Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 441

439
endings -e and -et in the definite singular of neuter nouns
(.huse~kuset) or the alternative inflections of the verbs of the
first conjugation svara, -de, -t ~ svara, -0, -0. It is probable
that many of these features will prove to be socially distributed.
This is almost certainly the case with the suffixal allomorphs
-i and -t in the past participle of the second conjugation
(byggi ~ byggt), the z'-forms being avoided by speakers of higher
social status. Also, there is a strong indication that the choice
ofallophone of /e:/ [?:, e:, £:,§:, e:, æ:, æ:], when not followed
by /r/, as in áta, and of /0:/ [0:, 0:, œ:, œ:], when notfollowed
by /r/, as in köpa, is correlated with the social status of the
speaker. Speakers of higher social status seem to favor the
closer and, in the case of /e:/, unnasalized variants.
The truth of these hypotheses may be verified by an auditive
analysis, but for the description of some other interesting
phonetic characteristics of Eskilstuna speech, such as word
and sentence intonation, diphthongization, stress, and quan-
tity, an acoustic analysis is necessary.
Further Investigations
On the basis of the analysis of the material collected so far,
it is possible to follow up the project with supplementary
investigations. One of these would be to test a hypothesis
concerning the social stratification of certain phonological and,
particularly, morphological variables—among others, those
mentioned above—on a larger number of systematically
sampled informants. This could be done either by asking
them to describe pictures or comic strips designed to elicit
the desired words preferably in some sort of disguise, for
example, as a psychological or aesthetic test, or by playing
back recorded pairs of phrases, identical except for one single
unit (for example, han har byggt en villa i Mesta ~ han har byggi
en villa i Mesta), and asking the respondents which variant
they use themselves. Both procedures present diíficulties. No
matter how unambiguous a picture or a comic strip is, one