🚀 go-pugleaf

In 1991 I did some syncronic research on palatals and depalatalisation in a 
Norwegian dialect. The palatals were these:

/N/ - voiced prepalatal nasal
/L/ - voiced prepalatal lateral
/K/ - unvoiced prepalatal affricate
/G/ - voiced prepalatal affricate
/j/ - voiced mediopalatal approximant (or semivowel or glide or whatever)

Historically both /N/ and /L/ come from the corresponding alveolar or dental 
/n/ and /l/ in Old Norse. Although the palatals first were only the long 
allophones of the alveolars/dentals, they must now be considered to be 
seperate phonemes.

/K/, /G/ and /j/ are historically velars, the palatals now occuring at the 
end of a noun stem, but before the enclitic definite article (which in Old 
Norse always began with a front vowel). Thus the modern dialect has a 
morphophonologic alternation between velar and palatal:

/k(:)/ - /K(:)/  e.g.  /bu:k/ - /bu:Ka/  (book - the book)
/g:/   - /G:/    e.g.  /veg:/ - /veG:i/  (wall - the wall)
/g/    - /j/     e.g.  /sa:g/ - /sa:ja/  (saw - the saw)

However, in the "standard pronunciation" of Norwegian there is neither 
palatalisation of the alveolars/dentals nor of the velars, this being 
supported by the orthography. Hence the young speakers of the dialect have 
begun substituting the palatals with the original alveolars/dentals and 
velars.

I wanted to see which palatals that suffered the first death, and which that 
were most fit to live longer, and I observed 30 boys and 30 girls. One would 
expect the depalatalisation to show the same sex internal tendencies for all 
of the palatals, but it didn't. The girls were more reluctant to the change 
from palatal to velar than the boys, and the boys were more reluctant to the 
alveolar/dental depalatalisation than the girls. Or in other words: The 
typical boy would say /diN:a bu:ka/ ("that book") and the typical girl would 
say /din:a bu:Ka/, whereas an old speaker would say /diN:a bu:Ka/. (However, 
in summa the boys _did_ have the most palatals.)

So, we have observed that boys and girls treat each their half of the 
palatal sounds oppositely. If anyone on this newsgroup has any knowledge of 
similar cases, please mail me at jardar@swix.nvg.unit.no writing in English, 
German, Esperanto, Norwegian, Swedish or Danish.


-- 
Jardar Eggesboe Abrahamsen            "Ili rigardis min kiel sian
studanto pri lingvistiko               moralan chefon."
jardar@swix.nvg.unit.no                                (L.L. Zamenhof)