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The Role Of Social Factors In The Dynamics Of Sound Change: A Case Study Of A Russian Dialect, Alexei Kochetov
The Role Of Social Factors In The Dynamics Of Sound Change: A Case Study Of A Russian Dialect, Alexei Kochetov
Alexei Kochetov
This article presents results of a sociolinguistic study of a Northern Russian dialect as spoken in a small rural community of Pokcha in the Western Urals, Russia. Because of a number of social influences, the dialect has been undergoing a rapid shift towards Standard Russian. The study examines two sound changes in progress: (1) a merger of unstressed mid back vowels and (2) a split of a post-alveolar fricative into two phonemes. The focus of the study is on the role of social factors—age, mobility, education, and sex—in determining the dynamics of the two rather different phonological processes.