• Michael Daniel
  • Ruprecht Von Waldenfels
  • Aleksandra Ter-Avanesova
  • Polina Kazakova
  • Ilya Schurov
  • Ekaterina Gerasimenko
  • Daria Ignatenko
  • Ekaterina Makhlina
  • Maria Tsfasman
  • Samira Verhees
  • Aleksei Vinyar
  • Vasilisa Zhigulaskaja
  • Maria Ovsjannikova
  • Sergey Say
  • Nina Dobrushina

We analyze the dynamics of dialect loss in a cluster of villages in rural northern Russia based on a corpus of transcribed interviews, the Ustja River Basin Corpus. Eleven phonological and morphological variables are analyzed across 33 speakers born between 1922 and 1996 in a series of logistic regression models. We propose three characteristics for a comparison of the rate of loss of different variables: initial level, steepness, and turning point. We show that the dynamics of loss differs significantly across variables and discuss possible reasons for such differences, including perceptual salience, initial variation in the dialect, and convergence with regionally or socially defined varieties of Russian. In conclusion, we discuss the pros and cons of logistic regression as an approach to quantitative modeling of dialect loss. Our paper contributes to the study and documentation of Russian dialects, most of which are on the verge of extinction.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)353-376
Number of pages24
JournalLanguage Variation and Change
Volume31
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Oct 2019

    Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Education
  • Linguistics and Language

ID: 75584750