varies across Albanian dialects, that of word-final schwa. Using the methodology of dialect geography, this dissertation presents isoglosses of these six features in Albanian based on information culled from published grammars. Modern-day isoglosses of these same features, based on dialect interviews conducted in the summer of 2001, are also presented. Comparison between the two sets of isogloss maps can inform us about language-internal convergence feature spread. This way of studying the process of convergence, by detailed study of the spread of convergence features through speech communities, is called the historical dialectological approach to convergence areas. It differs from a simple dialectological study of Albanian because the data selected for examination are convergence features, or ones that facilititated convergence features to appear, and their exposition in the speech communities of Albanian can inform us how convergence works. This approach takes seriously the idea that in order to understand the process of convergence it is important to trace the spread of convergence features through a language's speech communities.
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