Analysis of the linguistic behaviour of ‘non-core’ speaker communities has shown itself to be a promising field for detecting trends and/or incipient stages of linguistic change and innovation (cf. Wiese & Rehbein 2016). This study is a first step towards identifying emerging patterns of variation in quotative markers.
Traditionally, research has focussed on native monolingual speaker variation to examine the complex system of constraints that encompass native speaker sociolinguistic competence. This contribution approaches linguistic variation from a different angle and analyses the use of quotative constructions among two generations of Bosnian migrants in a rural, strongly dialectal community in the Swedish-speaking part of Finland. The quotative repertoire of first-generation, non-native speakers of Finland Swedish is compared to that of their children – second generation, native speakers grown up in a bilingual (Finland Swedish - Bosnian) environment.
The two generations' choice of quotative markers is analysed regarding language-internal factors (quoted content, grammatical subject of quotative frame, tense context) as well as language-external factors such as gender. Qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal differences in quoting behaviour: While the first generation mainly resorts to traditional quotatives (such as säga (say) and fråga (ask)) and favours longer stretches of quoting involving frequent use of zero quotatives, the second generation shows a more varied repertoire and has even picked up on dialectal innovations. The quotative use of liksom (like), which is found exclusively among the first generation, is interpreted as the embracing of supra-local variants as this use is found in standard Finland Swedish and absent in the local dialect.
A comparison of two groups of speakers who share an L1 as home language but show different paths of acquiring the examined language (acquisition versus learning) will show the importance of the nature of linguistic input for getting a deeper understanding of sociolinguistic variation and which factors are operative as constraints in the choice of variants.
Davydova & Buchstaller 2015. Expanding the Circle to Learner English: Investigating Quotative Marking in a German Student Community. American Speech 90/4.
Wiese & Rehbein 2016. Coherence in New Urban Dialects: A Case Study. Lingua 172/173.
