Sociolinguistic Variation and Change of Enunciative Word-Final Schwa in Tamil English Spoken in Chennai, India
Keywords:
Tamil-English variety, word-final schwa, sociolinguistic variation, identityAbstract
Based on sociolinguistic interviews conducted among 30 mother tongue Tamil speakers, this paper analyses the variation and change of enunciative word-final schwa /ә/ in Tamil English variety spoken in Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu in India. The present study is motivated by our sociolinguistic compulsions to investigate this potential variable in the past literature. Linguistic constraints on the occurrence of the variable are first examined followed by the correlation of the speakers’ choice of its variants with internal and external factors to determine the direction of change. Results indicate that in addition to the significant substrate influence of Tamil, the variation in the feature is subject to social and style constraints displaying systematic social patterns of variation. It is also observed that word-final enunciative schwa in Tamil English, even though is in a state of progression, continues to exist as a linguistic tool that marks the identity of the speakers.
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