
Full text loading...
Diglossia canonically refers to language situations with unequal attitudes towards a formal ‘H’ variety, connected to writing, and a colloquial ‘L’ variety, connected to everyday speech. This paper claims that variation that arises as a marker of diglossia can become dissociated from it and persist in the L variety, if it is sufficiently orthogonal to the writing system. With a sociolinguistic survey (n = 30), this paper examines five variables that were markers of quasi-diglossia in Eastern Cham in previous decades. Three of the variables continue to be stereotypes or shibboleths of diglossia, while the other two no longer exhibit any correlation with diglossia: the spirantization of r and the labial coarticulation of ŋ. The latter were changes from below that decoupled from diglossia, because they were sufficiently opaque to Cham script.
Article metrics loading...
Full text loading...
References
Data & Media loading...