How New Speakers Are Rapidly Reshaping Minority Languages
A study of Kashubian, a minority Slavic language, shows that speakers learning the language as adults are driving accelerated grammatical changes. The finding has implications for language preservation efforts and suggests that how languages are transmitted—not just who speaks them—fundamentally shapes their evolution.
Originaltitel: Morphophonological Innovations in New Speakers’ Kashubian
<p>New Speakers of minority languages are a special case which gives us a unique glimpse into variation and change. In such cases, language change at an accelerated pace tends to lead to profound changes in the structure of the language. Such developments are observable in Kashubian, a minority Slavic language spoken in East Pomerania. For the purpose of this study, spoken data consisting of responses to video stimuli was collected from a group of Kashubian speakers. Chosen morphophonological developments were analysed, especially repatterning and vowel substitution in nouns and verbs, as well as phonemic mergers and their consequences for the morphological structure.</p>