The Variable G jd. NA mn. of the feminine nouns of the vernacular of Crikvenica

Abstract

The paper presents the results of research of declension of feminine nouns of the vernacular of Crikvenica. The alternative endings in the genitive singular and nominative, accusative plural are governed by the stem-final consonant: if it is a palatal consonant, the ending -e is used, and if it is a non-palatal consonant, the ending -i is used. The research was conducted by two methods. On the one hand is a method that belongs to traditional dialectological research (using targeted questionnaires), while on the other hand a method that belongs to sociolinguistic quantitative research based on the approach to the Labov’s (and his sociolinguistic heritage) study of language changes and variability in language. The results of both studies yielded similar results: a) older informants mostly kept palatal and non palatal variant declension of feminine nouns in all three cases; b) predominance of palatal variant in all three cases is visible in all informants born in and after the 50’s of 20’th century with sporadic, random appearances of non palatal variant.

Keywords

• Čakavian dialect
• local vernacular of Crikvenica
• dialectology
• variational sociolinguistics
• feminine nouns
• declension