Chapter 13

Dialect levelling or shift

South Čakavian dialects spoken in Dalmatia, the coastal part of Croatia, are characterised by a high level of innovation coupled with heavy Romance influence, which is mostly discernible at the lexical and, less often, at the syntactic level. Despite their continued presence, dialect levelling led to the decline in the quantity and frequency of locally specific Romance elements. In the paper we examine whether and to what extent four Čakavian varieties are affected by levelling leading to either the Regional Dalmatian koine (RD) or a shift in the direction of the Standard Croatian variety (SC), and whether there are differences in that respect between the varieties under research. In order to determine the degree of advergence toward SC or RD, we examine the reported use and familiarity with lexical variants of Romance origin by means of apparent time analysis, followed by a comparative analysis of the collected data in four originally Čakavian settings. Our research reveals that differential resistance to shift and levelling of certain parts of the lexicon can be observed, that there are preferred models in the processes of levelling and change, and that the motives for maintenance and shift found at the lexical level depend on extralinguistic factors including geographical, social and linguistic isolation of certain Čakavian varieties.