Albanian Rhotics & the Mapping of Region to Gender
In this study I have two main objectives: (1) to document and describe the status of the two Albanian rhotics, /r/ and /rr/, in the speech and perception of participants from both northern and southern cities in Albania, and (2) to explore the social meaning(s) tied to the merger of /r/ and /rr/, particularly in the case where it seems like a regional dialectal feature has taken on a gendered meaning. I find that not only is the merger more common in the speech of southern women, but also the phonetic realization of the rhotics (even when unmerged) is different in the speech of northerners and southerners. Finally, I discuss the social meanings associated with merged and unmerged speech, and investigate whether a listener’s experience with a linguistic feature has an effect on the strength of the social meanings that a listener associates with that feature.
