Dialect vocabulary changes over 100 years. Standardization and new dialect forms in Hamaogi glossary

Abstract

Abstract This paper treats linguistic changes over a long time span, covering 100 years in terms of the birth years of the informants and over 250 years since the compilation of a dialect glossary. Data from seven generations about 20 years apart were acquired. We compare the absolute time of linguistic change in lexical items recorded in Hamaogi, a dialect glossary, with the results of a large-scale sociolinguistic survey in Tsuruoka City. For lexical phenomena, the change seems to be continuous over the 250 years. Lexical changes occurred in the feudal ages, after modernization, after WWII and even recently. New dialect is discussed as a symbol of language change in the opposite direction to language standardization. A “glottogram map” or “3D glottogram” presents concrete data of the spatial diffusion of the new dialect form, ganpo. We offer concrete observations of the development of new dialect, which is part of a language change in progress. More than 250 years seem to be necessary from the beginning to the end of a lexical change. This suggests that many dialect forms will remain until the 22nd century..