 Rhaid i gael ymlaen, Jonathan Caffa, ysgrifennu yma yng nghymru yma ar y barat, Jonathan ymlaen ymlaen i ymlaen ymwneud ymlaen ymwneud yn ysgrifennu, yw ymlaen i ddweud eich anhygoel a ffugenio a'r ymddangos ymddangos, ymlaen i ddweud eich anhygoel. Ymlaen i ymlaen, ymlaen i ddweud eich anhygoel, ymlaen i ddweud eich anhygoel a'r anhygoel. Dyna, dwi'n credu ddweud ym môr iawn. Dyna, ychydig y gallwch yn cael ei gwymau a rhannog ei gwybodol i ddweuddol yn Benchegon Ffrencwyll, yn yllafolio cyllidig, yn Lymon du Lyonau a Noes, Cantong o Alle yn Swân. Os yn y gallu reich i hwnnw y Llywodraeth a Llywodraeth bwysig yn yma, byddai'n rydyn ni ar hyn oabledillaryfio argymarfae y cyfeydd, oes cael credu'n bwysig yn Llywodraeth a Llywodraeth yn y pethau. Mae'r pwnmar yw'r cyfrinol wedi amlod yng Ngwysbeth. Mae'r cyfriner yn rhagor o'r pwnnw iawn, ac ond yn hynny'r Hyde, wedi'u cyfrinnol yng Nghyliss Aelodhei, ar yr yllun o'r Gy enseig. yr hyn byddai'r Gy enseig amllun gynto'r gynllewyr o'r cyfrinol bryd arnosnig a'r gylwgr yng nghylch O'r Llyfr Thyrm yn ffrontrwydd yn ystod yn ychydig o ddygodd i'r cysyllt yn yr argylchedd ynghyd o'r Gynllewyr. Ac here I will try to shed some light on their driving linguistic change and at the same time preventing complete language shift towards a standard French. I therefore propose the following presentation outline. I will begin by giving an overview of this much under studied language before introducing some theoretical considerations. Particularly, I will focus specifically on the concept of the new speaker because it is understood in the current body of sociolinguistic literature, before outlining the context of Fragole Po, It Brief ac yn ddweud y ddau'r ddau sy'n gyntaf ar y ffildwyr sy'n ddod i'r tynnu amser yn Llyfrgell yn 2012. Felly, o'n ffordd o'r rhan o'r ffordd, y Ffrancll Prowansal yn ysgol i'r ddau ffragmentadau ffrasigau a rhôl iawn, yn ysgol yn ysgol yn ysgol yn Ffrans, Swythysgol yn ysgol yn ysgol. Dy Asparau cymuno i'r ddweud o'r ddweud o gyda'r ddialogau o'r Ffrancelfolansal yw'r llangwydau heredig yn y parodau canadau a'r USA2, ac yn ymgyrch o'r Uneddiad Y Uneddiad Toronto, sy'n gwybod yng Nghymru. Yn gwybod, mae'r ddweud yn ffragmentu ac mae'r ddweud o'r gweithio ffair iaith 400 bydd ymgyrch Loyun mlogiol, carel, cynhwys i andysgol, ond chydydd gwych iawn. Fe ymwiel gennoch ymwiel iawn o'r cymdeithasol drwy'r'ig iawn o'r debat. Wrth gwrs, mae'r cwrm mwylo deithasol cael ei gynnalau gan cyllid, wedi aeth i Lywodraeth, Aceddaeth ymwyno i ymdweithio, i ysbryd o Gallais yn ysbryd ysbryd, ac i fyw o ddwyntau cymdeithasol ar y cwrm yn amgylchedd gyda Ielodraeth. Ono, un gynllun o'r cyfweld o'r ffordd ystod ystod y cyfweld yn rhywbeth yn cyfweld iawn, ond nes ydych chi'n cydwyd hwnnw, Ffrancfwr Pwylo'r Pwylo'r Ffrancfwr Sall, ac Ffrancfwr Pwylo'r Pwylo'r Pwylo'r Pwylo'r Pwylo'r Rheogon hefyd yn yn yr eich cyfweld yn y lleolol o unol ynghylch yn y llif yn y cyfweld. Yn y cyfweld yn rhaid i'r cyfweld, ynghylch y dyfodol, y numbers have been in decline for some time as language shift in the direction of regionally more dominant varieties takes place. Obviously, we have a context here where Franco-Poen Salle is not in contact with just one dominant language but several and regional varieties that have some higher prestige as well such as Occiton and in some cases Piedmonté. In France, speaker numbers are largely best guests as France holds no national census data collection for linguistic ac yn amser gennymau, mae'r cyfnodd yn cyd-ddi-gwyrd yn 50-60,000 cyfnodd yn allan. Mae'r hyn o'r cyd-ddi'r cyffredinol wedi'u cynnwys ymddangos cyffredinol ac mae'r cyfnodd yn bwydol yn ysgolol. Yn gyfnodd y Ffranc sy'n sylwadau ymddangos cyfnodd yn ystod o'r cyd-ddi-gwyrdd, yw'r cyfrannu cyfrannu yn brolygau'r cyfrannu. Felly, mae'r cyfrannu cyfrannu yn cael ei wneud yn ymlaen i gyfrannu'r cyfrannu. Ond, oherwydd, yn Ysgrifennu, y cyfrannu cyfrannu yn ymddir i'r cyfrannu sy'n defnyddio'n gael y cyfrannu, ond mae'n gweithio'n rhaid i'r cyfrannu. Mae Ysbytynol, mae'r dціwethaf, maen nhw'n ei ddechrau'r ddwylo yn ei ddweudio yng Nghymru, a'i ddweudio'r ddweudio ar y cyfnodau yn 16,000 yma ar gyfer. Yn Ysbytynol, mae'n gweithio'r ddweudio'r cyfnodau'r ddweudio'r ddweudio ar gyfer yn y dyfodol yng nghymru, ac yn y gallu ysbytynol, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r ddweudio'r ddweudio'r ddweudio that the other tongue transmission still takes place. For this reason, our status is seen very much as an idyllic citadel, if you like, for remaining speakers in the eyes of most native speakers that I've met over the years during the course of my field work. Aside from Oesden then, however and in general, Fonkel Pwmolsaal can accurately be described as undergoing what Camelol Monsol call gradual death, as speaker numbers have been, have by and large been, in terminal decline for some time. Felly, mae'n cael i'r ffordd, rydyn ni'n gysylltu i'r Ffrancow Pruansal o'r ffrancow yw'r ffrancow ond yn ni gynwys i'n Ffrancow. Felly mae'n gysylltu i'r ffordd, yn gyffredinol a cymdeithasol yn 1999 yw Llang de France, y ffranz. Felly, rydyn ni'n gwybod y ffranz i'r ffranz i'r ffranz i'r rhannu cyfewdd i'r llartafol o bwysigol ffrancow yw'r gweithio, languages, which it is claimed would fundamentally conflict with the French Constitution. Therein it says that the language of the Republic is French. In Switzerland, multilingualism is safeguarded by Article 116 of the Constitution, which stipulates that German, French, Italian and Romance are the regional languages of Switzerland, whereas German, French and Italian are official languages of the Confederation. This differentiation between regional languages on the one hand and official languages on the other has important implications, obviously, for the level of prestige associated with the former. For example, Romance is not an official language, and therefore it cannot be employed in Parliament, in administration, in the judicial process, or in secondary or higher education. Interestingly, Franco Provençal is distinctively absent from the article, and therefore has no official status as it were at all. That being said, Article 4 does guarantee that the right to express oneself in one's own language is one of the rights of man, and that no one can be discriminated on these grounds. Therefore, while provision for Franco Provençal provisions are not explicitly guaranteed by Swiss Federation, there is a much greater tolerance towards linguistic diversity in Switzerland in general. Further, the individual Swiss cantons have significant autonomous oversight when it comes to regional languages. In the case of the Canton Valley, where vitality of Franco Provençal is much higher than anywhere else in Switzerland, provisions are afforded by the regional council. Moreover, unlike in France, Switzerland has no laws forbidding Franco Provençal in the public domain or in the media, and television programmes with components on Franco Provençal are regularly found on channels like Canon enough. Franco Provençal is spoken in several regions of Italy, and thanks to a number of laws, it is guaranteed some protection and provision. However, speakers of Franco Provençal number in the hundreds outside of the Aosta Valley. It's only in the Aosta Valley where it is found in schools and even then only at primary level. Broadly, then, Franco Provençal status, transnationally, can be described at best as ambiguous. In all its guises, though, there is no accepted or for graphical norm, and where Franco Provençal is written, it is found most commonly in highly localised phonetic spelling systems, as some might expect. Historically, as a distinctive and coherent grouping, Franco Provençal has traditionally commanded little acceptance in the romance literature generally. It was first proposed by an Italian linguist in 1878 who attempted to demarcate these varieties principally on the grounds of just one phonological feature, the change in vocaliate quality of Latin tonic 3a in certain contextually conditioned instances. So, these isoglosses bunched up here, separating Franco Provençal from northern French. Here, Franco Provençal maintains Latin tonic 3a, whereas in many of the varieties found, the Langdeuil area, you get a shift up to an e or an e sound. So, something like Pré in French would have its equivalent in Franco Provençal, Prà. The bunching of isoglosses down here, conversely, we find a raising of Latin tonic 3a, which differentiates it from the Occitan varieties. So, in a context such as Vache, a cow, you get something like Vache or Vathy in Franco Provençal, whereas Latin tonic 3a is maintained in the Occitan varieties. So, principally on the grounds of just one phonological feature, this grouping was proposed and has since not really been accepted. As a result of this very narrow definition, the demarcation of these varieties has traditionally been considered illegitimate and repeatedly called into question. There has traditionally been little overall acceptance on what exactly Franco Provençal is or how it can be defined. For linguists, then, the legitimacy and borders of these varieties has long been the subject of some debate and this debate has largely entirely bypassed speakers themselves, obviously, who have never knowingly felt to be part of the same larger linguistic unit and it is often the claim that there is little overall sense of linguistic identity. This label Franco Provençal as a scientific construct means little, if anything, to these speakers, which suggests some sort of French Provençal hybrid. As such, it's an entirely common finding amongst traditional speakers of Franco Provençal that they have only ever known their language in an entirely affectionate way, of course, as Petois and where there is instead an emphasis on the ultra-local. Highly-likalised variation is the obsessive interest of these traditional speakers, as Dorian once said, I think it was. So, these traditional native speakers then have no interest in long-term preservation I've found in my own field work if it means some sort, some form of standardisation that they're vehemently opposed to. This attitude towards revitalisation can be contrasted with emerging new speakers in the region who take a very, very different view. So, just a quick word on the notion of the new speaker then. I'm sure we'll hear familiar at least with Nancy Dorian's work on the proficiency continuum of speakers, where in the early 80s she posited three categories of speaker that could be mapped to a client of obsolescence. These were older fluent speakers, younger fluent speakers and semi-speakers. As some sort of linguistic attrition is often said to be characteristic of semi-speakers, this latter category is viewed conventionally as potential harbingers of language deaf in Alexandra Yaffa's work. Building on the work of Dorian and others, new speakers are a novel category of speaker that has been the subject of a pretty significant study most recently. There's even a European Cooperation in Science and Technology focus group dedicated to new speaker research and what they can bring to endangered language communities. These speakers then, Alexandra Yaffa, describes as evoking an upward movement away from language shift rather than an inevitable downward slope. Studies that have taken place on these speakers most recently tend to describe them invariably as predominantly middle class, well-educated, urban dwelling, highly politicized. In sharp contrast to traditional native speakers, these individuals typically acquire the minority language as an intellectual exercise rather than via the home. Owing to the fact that these speakers can produce variants that are far removed from traditional norms, there is a certain amount of linguistic insecurity that is reported between both native speakers and new speakers. These so-called new speakers of Franco-Prançal are now beginning to emerge out of the revitalization movement with a number of goals orientated towards more favorable language planning policies which they wish to achieve by seeking out a more global linguistic identity for the region, wider recognition, increased literacy. In stark contrast to traditional native speakers, these individuals tend to be middle class, as I've said, well-educated, highly politicized individuals. Moreover, quite unlike native speakers who form dense, close-knit networks, these speakers are geographically dispersed and maintain contact amongst themselves predominantly over the internet, aside from the few occasions where they meet for the purpose of language activism. Therefore, their networks might be said to be characteristically weak. In an attempt to forge a more distinctive pan-regional identity, the new speakers that are referred to here have re-baptized their language under the alternative label Arpitant, which they argue is less confusing than the label Franco-Prançal, which, as I've said, simply suggests a mix of both French and Provençal. This is even satirized on social media platforms among the more active members. The label Arpitant is actually borrowed from a Marxist group called the Arpitani movement from the Aosta Valley in the 70s, whose original manifesto, too, curiously enough, also alludes to linguistic unification of the region. Unlike the vast majority of traditional speakers, then, these Arpitaniists see a common unity in the dialects of the region, and they campaign actively to diffuse this term as widely as possible, along with a proposed unified multidilectal orphography termed Reference Orphography B, which is viewed by Arpitaniists as vital to the future of the language. However, this orphography has been heavily criticized by both speakers and linguists in the region for its oversimplification and arbitrary selection of forms, which often, it is argued, will not represent a large number of Franco-Prançal varieties. Arbia is not based on any one prestige variety, nor is it all accepting, as prescribed by the concept of polynomial, for example, as tried and tested on the island of Corsica. It instead foregrounds etymology among its most important criteria for variant selection, and it is heavily influenced by standard French. It's also noteworthy that Arpitani speakers will advocate that they do not seek pan-regional linguistic standardisation and are happy to tolerate variation so long as orthographic conventions are followed. Interestingly, however, we find in Arbia a set of recommended pronunciations for non-native speakers who seek a standard Franco-Prançal pronunciation. Is this then standardisation proper by the back door? So let's take an example. How does Arbia deal with a linguistic feature such as L-palatalisation? So a feature that has a very wide array of possible surface forms in Franco-Prançal. So in short, L-palatalisation refers to the palatalisation of lateral approximants in on-set consonant clusters containing an initial obstruent plus lateral segment. While L-palatalisation is not uncommon in Romance, we find in Franco-Prançal a large amount of highly localised phonological variation. How then does Arbia approach this particular feature? In short, it prescribes a palatal lateral approximate as the recommended pronunciation, which is represented by a double L graphene, and this variant is recommended for all five obstruent plus lateral clusters. Interestingly, the author justifies this choice because it's supposedly the majority pronunciation in Franco-Prançal. However, even a cursory examination of dialectal atlases for any number of Franco-Prançal regions in France, at least, suggests that this is not the case. This is significant if we consider that the greatest number of Franco-Prançal speakers come from the French side. It's also significant that the authors have arbitrarily selected a variant that comes from the Aosta Valley largely. As I said, Aosta is lauded in the FPE, the Franco-Prançal communities, as the citadel of the language, and it's noteworthy that most speakers would sooner align their own linguistic practices with those speakers of the Aosta Valley than dialect speakers just a few kilometres up the road. This is a finding that I found time and again during my field work that they would sooner align their practices with those of Aosta than they would with their neighbour. To summarise, on the one hand we find in the context of Franco-Prançal a traditional native speaker base in terminal decline. These speakers we have seen have never knowingly felt to be part of the same linguistic unit. There is an obsessive interest in highly localised variation and standardisation is fiercely opposed. On the other we find an emerging group of new speakers who favour instead a pan-regional linguistic identity and a multi-dialectal orphographical norm and we've seen that this norm proposes a series of standard Franco-Prançal pronunciations. Next we shift our attention to actual language use, where we will be asking what these disparate speakers actually do. In particular we will ask in which direction do new speakers move towards native speakers, towards native speaker variants or towards something else. We can also ask what native speakers themselves do. Is there an awareness of ORB? Does it carry any prestige in the native speaker community? Do they continue to maintain highly localised forms that is so characteristic of Franco-Prançal? These are also possible questions. First just a quick word on methodology. In France I conducted fieldwork in the regions of Le Monde du Lyonais, which forms part of the department of Renalpe. The fieldwork sites are all peri-urban and converge on the city of Lyon, France's so-called second city. As regional dialect levelling is now widely reported in most northern French cities, change in a major conurbation like Lyon might well be expected. I also conducted fieldwork in the Canton Valley in Switzerland. Similar to the Lyon context, valley is made up of a number of isolated rural communities, though incredibly mountainous. That will converge on a regional centre of some description, Sion. However today I'll be focusing primarily on the Lyonais data. Speech samples were collected from three categories of speakers with very different acquisition routes. In France 16 native speakers were sampled who had acquired Franco-Prançal through intergenerational mother tongue transmission two late speakers were also sampled who had acquired Franco-Prançal later in life, but still in the family setting. Lastly, three new speakers were included who fit the profile that we've been describing. All three were university educated, had acquired Franco-Prançal in a purely educational context. This sampling methodology was then applied to the Swissfield work sites as well. To elicit both monitored and unmonitored speech styles, I conducted semi-structured sociolinguistic interviews with speakers individually and in L1, L2 mixed groups. For the individual interviews, structured elicitation tasks were included, which were constituted word lists, reading passages, composed in both a traditional Franco-Prançal dialect or phography and ORB, this new norm. Owing to the small size and relative social homogeneity of the communities we're talking about, I also elicited sociometric data by essentially asking the speakers about their daily associations in an attempt to try and map their network to some degree. So while this wasn't strictly speaking a social network study proper, it was used in an attempt to try and enhance the analysis of variants. So for the linear community, which we'll be focusing on here, essentially this is a depiction of the network and the data that I had at the time, and it maps them in terms of their primary associations with each other, how often they see each other, how often they talk to each other, and so on. And essentially these three highlighted speakers here are the new speakers who sit outside of the larger network. This late speaker here also had very limited contact with the larger network too. So mostly here we've got all native speakers who were able to name each other in interview, and essentially this is how I also ended up recruiting my participants as per the work done by Leslie Norroy and people since. So for our dependent factor, we'll be looking at one of the phonological variables from my PhD, which we've already mentioned, so variation in the realisation of l-palatilisation in Franckol Provençal. As I've said, in Franckol Provençal, l-palatilisation can in theory occur in all five possible obstruent plus lateral clusters, which is particularly in variety spoken in parts of Switzerland, the York Savoie, and places like that, where numerous highly localised variants are attested in the literature. However, this is not the case for a large area on the French side, where instead we very often tend only to find palatilisation in the vela plus lateral clusters. So for the Lyonnais sites, the 1950s Atlas data that we have tells us that l-palatilisation should only take place in the vela plus lateral sets and in the labial sets. These data come from Pierre Gardet's Atlas linguistique ethnographique du Lyonnais, where map points 40, 40, 142 correspond more or less closely to my own field worksites, though they're not exactly, so these aren't exactly the same location, so really this is more of an approximation. As we can see, the expected variant, according to the Atlas for l-palatilisation, is the median approximate, or YOD, in the vela sets and a clear lateral approximate in the labial sets. So, onto my own data. All of the 1,300 or so tokens in the corpus for l-439 were elicited in all five upstream plus lateral clusters for all three speaker types and across all styles in Lymon du Lyonnais. I should stress, however, that the data are very fragmentary, as there are unequal numbers of speakers in each field worksite. There were very few females, unfortunately, in general in these areas, and not all speakers could sit both the group interviews and the structured elicitation tasks given the age and frailty of many of them at the time. So rigid statistical modelling of these data is therefore very difficult, and these methodological issues are not uncommon in obsolescent dialect settings such as this. Some caution is therefore again needed in deriving conclusions from these data. So, recall that we expect palatalisation in the vela clusters but not in the labials. To give us some idea of what these sound like, I had some clips here that I wanted to play. So, this is a male-nated speaker. Lukas. So, a straightforward vela plus y odd. Yes. A female? Lukas. So, the data reveal then that among the native speakers we find zero palatalisation in the labial sets just as the historical evidence suggested. These speakers are therefore maintaining the distinction between vela and labial clusters. However, if we focus on the data from the labial sets, we do not find categorical palatalisation but instead a 50-50 split between the median approximants and the lateral approximants which requires a bit of discussion. In short, however, the data didn't show any patterning according to the macro-level social variables such as sex or age which isn't at all surprising given the relative social homogeneity of the community under investigation as I suggested. However, the style of the speech event did flag up as having a possible interaction. So, the graph here gives overall frequencies, just raw frequencies in the vela sets only, and shows on the x-axis the field worksites explored in the study with the graph faceted by a speech style, so casual speech and structured elicitation tasks. First, we can see that this is a low frequency variable in the casual style, but there are nearly no palatalised tokens at all. Conversely, for the word list, we find much greater frequency of palatalised tokens. However, we also find unpalatalised laterals in these clusters too. Therefore, when these L1 speakers are monitoring their speech, we get a higher rate of palatalised tokens, but with significant variation, and when there is less monitoring, palatalisation drops to near zero. In terms of an explanation for this, the most obvious one would be to suggest that there is some convergence taking place with standard French where L does not undergo palatalisation before an obstrant. This limited data that I do have here would appear to support this as we find that those sites found closest to the Loire, the periphery of the Franco-Polansale speaking zone, show much lower palatalisation rates. Though, again, the Saint-Saint-Foyren fieldwork site here on the far left, the data only come from two speakers, so I mean this is the best tentative stuff. Turning to the late speaker data, as just two mails were sampled and only a very small number of tokens were elicited, we can't really make much of this, but it's noteworthy, or nonetheless noteworthy, that late speakers show similar patterns with their reference group. In other words, palatalisation in the labials with some variation in the, sorry, no palatalisation in the labials, but some palatalisation in the velas. It's in the new speaker data where we can make some particularly interesting observations. First, like both the native and late speakers, we can observe the use of both the lateral approximate and the median approximate in the vela clusters. In this sense, then, they produce similar forms to the native and late speakers. Secondly, while the token numbers remain small, we can observe that the new speakers are the only category to extend palatalisation from velasets to labials. Unlike the native speakers and the late speakers sample for this region. So in this case, they differ. However, what is perhaps most interesting is that we find in the data a number of palatalised lateral tokens as well, behind that, I think. There we go. So a number of palatalised lateral tokens too. So just to try and give the difference here between the two. So this is a male, a one speaker for a velaset, as we heard previously. Lukjosh. And then a voiced equivalent. Yes. And then the palatalised lateral. Lukjosh. So a distinct difference in the palatalisation. Glyasi. So glyasi, glyasi. Moreover, when the new speaker data are broken down further by individual participants we can see that the palatalised lateral has come from just one speaker in the Leonis sample overall, participant A1823. In addition, the palatalised variants only occur in the elicitation tasks and no tokens were recorded in group interviews much like the native speakers. So what reasoning can we advance for the emergence of this palatalised reflex in the data? We could argue that this might be an example of what Peter Trudgill has called an inter-dialectal form. After all, this speaker has standard French as an L1 where palatalisation in this context does not occur. And the dialectal feature for this region we have seen is the median approximate. Alternatively, we could argue that this form has come about in the data as a result of some influence from the ORB orthography. Recall that the palatal lateral approximate has been selected as the recommended pronunciation for this variable. While I'm not obviously making the claim here that the palatal lateral and the palatalised lateral are the same thing, we might argue that A1823 is distanciating himself from the dialectal form for this area and for lack of a palatal lateral approximate phoneme in the speaker's phonological inventory has produced instead a phone that to this speaker might approximate more towards an arpitant norm. Recall that as a new speaker this individual employs far more frequently in the written form and therefore ORB may be having some impact linguistically. To try to account for this I devised an arpitant engagement index on the basis of six indicators that might show how strongly these speakers are connected to a larger revitalisation movement and how this might relate to language use so the factors were labels of varieties such as Patoir rather than Patoir acquired Franco-Pran Sal in an educational setting reads Franco-Pran Sal literature from other regions uses Franco-Pran Sal on the internet and engages in language activism and participates in crucially the arpitant movement itself. Those speakers scoring in a range of five to six for these indicators would suggest very strong level of engagement. Again although the data are very fragmentary and limited we have some tentative evidence that suggests that engagement in the arpitant movement might be acting as a reinforcement mechanism or rather an enforcement mechanism for what these speakers see as an alternative norm. Table six is showing here that only those new speakers that scored between five and six have produced palatalised laterals or palatalised in the labial plus lateral sets something that again we wouldn't have expected for this region. By way of some conclusion then we've seen that quite unlike France's other regional languages Franco-Pran Sal has long been viewed as an illegitimately demarcated notion by linguists and speaker numbers have been dwindling for some time. We've seen some evidence today to suggest that linguistic convergence might be taking place among the traditional native speakers in the direction of the dominant language. However I've also suggested that emerging new speakers might well stem the flow of language shift. These highly politicised individuals have adopted a novel approach to revitalisation by effectively rebranding the language for themselves in an attempt to recreate a pan-regional arpitant identity as an approach. They also support a multi-dialectal orphography that interestingly does not necessarily adopt variants of the widest currency. I try to demonstrate with very limited data here that these individuals are capable of producing variants that can diverge quite drastically from traditional norms. In the case of the variable discussed today by examining these speakers' associations and participation in the arpitant movement I've suggested that an alternative norm might emerge over time and so these very few tokens might better be described in Peter Trudgyll's terms as vestigial variants representing the early seeds of change which might indeed come to be a norm in the future particularly given the obsolescence of the language and assuming that numbers of native speakers can grow from this particular movement. Thank you very much. Sorry, I don't quite follow. I'll evaluate it right, sorry, excuse me. I found an interesting context I mean I know I didn't speak about the Swiss sites today but between the French and the Swiss side in my interviews with the FP speakers on the French side there wasn't really much reaction at all because there wasn't really much contact between the two. As I said based on the data when native speakers and new speakers came together and by the way that was really difficult to work to get to actually work new speakers didn't produce these features but interestingly native speakers as the data suggested didn't palatalise at all either so I've suggested that this might be a stage in phonological levelling because it seems to be sensitive to style in some way. On the Swiss side there was much more contact between new speakers and native speakers but there was also significant stigmatisation of new speaker forms so in an article that I've just submitted to General Multilingualism Multicultural Development I argue that on the Swiss side because they are so protective of highly localised variation they are unwilling to or they're unwilling to accept not only new variants and new practices but new speakers in general I found significant reticence between the two groups they were very much as Bernadette O'Rourke says sociolinguistically incompatible in that sense the interview recordings, the qualitative data were very revealing in that sense that they weren't prepared to accept new speaker practices new norms they don't tolerate mistakes and really it was interesting because they said that they would much rather that they didn't try it's like they want to be the ones that nail them thus nail in the coffin as it were which is bizarrely paradoxical but I'm sure relevant to many other obsolescent language contexts quite right but that wasn't I didn't find any of this on the French side interestingly now I wonder if that's because the tip towards shift is so much further along the line than in the Swiss side where there's still relative vitality and you get I was astonished going into the Swiss side after the French side finding speakers in the street whereas in France I spent a lot of time trying to get into these communities and recruit participants so on the Swiss side it was much more vitality on the French side there really wasn't and it is very much in terminal decline and I do wonder whether that played a factor that played a part sorry in the difference between the two I didn't do any data collection for this on the Valdos side that's part of a project that hopefully I'll get funding for coming up but as I said in Aosta the situation again is very different you find the greatest number of speakers per total regional population you find it in schools there's to some degree regional norms and there's intergenerational mother tongue transmission so I would imagine that on the Aosta side things are very different this is what makes it a particularly interesting I think socio-linguistic context because you have an endangered language that is spoken across these free states and things are being played out very differently so I would imagine and I would expect things to be very different on that side too so that's to come basically absolutely absolutely yeah absolutely I mean there's a particularly interesting one because in the Savoie region which is part of the French side you have these militant movements called things like Savoie Libre Free Savoy and they see in these isolated areas this common language and this common ethnicity if you like and they militate for separation from the state and to have their language put into schools and things like that and I would imagine that there isn't much of a willingness to accept that they're part of a larger unit actually and ar fitanist that I've spoken to in contact with people from places like Savoie seem to suggest this you know that they're punting this alpine identity and you know some people are like well hang on that's not us so you get these interesting dynamics emerging from that yes so it was proposed by an academic obviously a linguist who was himself from the region he wrote an iteration of it which he published in 98 and it was sort of adopted in the early 2000s by this movement that I refer to it was then obviously built on for ORB which formed part of his doctoral thesis at Pariset I think so it's one of those it's very similar to the Breson context in many ways in that you've got a norm that's being adopted by an academic elite that's being propagated here it's not come from the people as it were and as I said there is massive opposition to it when you get down to speakers on the ground and this is something that they're trying to push against but I do this is yeah this is what I mean so you increasingly find these clashes that sort of regional dialect festivals that take place annually they come together and you get these these oppositions as it were in this discourse it's quite fascinating but yeah effectively ORB is an academic construct if you like that has been used there's some understanding on the part of the movement that uses it that this language is going to go if we don't do something about it so they're willing to tolerate variation as it were as long as people stick to the written medium but as I've said if they're going to punt a standard pronunciation by the back door as well it's not really honest I guess ORB, no far from it it only really is used by language militants that belong to this Arpiton movement if you were but it's interesting that they tend to be the loudest ones because if you go online for example this is where you find the majority of them and you find interesting situations where Arpiton is now quite prominent on places like Wikipedia F no log, no longer use Franco Provençal as a label they use Arpiton so where their loudest is online and that appears to be leading to some kind of change in that respect the only others that I've okay so in terms of new speakers so the only other context that I can think of from my particular field work is when I was doing field work in Valais I found this opposition the competing communities of new speaker practices if you like in that either you belongs to this movement that propagates ORB believes in this notion of Arpiton this wider identity or you believe very firmly in what's local so some new speakers actually adopt the views of the native speakers and they're quite happy to say I'm not interested in anything else I learnt this because it's part of me it's part of my local community and that's what I want to learn I think my younger speaker was 19 and I had it on record as suggesting this which suggests that new speakers aren't like a homogenous unit of their own you get a lot of these interesting dichotomies taking place I suppose within that notion of new speakerism I guess okay yeah so from what perspective so as I said in Aosta things are slightly different because it's an autonomous region and this is where the greatest number of speakers are do you mean elsewhere in Italy like in Falto and Celle de Vito places like that because it's spoken in different distant and disparate places even northern Italy or southern Italy outside of Aosta speakers number in the hundreds and I've not done any field work there it's an interesting question actually I'm not entirely sure certainly in Aosta as I've suggested the context is again rather different that's a polite way of putting it that's polite still yeah it's certainly possible I would suggest that the militants that I'm talking about here are actually more active on the ground in Switzerland where they don't have that problem so the network data that I had for Switzerland suggested that new speakers were more integrated in the local communities were more active on the ground as it were then they were in France so I wouldn't suggest that that's actually a factor I'm not from the region yeah yeah yeah okay yeah I mean I don't know looking back how I did that I mean I started working on these communities in 2010 while I was a student and at that time I relied very heavily on colleagues at Université Lyon 2 who work on these communities as well and that was an entry point as it were and I kind of I went from there basically a couple of students were what I called at the time neo locuteur so new speakers too so once I sort of met a few and I started asking them about their associations with others it was quite easy to get into the communities transport was a massive issue can't get anywhere really in Valais in a car sorry on a bus you need to drive round so in terms of accessing the communities I relied on local dialect associations on universities who are quite active in these communities and I went from there basically yeah well Switzerland was slightly easier as I said you could walk around the street and hear the news to it at all well I mean you joke but I remember this vividly this occasion where I was walking around with one of my new speakers and there was a situation where we were sort of in the road and there were these artisan workers sort of drinking wine and sort of went up to them and often in Valais if you have someone's last name that's enough to get you very far because they have like seven last names and that's it I'm not sure why and that was a lot easier from that perspective getting participants in France was much much harder because they're so isolated you can only get a bus that gets these communities like twice a day it was a lot more difficult but no I couldn't have done this without early on the efforts of Lyon du and local dialect associations that were quite happy to accommodate me so thanks to them I guess yeah I mean this is sort of part of ongoing research as it were in the wider sort of new speaker network community of academics that are interested in these sorts of things I mean I can only really talk from my own experiences some feel a sense of attachment to this this larger unit because they come from some part of the area not necessarily from the community itself but some part of the area others feel disdain at the fact that this language hasn't been passed down to them and therefore feel like they need to take it up that they should there are a wide number of reasons why one might adopt an endangered language as a new speaker academic interest is another one that's been cited so varied and complex the higher the fluency yeah I could believe that I mean especially in sort of Switzerland where the communities are so difficult to get to I mean I remember at one point driving through a vineyard something that felt fairly vertical I wouldn't be surprised because they're so isolated I mean it's astonishing I guess as a young scholar trying to do this sort of thing you don't expect in this day and age that that's going to be a problem and it is in terms of access I mean so some of these communities where some of the speakers came from especially in Switzerland you found the most interesting characters not I don't know about the highest but certainly the hardest to get to yeah definitely sure yeah I mean I would imagine that there's something to be said for that definitely who's they oh right so right right I would say no so the literature suggests that in some cases yes in some cases but it's never really clear I haven't done any research myself on how mutually intelligible these things are I'm talking about a study further down the line on dialectometrics to try and work out in some scientific way how mutually intelligible they are speakers like I said depends very much on who you ask very often there's an unwillingness to understand the neighbour you know a neighbour opposition that sort of thing is probably part of it yeah yeah could you just use it in Switzerland oh right so in terms of my well no no not at all so from my perspective as an L2 speaker these things are wildly different incredibly complicated and I was banging my head against the wall on a number of occasions because as I said part of my methodology was I'd get them speaking individually and then in groups so very often in groups you've got to be the one to direct the conversation so you want to do your best to try and speak in dialectometrics that took some tuning of the ear and I was grateful once I'd met some of my participants that were happy to sort of do the directing and me sort of sit in the background so no when I was trying to acquire or even passively some some knowledge of FP in Switzerland it took a lot of work I don't know whether native speakers would say that they're mutually intelligible those that I've asked have said no but there's no real scientific data evil way so that's an interesting that's an interesting question do you demarcate borders for this language based on just one phonological feature that happens to fit that's a very good question who are these borders for this is something that James Castor and Michel Berre talked about at some length the jury's out on that one as far as I'm concerned it's a difficult one to get one's head around okay right so the new speakers that I met in Lyon were taking evening classes that were offered by a local dialect association interestingly those classes didn't take place with pedagogy that was written with ORB when I'd come back so I did my first battlefield work in 2010 when I came back I'd learned that both so two of the new speakers that I met in 2010 had stopped the classes and put things on by themselves on the Swiss side it was a combination of again associations putting out pedagogy written locally that they could pick up and learn for themselves these things as I said amongst new speakers take place predominantly online anyway so I guess it's as one would teach one's self a language by by themselves in a number of cases the criteria is it's not passed down intergenerationally so there's some educational context or some pursuit that's academic are there on the French side I found it very difficult to find any material myself there isn't a lot at all on the Swiss side you've got more active dialect associations that put out literature that spend money from the regional council because of their approach to multilingualism so that there is some and where there is some you often find younger speakers taking up these classes out of interest but it's faculty 30 if it's not part of the curriculum the national curriculum in any way so it's optional don't know if that answers your question okay so in my yeah it's I wasn't making the suggestion that they were fluent speakers the fluency is extremely variable they tend to be a lot more competent in writing than they are in spoken which is why I had such a hard time getting new speakers and native speakers together in the same room but in my group interviews I found that the new speakers were able to produce engage in a discussion wherever you call it fluent I'm not entirely sure what I mean in that context but what I need to establish fluency well yeah I mean I was interested in very specific features and I don't think you necessarily need fluency to make the kind of suggestions that I'm making here that a potential putative learner norm is having some impact on oral fluency when they're the ones using it in writing if you see what I'm saying so in an interview I felt that they were producing coherent conchal porwansal as I understood it and the variable that I was interested in was being elicited so that was enough of a leap for me well not yeah I can see that that's a problem and that's not something that I was able to tackle or deal with but it's an interesting point that I take yeah I've said the majority of the time you speakers will be using this online so amongst themselves in the same ways I guess you use any other language when they come together it's usually a specific context usually language activism of some description usually a dialect association of some kind so there are specific purposes I mean people talks about the post vernacular culture of conchal porwansal that has become more performative than anything else so yeah limited oh right so I've been told that they do it Bruce Guy but I haven't seen it myself so it's predominantly social media actually yeah so stuff like indigenous tweet that sort of thing Facebook there are translations that are being worked on you know for Facebook things like that yeah yeah interestingly the ORV that's being punted here yeah yes oh always I can't tell you always there was variability in both all I'm saying that for my data there was no palatalisation whatsoever in the native speaker category only in the new speaker category did you find palatalisation in labials not categorical though there is an argument perhaps that it's an allergy sure but what's interesting is the new speakers do it the native speakers don't and what's also interesting is that sorry well that might be a possibility I'll suggest that ORVs having some impact because in terms of an orthography you get this 2L thing with all five obstruents yeah oh to begin with well I mean what you mean in terms of yeah I mean yeah this is what I'm saying so they've not gone for the variant of widest currency here which by my understanding is as a median approximate they've gone for something that's very like a Austin variety now that's probably telling in of itself you know the 1930s literature I mean this is not very well documented at all so the 1930s literature that I've read suggests that the palatal lateral approximate was a feature of one or two dialects in Switzerland for example but had since been levelled out it is still found in Aosta so there's probably something going on there as well it's not a coincidence sorry right so it depends in France you don't get palatalisation at all of labials except in sorry yeah exactly the closest you get to the Swiss side the more like you are to find palatalisation in labial sets yeah yeah well what I'm saying is if you look at the atlas data from at least the 50s there's no palatalisation in the labial sets at all you know from the edge of the Lyuney area right through to the Ode Savoy area which is sort of getting into almost Swiss territory there so obviously we're talking about a dialect continuum if you like but there's no reason to suggest why these new speakers should be producing palatalisation in labial sets and what's interesting is the kind of variant that they opt to choose or at least in one or two cases isn't a yard but it's something approximating another kind of variety now is it influenced from another variety is it influenced from ORB as a norm I'm saying that both are possible it's written so yeah so obsturant plus 2Ls and they understand that that 2Ls means yes where does that come from? generalisation I would imagine because well what I'm arguing here is that they cherry picked features so they've gone this is a grassroots form from this part and we quite like that variety so we're gonna import that it's definitely arbitrary definitely and this isn't again unlike many other new speaker contexts that describe these sorts of phenomena yeah I've heard that one before well precisely and if you look at the Swiss side where as I was saying they're quite prepared not to engage with new speakers at all because they're not happy with new practices or they're not happy with errors if you like then you know something's got to give at some point exactly I got in touch with someone at a dialect association recently who's father passed away and he played a prominent role in a lot of my field work and that was really telling because you know these people aren't going to be around for much longer but if they're unwilling to compromise again this is I mean this is attested throughout the revitalisation literature as I'm sure you know well it won't be long before this is a similar context thank you for inviting me thank you