Sociolingüística en el ALEA: variable generacional y cambio lingüístico

Abstract

This paper aims at reviewing the information of sociolinguistic nature contained within the synthetic maps of the Atlas Lingüístico y Etnográfico de Andalucía, ALEA, volume VI (atlas concerned with the linguistic and ethnographic information found in the region of Andalusia). After establishing a more or less general framework about the different sociolinguistic variables that can be observed in these maps, it concentrates upon the specific variable dealing with changes related to generations. This task will be carried out in order to determine if, together with the application of the apparent time hypothesis, predictions drawn about linguistic changes in the Andalusian language could be fulfilled or not once fifty years in real time have passed. Thus, we try to evaluate that methodology as a procedure to predict the orientation of linguistic changes. The result obliges oneself to look at what the text calls apparent time weaken hypothesis, so that this mechanism only works for certain kind of linguistic change and just when its sense coincides with the marked by the vector of the resulting from such changes.