Phonological Description of the Local Speech of Zgornja Velka (SLA 364)

Abstract

The local speech of Zgornja Velka (Slovenian Linguistic Atlas, point 364) belongs to the Pannonian dialect group, or, more precisely, to the western Slovenske gorice sub-dialect. Two typical features of this speech are the loss of the tonemic opposition and the relatively late lengthening of the old and the new acute vowels in the non-final syllables. This process also occurred in the final or the only syllables and in the words with the shift-back stress. Consequently, the reflexes for these vowels differfrom those which were permanently long or circumflex. The result of this differentiation is the loss of the quantitative opposition. Among the e-vowels a specific reflex exists for the permanently long e (/e:i/), and among the o-vowels for the permanently long q.