This paper presents some of the linguistic changes that have occurred in recent times in the speech of the lower Dreta Valley (between Gornji Grad and Nazarje, where the Upper Savinja Valley dialect is spoken); these changes have largely taken the form of innovations. The research is based on the language of middle-aged speakers at the end of the 20 th and beginning of the 21 st century. This survey of recent developments in grammar, vocabulary and semantics is based on selected texts and published work contained in the dictionary of common nouns for the area in question, on my own personal competence and on the explicit statements of individual interviewees, as well as on linguistic studies of the area in question published over the last century or so. Taking into account extra-linguistic factors, one is able to obtain an overview of the turbulent linguistic changes to which the dialect, like other Slovene linguistic systems, is being exposed. The specific features of the speech under examination are, by and large, being wiped out with the introduction of more general non-dialectical (»supra-dialectal«) features.
|
