PHONOLOGICAL VARIATIONS IN THE CONTEMPORARY ZAGREB DIALECT

Abstract

The paper presents a preliminary investigation of four phonological features with variations in the contemporary Zagreb dialect: loss of the devoicing of word-final obstruents, stress shift to the stem-final syllable of singular forms of neuter nouns such as ime and prezime, stress shift from the stem-final to the first syllable of adjectives with suffixes -sk- or -n- and elision of intervocalic consonants. The features are studied within a variationist sociolinguistic framework with the aim of investigating the prevalence of variants among speakers and identifying conceivable indications of an ongoing language change. The investigation is based on spoken material collected with the help of interviews, which has been analysed with respect to the participants’ age, gender, and socioeconomic status. The results indicate that the devoicing of word-final obstruents is rather well-represented among more mature speakers and poorly among the younger ones, pointing towards an ongoing loss of this feature. Singular forms of nouns such as ime and prezime with stress shifted to the stem-final syllable turned out to be a variant occurring sporadically in younger speakers, showing no indications of an ongoing change. Regarding the stress shift from the stem-final to the first syllable of adjectives with the suffixes -sk- or -n-, it has been revealed that is already a completed change in some adjectives, and that some adjectives with the relevant structure have not yet been affected by the shift, while others exhibit variation. The observed patterns indicate that the described shift may be an ongoing change affecting the adjectives with variation. Finally, the intervocalic consonant elision was noted very sporadically, and it shows no indications of an ongoing sound change.